Education Policy, Politics and News

A Brief Dip into Education History Pt. 2

2011-10-09T23:02:00.000-07:00

"Paralegal salary" may be a ridiculously common search term now, but office work like this is a very recent invention. Yes, this is but another strand of thought in education history thanks to the now-classic Huck's Raft by Steven Mintz (2004). This time I want to take a peek into what Mintz had to say about employment for teens at the turn of the nineteenth century.

The topic of teens working connects to education history because for the longest time, working outside the home was the primary mode of educating older children who were transitioning into adulthood. Very few attended high school before it was compulsory and even then not all teens could forsake those valuable working years to pursue an education. The history of work-as-learning goes way back to indentured servanthood and apprenticeships at least as far back as the seventeenth century in America.

Mintz mentions in his chapter on "Laboring Children" that daughters of ethnic minorities often had drop school and start working to contribute to the family income. Females coming of age in the Industrial Revolution learned to covet office jobs over labor and time-intensive gigs in cotton textile mills or degrading positions in well-off households.

Later as manual labor became the destiny of fewer and fewer middle-class youth, men and women alike began to seek office employment, sparking the fear that office boys were less manly than their working fathers had been and inspiring girls all over to land a job at a desk like in glamorous popular novels. Regardless, such employment was delayed as more and more (white) youth finished high school and then went on to complete a portion of higher education.

(This week I'll bounce back to posts on education news/policy! Thanks for indulging my brief trip down memory lane.)

A Brief Dip into Education History Pt. 1

2011-10-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days I've been eyeballs deep in Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood (2004) by Steven Mintz. Well-written and surprisingly fascinating, Mintz's work traces conceptions and realities of childhood in American from the seventeenth century to the present. I'm only half-way through so I've just reached the pre-World War I era.

You never know when you have some old, rusty misinformation lying around in your mind, nor are we often aware of gaps in our knowledge until new information is grasped. Well, guess what-- I had huge gaps in my knowledge of childhood in this country over the last few centuries. Mintz seems so thorough in his examination of the sub-cultures in seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century America.

One of the main ideas has been that adult's ideas about childhood are often rooted in what they want children to be like and what about their own civilization they want to preserve or expand. The Puritans are a great example of this. Puritan children were just "small adults" who were in dire need of correction and instruction from day one. (Early childhood education readers, these are the people that pioneered the idea that childhood is the "formative" stage of human development.?

Puritan adults thought about their kids obsessively, which may seem surprising since they didn't indulge their kids one bit. They wrote about raising children relentlessly and devised new ways of instruction and child rearing to raise up little men and women who would value the sacrifices they made to bring about their way of life and to carry that life into the next generations. They started learning to read and memorize basically in infancy.

Did the Puritan children miss out on carefree times of fun and play? Did they miss their childhood? I could be wrong but it seems what Mintz is saying is quite the opposite. Their childhood may have been more structured and laden with responsibility compared to modern ideas of childhood, but it wasn't necessarily less pleasurable. Like today, children probably took pleasure making their parents happy, bumping along, having fun intermittently and doing what was expected of them because that's what they knew.

School of One and Hybrid Schools

2011-09-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

Thanks to an article I found on Teachery.net speculating on education evolution, I came across this video about a New York City School System project called the School of One. Originally led by Joel Rose (who resigned in March 2011), the school teaches clusters of kids using a mix of technologies and teaching styles. They mix small group work with independent online tutoring and work with smart boards and computer programs in addition to traditional lessons led by teachers.

Each student's skill set is known by a mind-blowing algorithm that assesses at the end of each day whether they've mastered a new skill or not. If they haven't, then the algorithm determines what new way of approaching that same topic the student will engage in the next day. It's very interesting. It sounds like magic to me (and that is why I am not a software developer).

Read a two-part review by Education Sector blogger Bill Tucker here and here.

School of One revolves around the goal of addresses each "one" student's individual needs. They also have easing and enhancing the work of the teacher in mind. Three schools in New York have hosted the pilot program so far. Right now their students learn math by the School of One method. Four new schools are scheduled to get the program in 2012-2013. Check out the School of One website.

One of the most noticeable things about the program is the amount of responsibility they pass off to technology. Computers have been in schools and classrooms for a long time now and their presence is always increasing. Instruction today is always a hybrid of person-to-person/class teaching and interaction with technology. Education editor Liz Dwyer writes about the rise of the hybrid school here.

With endless resources online and educational technology improving there are few reasons not to integrate these things into schooling. I myself love to access the tutorials over at Khan Academy when I'm feeling rusty on something.

Social Promotion Vs. Grade Retention

2011-09-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

I can only vaguely remember any kids in my elementary school who had been "held back." I remember knowing who they were at the time, and I recall my impression that kids who were held back were noticeably older, taller, bigger than the rest of us. There was really no way to be held back quietly. And even though there was a stigma associated with it, I don't remember those older kids ever being picked on, because they were as I said, bigger than the rest of us.

An interesting article about a mom who wants her son to be held back even though her school wants to promote him came across my news feed today. He's a Special Education student and his school is sending him up to sixth grade, even though his mother says he still does not know how to read. For Special Ed students, the percentage of content they've got to master to pass a grade is lower than for other students. So in the mind of the school, if this kid has mastered the required 20 or 30% he's good to go. Mom worries he will only fall further behind.

