Tag Archives: reform

Race to the Top will fail …

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From The Answer Sheet (Washington Post blog on education), written by guest Marion Brady:

… a curriculum adopted in 1893 that grows more dysfunctional with each passing year. Imagine a car being driven down a winding rural road with all the passengers, including the driver, peering intently out the back window.

The familiar, traditional curriculum is so at odds with the natural desire to learn that laws, threats and other extrinsic motivators are necessary to keep kids in their seats and on task.

Rest of the post here. It’s worth reading.

Steal this blog.

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Must read article by Ron Charles in the Washington Post … discussing college students’ reading habits (On Campus, Vampires Are Besting the Beats):

“… according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the best-selling titles on college campuses are mostly about hunky vampires or Barack Obama. Recently, Meyer and the president held six of the 10 top spots. In January, the most subversive book on the college bestseller list was “Our Dumb World,” a collection of gags from the Onion. The top title that month was “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” by J.K. Rowling. College kids’ favorite nonfiction book was Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” about what makes successful individuals. And the only title that stakes a claim as a real novel for adults was Khaled Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” the choice of a million splendid book clubs.

Here we have a generation of young adults away from home for the first time, free to enjoy the most experimental period of their lives, yet they’re choosing books like 13-year-old girls — or their parents. The only specter haunting the groves of American academe seems to be suburban contentment …”

Is inspiring literature doomed? What will happen to progressive thinking if college campuses become mere extensions of high school, and no longer the place where kids are exposed to new and radical ideas?