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An idea worth spreading

Education is not something you can do TO children. Once a child reaches around 9 years old, all learning is self-directed learning. Student "engagement" is often narrowly conceived as keeping the curriculum fun and culturally inflected. But for students to "learn how to be learners," which should be the primary goal of education, students need to be allowed and encouraged to ask questions and contribute to the direction of their academic studies. Further, those students who grow up in segregated, impoverished communities and who are the intended subjects of so much 'achievement gap' policy are naturally those students who are most alienated from and distrustful of schools, teachers, and the whole institution of education, which, like the rest of society, tends to treat them like criminals. And yet, student voice and agency are almost entirely absent from the national debates about school and education reform. This must change.

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Education change. Communicating ideas. Sustainable economies and political systems. War. The denial of death. Literature and reading in an image culture. Japanese culture.

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  A reply on Talk: Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong

  Mar 22 2013: Important. The several myths are bound up in Dan's statement that " The $400,000 talent won't work for $84,000." All the work on intrinsic motivation (Daniel Pink etc) indicates that the talent will in fact work for less. And other emergent research along with common sense indicate that the people making 400K with their expensive MBA's are not really 5 times "better" than the people who chose to go into social sector work, if at all. Obviously expensive leadership at the top has not well served those industries most famous for it - such as banking. The CEO of Wells Fargo earned $300,000+ A WEEK last year to oversee more 'too big to fail' systemic corruption and failure for which many 'great' talents have been deeply rewarded by a rigged system that favors financial profit over social benefits - not the kind of talent that the social sector needs, now is it?