Throughout the ages, cultures have held different positions on the core purpose of education. Some have seen education as a means to preparing children for war (Sparta), or preparing them for a monastic life (middle ages), or getting them ready for factory work (late...
Whole generations of black young people can continue to go down the drain because their fate carries less weight than fashionable racial rhetoric.
Today, Dr. Benjamin Carson is a renowned neurosurgeon at a renowned institution, Johns Hopkins University. But what got him there was wholly different from what is being offered to many ghetto youths today, much of which is not merely futile but counterproductive.
On the low academic preparation of many teachers.
The only way to improve our schools is to get government out of education.
Expanding the underperforming K–12 system “down” a year earlier to include publicly funded preschool naturally benefits the education unions. But what about the kids?
In recent years, it has become increasingly popular to argue that government should be operated more like a business. As an example, a manifesto written by sixteen public school executives explains how to fix public schools: Let’s stop ignoring basic economic...
The most important thing for a parent to remember is to teach his or her child to think. A reader once wrote me a note in which she elaborated on how she teaches her child to think in all kinds of ways. She discusses moral or other kinds of dilemmas in everyday life....
The poor have found remarkably innovative ways of helping themselves, educationally, and in some of the most destitute places on Earth have managed to nurture a large and growing industry of private schools for themselves.
According to clickorlando.com and FoxNews.com, The Florida Board of Education decided in an emergency meeting last Tuesday to lower the passing grade on the writing portion of Florida's standardized test, after preliminary results showed a drastic drop in student...
I have resisted commenting on political issues—such as the riots in Greece against the austerity measures by the government and the more than three-month long student protests in Montreal against the small tuition hikes introduced by the Quebec government—because I...
For decades, America’s public schools have done an increasingly poor job of educating our children. Politicians love to put forth optimistically named programs, such as “No Child Left Behind” or “Save our Schools,” with grand promises of reforming our educational...
Tuition inflation will continue, just as it has for decades under college student loans. Obama’s plan will accelerate the process.
A DrHurd.com visitor asks how she can help her children to keep developing their rational minds, to be objective and to develop a correct hierarchy of knowledge, in spite of government-run schools that teach the exact opposite. She says her kids are intelligent and...
The best way to raise financially responsible children is to teach them cause and effect. This means giving them logical consequences and explanations for your decisions. Give them choices when you can. When possible, let them in on your economic decisions (which...
Last Tuesday, we took the midnight train to Chicago. It's an easy ride, with a bedroom both ways -- except I get the top bunk, which feels like I'm stuffed in a 1942 troop train heading off to battle the Nazis. Getting up and down the ladder in cramped quarters gets...
The basic principles of motivation are really quite simple: the teacher must identify the value of his course, design the curriculum accordingly, and name the value explicitly. If he does this properly, he can dispose of the pizzas, gold stars, and rulers, and enjoy the radiantly eager response of children who really grasp what they are learning and why.
Recent videos of American children in school singing songs of praise for Barack Obama were a little much, especially for those of us old enough to remember pictures of children singing the praises of dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mao. But you don't need a dictator...
There is so much for high school seniors and their parents to know about colleges that they not only need to get a lot of information but also need to make sure it is the right kind of information. A number of college guides have useful information but, unfortunately,...
When parents plunk down $20, $30, $40 and maybe $50 thousand this fall for a year's worth of college room, board and tuition, it might be relevant to ask: What will their children learn in return? The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) ask that question in...
Ward Connerly, former University of California Regent, has an article, "Study, Study, Study -- A Bad Career Move" in the June 2, 2009 edition of Minding the Campus (www.mindingthecampus.com) that should raise any decent American's level of disgust for what's routinely...
Even if the "stimulus" package doesn't seem to be doing much to stimulate the economy, it is certainly stimulating many potential recipients of government money to start lining up at the trough. All you need is something that sounds like a "good thing" and the ability...
I have invented a new educational game. I call it "Tell Me Everything You Know." Here is how the game works in my grammar class: I write a sentence on the board, set a time limit, and then have the students write down every grammatical fact they can name about the...
Daily life offers us parents many opportunities to strengthen our children 's minds. One way to do that is by noticing and taking advantage of opportunities to praise our children's thought. "Yes, that's right." "Very true," "I didn't know you knew that!" "You...
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