How to teach critical thinking: an immodest idea
This entry is going to proceed through some maddeningly vague statements, so I will start with the bottom line: currently my best idea for teaching critical thinking in social sciences or related areas is to have students wrestle with an important substantive question or puzzle in a reasonably-well-bounded area of knowledge. The structure may be […]
The right-wing goat rodeo and the Common Core
Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli have a short essay this morning, Repairing the Conservative School Reform Coalition, that addresses their sense of fragmentation on the right in education policy. In the last few weeks, debates over both the Common Core and reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act have shown additional shredding of what was once […]
“Trust us” and “there’s plenty of oversight, honest!”
What does an education historian bring to the table on national security debates? Just this: When have we heard government officials assure the public that they’re competent and the public doesn’t need to have more information? When we have heard government officials assure the public that there is sufficient oversight of activities? When has security […]
Brief review of Matt Reed’s “Confessions of a Community College Administrator”
I recently read Matt Reed’s Confessions of a Community College Administrator, which was released earlier this spring. Bottom line: read it if you want a good description of community colleges today and an administrator’s perspective on the dilemmas of the public 2-year college sector.
Time enough for love … of learning: more on credit (hours)
Matt Reed has responded twice to my observations last month about competencies and credit hours. First, he directly responded to my proposal that we just strike the word “hour” from the phrase “credit hour:” If we just declare that credits mean whatever a given provider says they mean, then there’s no basis for denying federal […]