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Books have little direct influence, but that’s generally been the case
One reason is that books have lost their place as primary vehicles for shaping education policy. Just like in other realms, books are being displaced by other media. A film like Waiting for “Superman” can have considerably more influence over education policy than any book. Articles and reports can be released on the Internet as soon […]
Michael O’Malley’s take on Virginia history textbook errors
The SOLs are the problem. They combine the huffing and blowing of conservatives, who want measurable fact-based standards, with the wheedling of liberals, who want “inclusion.” The result trains kids away from argument and reason and towards empty memorization. via Those VA History textbooks – The Aporetic. Bad standards aren’t the entire problem, but incoherent […]
Teaching about religion
Andy Rotherham uses the overblown rhetoric about "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays"* to point out that public K-12 schools generally do a lousy job of teaching about religion. He attributes this substantially to the skittishness many public schools have about the church-state boundary. Never mind the 1995 consensus statement that included (among others) ACLU and Baptist […]
Toys, tech, and learning
A few days ago, Michael O'Malley summarized very nicely the cultural history of a middle-class Christmas. (He gives proper credit to Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas.) One of the consequences of a gift-giving culture within families has been the evolution of consumer electronics as children's toys. No, Christmas commercialism isn't entirely responsible for this; […]
Domesday version 2010
Congratulations to all 308,745,538 of us! I'd link to the Census Bureau website, but I think it's crashed under a huge weight of traffic. Update: The Census Bureau website has evidently recovered.