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What happened to the STEM push to put the US over the top when it came to technology and science? Well, it's difficult to do any of that if you don't have any follow through.
Now, I'm not going to blame Obama for this, just as I didn't blame Bush for NCLB. I cannot be brought to ever believe that the President of the US (regardless of which party he/she is from), doesn't bleed red, white, and blue and want what is best for America and its kids.
But this is simply a symptom of being human: we talk a good game, but do we follow through? Some what. Maybe 5% of the time.
Worse yet, this is typical of what passes for "reform" in education. Give all the curriculum and standards to the schools (now I know that "give" is a kind verb. Maybe I should use "push" "force" and "dump" too) and then don't have any professional development or follow through to improve it.
That would be like apple still having a 1GB iPod that only played music prior to the creation of iTunes. That was fine, for about a six month period in 2002, but not 2012. What version of the iPod is apple on now? They ship and then periodically update and improve their products.
Why should it be any different in education?
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I love this one: 10 Lessons of an MIT Education.
Think high school or summer school is hard? Check this out . . .
Lesson One: You can and will work at a desk for seven hours straight, routinely.
Lesson Two: You learn what you don't know you are learning.
Lesson Three: By and large, "knowing how" matters more than "knowing what.
Lesson Four: In science and engineering, you can fool very little of the time.
Lesson Five: You don't have to be a genius to do creative work.
Lesson Six: You must measure up to a very high level of performance.
Lesson seven: The world and your career are unpredictable, so you are better off learning subjects of permanent value.
Lesson Eight: You are never going to catch up, and neither is anyone else.
Lesson Nine: The future belongs to the computer-literate-squared.
Lesson Ten: Mathematics is still the queen of the sciences.
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Need a little inspiration? (Come on, who doesn't?)
Here are The Top 10 Most Utterly Awesome Quotes About Teaching.
This one is my favorite -
I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
― Albert Einstein
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This is so true.
Nothing has had a greater impact on my teaching in the last 5 years than Twitter.
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Here is an interesting article on not just oversharing information on a college entrance essay but also on kids trying too hard to stand out.
I especially like this part from the article
When it comes to college admissions, our society has tumbled way, way too far down the rabbit hole, as I’ve observed before. And in the warped wonderland where we’ve landed, too many kids attach such a crazy degree of importance to getting into the most selective schools that they do stagy, desperate, disturbing things to stand out. The essay portion of their applications can be an especially jolting illustration of that.
THE blind spots and miscalculations that enter into the essay-writing process reflect the ferocious determination of parents and children to impress the gatekeepers at elite schools, which accept an ever smaller percentage of applicants. Students are convinced that they have to package themselves and communicate in entirely distinctive fashions.
I'm all for voice, style, and originality in writing. But writing an essay with clear and concise details that illustrates an applicant's talent is exactly what you need. This article notes plenty of controversial topics or too intimate of details shared that do, in fact, allow the student to stand out . . . but it's for the wrong reason.
I'd encourage any students to take my advice to heart: write about your life in clear and concise prose that illustrates your uniqueness and talents in action. Write a gripping narrative that you wouldn't mind seeing reprinted in your local paper.
It doesn't need to be controversial or totally original.
After all writing about the relationship between a parent and a child isn't all that original, yet To Kill a Mockingbird, Beloved, The Catcher in the Rye, A River Runs Through It, and Huck Finn all tackle it. And they all do it in strikingly different - yet distinctly remarkable - ways.
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Shouldn't Learning Always Be Exciting?
This post happens to focus on the use of 3D printers in education and how they can make learning more exciting. I agree. They can. But they are just the newest item in a never ending list of things that can make learning exciting (including the PET (which was the first computer I ever used back at JA Hughes Elementary school in RLF), the APPLE IIe, ITV, the internet, the iPod, the laptop, iMacs . . .)
But I'm more intrigued by the question the bloggers asks.
Shouldn't learning always be exciting?
Of course it should. Right?
Well, I guess that depends upon your definition of exciting?
Exciting as in learning knew information and seeing how it enlarges your world view and how it can apply to your life? Well, yes that is exciting. But it's exciting to me now. Not exactly when I was 15 though.