It's an interesting problem in my opinion, not just for this Special Education student but for the many, many children who are moved up a grade each year even though their parents or teachers know they aren't ready. It's called social promotion or "seat time." Students move through K-8 with their peers regardless if they have a very low content mastery rate. It's so common it hardly seems like a battle anymore, which is why the article I read stood out and is trending at the moment.

Critics on either side of this education issue cite negative social consequences for these students. If they're held back they will feel awkward around their younger classmates and may turn into bullies or feel bad about themselves. If they're moved up they fall further behind academically and they may drop out or cause trouble. This problem asks us to define whether quality of education or quantity of education is what is signified by a high school diploma.

Honestly, it sounds like these kids are in a bad position either way. Other options for improving their content mastery include tutoring, summer school or maybe a change of schools altogether to a different type of learning environment. And there's always homeschooling for families who can make that work.

I know every teacher faces decisions like this each year. I have a cousin who teaches elementary and even though several of her students last year could have benefited greatly from repeating a grade level until their behavior was more on par with their peers, it was basically unthinkable to do anything other than pass them. Why is that so normal now? What do you think? And something else I'd like to know is how teachers are prepared during their education to address these situations.

Valuing and Devaluing Higher Education Today

2011-09-01T16:21:00.000-07:00

The bridge between academia and the business world has never before been so closely knit. Of course a college degree has always been helpful for finding a job or a professional career, but now it is almost impossible to think of the two worlds separately.

Today most jobs require not only a college degree, but often an advanced degree such as a master's in a specific field is required, too. With the number of available jobs down due to the sluggish economy, more people are competing for the same jobs. That, combined with the ever-increasing number of college graduates, equals a ridiculously competitive job market filled with super-qualified candidates.

Even newly-minted attorneys straight out of great law schools find themselves competing with experienced, accomplished lawyers whose firm just let a hundred people go. It's for this reason that many people who already have a bachelors or one advanced degree turn right back around and matriculate into another college degree. This cycle creates fresh waves of new candidates with even more degrees. A percentage of them will, once again, not find gainful employment and will go back for even more credentials!

Sure, I graduated with zero offers, but that was de rigueur in 2009.

As Laura Pappano reported this summer for The New York Times, many employers make their first cut based on who has a masters degree and who doesn't. It isn't that they are specifically looking for someone who has spent additional years reflecting on theory, but that it shows a certain amount of "go-get-em." A masters degree demonstrates how hard you've worked, at least in the eyes of those who are hiring.

You cannot, however, give an advanced degree too much credit, at least not if you write for The Onion. An old headline of their proclaims, "Masters in Writing Fails to Create Master of Writing" and roasts the poor guy who made it through an advanced degree in writing without developing a bit of talent.

At some point we are all inspired to love learning for its own sake. Perhaps due to a brilliant and lovable professor, or a night of genius in the library or (admit it!) The Dead Poet's Society. Learning should be loved for itself, in some respects. But even if you live in the ivory tower, you have to consider how to make higher education pay. And if you want a career, you have to bring those two worlds together. So it only makes sense that more and more colleges are catering to the business world, shaping degrees and programs that will feed directly into a career, as Pappano reported in "The Master's as the New Bachelor's."

That's the case with many online degrees that are purely career-oriented, or as one website calls them "industry-focused degrees", in addition to niche advanced degrees at traditional schools that are being fashioned to produced better candidates for hard to get jobs. These are programs that define themselves based directly on the business world. And at this point, who could fault them?

What, at the end of the day, does it all mean? Our experience and definition of higher education is based on what we expect from it, what we take from it and how we use it. As we change, it changes. It's to be expected that in an advanced, capitalist society like our own, that the meaning of an advanced degree is going to evolve with us and represent a certain monetary value and professional edge. And if it evolves with our dollar, too, well... I think you can see where this is going.

Technology + Social Media + Milliennials = Love Forever

2011-08-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

Via: OnlineEducation.net

Millennials (those born between 1981 and 2000) have grown up deeply enmeshed with technology. Social media has been an integral part of their lives since, well, since it was invented. Their relationships are supplemented by Facebook. Their one-liners are sourced out to Twitter. They pump creative juices into and out of Pinterest. And they sometimes resort to LinkedIn to connect to traditional employers.

It's no wonder that technology and online resources including social media have become a huge part of their studies, as well. OnlineEducation.edu recently released the above infographic based on a student/technology study.

The results may astound you... based on your age and how often you find yourself around current students. 75% of students reported a preference for tablets over textbooks. That's a huge shift in how students operate in academic settings.

Not only are students today integrating gadgets and online resources into their education, they're taking classes completely online in increasing numbers. MyCollegesandCareers.com reports that "nearly 12 million post-secondary students in the U.S. take some or all of their classes online." It's nothing less than extraordinary how quickly technology has advanced just in facilitating online classes.

One statistic in the report left me baffled, however. 82% of surveyed students use devices such as laptops to write their papers. What do the other 18% use? Typewriter? Pen and paper? Do instructors even accept those anymore? One thing's for sure, the internet, social media and advanced technology have forever changed the landscape of education and the experience of being a student.