My son, with mock pathos, is explaining to his mom how he managed to mess up a word definition on his homework: I’m a little boy, not a Merriam-Webster dictionary! Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Education
Like Father, Like Son?
The number of students majoring in computer science is falling, even at the elite universities. So [Bill] Gates went stumping at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, M.I.T. and Harvard, telling students that they could still make a good living in America, even as the nation’s industry is sending some jobs, like software programming, abroad. — The New York Times, “Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career” My brother is a doctor. He doesn’t encourage his kids to go into medicine though, because he’s incredibly frustrated by the fact that you go to school for 20 years to learn something, only to have clerks from insurance companies decide if a procedure you’ve recommended is or is not “medically necessary.” I’ve worked in computing for 20 years. I don’t push my kid to get into it because during that time, it’s become less and less… Read more →
Come On!
The Kumon (pronounced KOO-mon) learning centers are very popular here in Irvine, where parents are always looking for ways to give their kids a one-up on somebody else’s kids . . . Read more →
Lewis vs. Clark
My son is doing a 5th grade research paper on William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame. “Clark was a much better man than Lewis,” he says. “Why do you say that?” I ask. Read more →
Unskilled and Unaware of It
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. — Justin Kruger and David Dunning,… Read more →
Introducing a 10-Year-Old to Poetry
Me: (reading aloud from syllabus for UC Irvine Young Writers class, in which my kid is enrolled) “We are going to be doing a variety of activities, including a facade poem, a four season poem, journal writing, and a memory snapshot story.” Him: Poems blow. Read more →
Three Short Arguments Against Affirmative Action
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that race can be a factor for universities shaping their admissions programs, saying a broad social value may be gained from diversity in the classroom. The Fairness Argument If it was unfair when we used to discriminate against blacks and Jews, don’t tell me it’s fair now to discriminate against whites and Jews. Read more →
Stuff They Don’t Teach You in School
A client I’m working with is rewarding the top 20 percent of its sales force by flying them to Lake Tahoe for a 3-day weekend. An enterprising competitor might say to himself, “Hmmm . . . what if something were to happen to that plane?” Now there’s something they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School. Read more →
Teachers Making a Difference
Good or bad? It doesn’t say. OC Family‘s Special Annual “10 Teachers Making a Difference” issue is out . . . Read more →
Harvard Admits I Was Right
Got an email from Harvard this morning: Hello Paul, Thank you for catching the error on the Harvard at a Glance page. We now use the correct “principal.” Sincerely, The Harvard News Office You are quite welcome! How about throwing in free tuition for my kid? Read more →
Harvard Errs
I was marveling at the Harvard University fact page — 14.6 million volumes! Established 1636! — when I noticed “10 principle academic units.” Egads! A grammatical error on the Harvard site! I’d better send them an email . . . Read more →
Lost in America
Nearly 30 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 cannot locate the Pacific Ocean on a map. You can try it yourself here. Read more →
8th Grade: Then and Now
Dat’s de ‘fect of education; dat’s de t’ing what’s gwine to rule; Git dem books, you lazy rascal! Git back to yo’ place in school! — James Weldon Johnson, “Tunk” If you’ve ever wondered — I know I have — if certain of your colleagues completed the 8th grade, or rather spent their time jacking off like apes when they should have been doing math homework, you may be interested in Could You Pass 8th-Grade Math?, a sample of the Illinois State Board of Education’s math test for 8th graders. Read more →
Geography
This is probably why geography has not really been taught since World War II — to keep people in the dark as to where we are blowing things up. — Gore Vidal Read more →
Useless and Pointless Knowledge
Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain That could hold you, dear lady, from going insane That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain Of your useless and pointless knowledge. — Bob Dylan, “Tombstone Blues” “I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while–just once in a while–there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time!” — J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust. — T.S. Eliot, “The Rock” Read more →
Does an Elite College Really Pay?
This article concludes that the answer is no — that if you’re smart enough to get into, say, Princeton, you’re smart enough to make money wherever you go to school, even if it’s someplace a lot less expensive. Not to say that I wouldn’t be thrilled to have my kid get into an Ivy League school, but I’ve always thought that it’s no great feat to graduate “the best and the brightest” if you only admit the best and the brightest to begin with. Read more →
1st Day of 4th Grade
We have Mr. Walker for 4th grade this year . . . I saw an article today: Do Kids Need MP3 Players for School? It seems obvious to me that they don’t, and why even bring it up, although a pair of my kid’s back-to-school pants actually came with a built-in MP3 player holder. His reaction: “Cool! . . . what’s an MP3 player?” Read more →
Geometry or Epistemology?
With school starting up in a couple of days, my wife is trying to get our boy in an academic frame of mind . She has him doing some exercises from a geometry workbook and of course he’s not interested. “I can’t tell if these lines are exactly alike,” he says. Holds the book up to his face. “They look exactly alike . . .” Call me biased, but turning the whole exercise into a philosophical problem, rather than just saying “I don’t want to do this,” is a pretty sophisticated plan of attack for a 9-year-old. Read more →
Welcome to Irvine!
Education is important in our community . . . Word came home last week that this year’s Stanford 9 testing starts the first week of May. Immediately, my wife got a call from another mom announcing that she’s cancelling all play dates through the end of the testing period so her kid can spend every waking moment on test prep. The gauntlet has been thrown! Meanwhile, in business news, thanks to the tech meltdown, office space vacancy rates in southern Orange County continue to hover around 30 percent. The screaming rent deals this creates were enough to induce the company I work with to pack everything up and move one off-ramp further south on the 405 . . . Read more →
Teaching Kids to Write
Having students write essays about books accomplishes three things. It makes them hate writing, because it’s such a fruitless, uninteresting assignment. It makes them hate reading, because even books they enjoy are turned against them. And it probably makes them hate thinking, because the kind of analysis they’re forced to do is so strained and dull. — Joseph Weisberg Read more →