Education

The Demonization of “White” English Harms Black Students

Is Learning Standard “White” English Oppressive for Black Students?

Education and the Poor

Education and the Poor

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.

All Children Left Behind

All Children Left Behind

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...

Abyssal Failures: The Post Office and Education

Abyssal Failures: The Post Office and Education

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...

How Children Can Survive Bad Schools

How Children Can Survive Bad Schools

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...

How to Keep Your Kids From Growing Up To Be Brats

How to Keep Your Kids From Growing Up To Be Brats

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...

Motivation and Education

Motivation and Education

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.

A Letter from a Child

A Letter from a Child

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...

Choosing The Right College

Choosing The Right College

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,...

Not Much: What Will They Learn in College?

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...

College Education: To Much of a “Good Thing”?

College Education: To Much of a “Good Thing”?

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...

Tell Me Everything You Know

Tell Me Everything You Know

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...

Praise Your Child’s Thinking

Praise Your Child’s Thinking

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...

The Real Math Magic: Understanding vs Memorizing

The Real Math Magic: Understanding vs Memorizing

These children are not treated like human calculators, they are treated like thinking beings. And when they truly grasp the concepts they are using, when they can explain them fully and articulately, when they retain them because they are not memorizing, but understanding–that is real math magic.

Is College Worth It?

As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled "America's Most Over-rated Product: Higher...

Amateurs Outdoing Professionals

Amateurs Outdoing Professionals

When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession. If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital...

The Economics of College, Part III

The Economics of College, Part III

Why does college cost so much? There are two basic reasons. The first is that people will pay what the colleges charge. The second is that there is little incentive for colleges to reduce the tuition they charge. Those who want the government to provide subsidies to...

The Economics of College, Part II

The Economics of College, Part II

Those who argue that the taxpayers should be forced to subsidize people who go to colleges and universities seldom bother to think beyond the notion that education is a Good Thing. Some education is not only a good thing but a great thing. But, like most good things,...

The Economics of College, Part I

The Economics of College, Part I

A front-page headline in the New York Times captures much of the economic confusion of our time: "Fewer Options Open to Pay for Costs of College." The whole article is about the increased costs of college, the difficulties parents have in paying those costs, and the...

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

Pin It on Pinterest