Exciting as in engaging and entertaining as in watching a movie or Youtube clip? Well, yes that can be exciting. But how many Youtube clips have the students in your classes already watched in their short life times? I've actually been in classes where I thought, Oh Lord! Not another movie! So that isn't a recipe for constant excitement either.
Exciting as in having a passionate person lecture or engage you via discussion? Well, yes that is engaging to me and always has been. But how many of these people actually exist?
I think what I'm getting at here is that learning should be exciting. But the excitement of learning lies in variety.
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In our nostalgia for the past, let us not forget that it was not always better. That is something we can never ever lose sight of. Take air travel as an example.
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Again, more nefarious activities from the millennials. This one using Twitter, one of the devil's most dominant tools right now.
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Here is one of my favorite authors in a trailer for his new series, How We Got to Now. There is no way to accurately describe how much I'm looking forward to this. It's like Connections by James Burke has been re-created!
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I saw this on social media. I wanted to learn more, so I clicked on the link (and seeing links on Facebook is always a sticky issue. They are rarely reliable and almost always extremely biased (I mean I will link to this very post via Facebook when I'm done . . . so you know it's not reliable). And it took me to the Tea Party News Network.
No bias there at all!
But the story is about a Marine who was arrested and "forced" to go through a mental health evaluation (and my biased mind is wondering just how difficult a battery of mental health exams and tests can possibly be for a "decorated Marine." After all, it's not like he was subjected to water-boarding or electro shock therapy) because of some Facebook posts he had which were very derogatory about the government, namely our current president.
Of course, this is all passed off as horribly un-American! At least the headline does. As I read more I realized he was actually arrested 2 years ago. So it's old news. The "new" news is that he is suing the government for this. (Again, my biased mind thinks that he no doubt has criticized others for suing the government - most likely when a republican was president - as frivolous and a waste of tax payers money (tea partiers should like that)
It all comes off, of course, as our liberal president cracking down on free speech of our honest Americans. (Again, my biased mind thinks that yeah, this is going too far. It's not like our veterans ever have any trouble adjusting to society and they never become violent. Quick question, how many soldiers (horribly) have committed suicide or shot up a military base in the past few years? This is a serious problem and one I don't mean to make light of. It's a serious issue, regardless of who is in office). But if he were to actually lose it and make good on some of his claims then the government and police departments would be under siege just as they were post Sandy Hook or post Fort Bragg. Stop me if you've heard this one before . . . family members contacted police about their son's odd behavior . . . the tell-tale signs were there on social media . . . why didn't anyone do anything?
And let us not forget, post-911 a lot of people were scrutinized and taken into custody as a result of our Home Land Security laws. There were protests then (from the left mostly I would imagine). But if any of those actions resulted in one terrorist act being stopped, the amen!
The same is true for this. If an innocent but zealous person has to be taken into custody and subjected to "horrific" mental health evaluations in order to catch one nut-job who is intent on blowing himself up at the Mall of America or to catch a disgruntled student who is planning on opening fire in my high school, then it is a very small inconvenience to deal with.
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To be fair, I've given at least two examples of how awesome and kind millennials can be. Here is the opposite. Here is a little entitled jerk who can't handle a situation when things get a little difficult. What would a person from the 1930's have done to this kid? I don't know, but that would be just as entertaining to watch as this clip.
I plan to use this in College Comp when I introduce students to Seth Godin's The Dip. Here is a kid who illustrates all that is wrong with quitting.
He should have quit early and just decided against getting a tattoo given how much they can hurt. He must have some idea of his tolerance for pain and how long the actually tattoo (that he wanted by the way) would actually take.
He should have quit early.
But now he is in the dip. Godin would tell him to man up and lean into the dip. Keep in mind that in a few days the swelling and scabbing will subside and you'll have a tattoo of which to be proud.
But this kid doesn't do that.
He quits (as so many of us actually do) at the worst possible time: right before the payoff.
So instead he's left with a partial tattoo that is a reminder of what a pathetic, spoiled, enabled, jerk he really is.
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