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If you had been an artist seeking greatness in the 1400s, moving to Florence, Italy to intern and associate with some of the greatest artists in history would have been a good idea, like a high-tech engineer moving to Silicon Valley in the 1980s. Although having a nurturing environment does not guarantee success, there is no arguing it helps, but environments go far beyond a group of professional mentors.
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Knowing Who to Blame Is Not Useful. Addressing the world with the mindset that you are responsible for everything that happens has some considerable advantages. For one thing, much time, effort and energy is wasted arguing about whom or what is responsible. The simple statement, “I am responsible” can completely defuse many highly charged situations and enable the people involved to move forward to the real issue, which is usually, “What can we do to fix or mitigate this situation?” Besides, if you do find someone to blame, they likely will not contribute to resolution of the issue. I have never heard of a burglar who after being apprehended volunteered to come back to the victim’s house and clean up the mess they made.
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Wouldn’t it be nice if when we were young somebody would teach us that our self-concept is a dynamic and evolving process, and any decisions we make are always subject to later reconsideration and revision. Plus if every time we said “that is not me”, it evoked a discussion of the pluses and minuses of our current concept of “me”. Then over time, our sense of ourselves would progressively gain clarity and strength so in mid-life, we would know who we were and why instead of ending up doing the wrong things, in the wrong job, with the wrong friends, living in the wrong place and not understanding why.
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When we think of education, we often think about reading, writing and arithmetic, but there are other skills, life skills, that many believe are equally valuable. Life skills are usually more tacit than explicit and, therefore, are more difficult to assess than academic skills. Nevertheless, they are still essential and deserve to be taken seriously. In this and the next few posts, I will describe each of nine such skills beginning with Skill #1 Self-Directed Learning.
I just finished reading the first round of editorials on the Reuters Great Debate blog. So far opinions have been expressed by Steven Brill, Joel Klein, Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier, currently senior scholar at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education. Here is what I found out.
Before we can begin to improve our schools, we have to eliminate poverty, fix our health-care system, create a better class of politicians not swayed by special interest groups and persuade unions to put children first even though they do not pay union dues.
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California has written into law that the preferred choice for reducing school district costs in the face of budgetary shortfalls is to reduce the length of the school year. At the same time, reducing school district budgets by laying off teachers is precluded by law.
Really!
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The No Child Left Behind initiative is a notable effort to establish metrics for our education system so its efficacy can be measured and appropriate corrective measures can be taken when necessary. This sounds like a good idea, and one can wonder why it has taken so long for us to get here. Maybe it is because this may not be the place we want to be. Let me explain.
Naturally parents want to protect their children, but some of the ways they go about it can lead to problems and actually make their children’s journey to adulthood harder.
It is not easy to sit by and watch your toddler fall repeatedly, yet that is the way they learn to walk. Good parenting means protecting your children from harm. It also means encouraging them to stretch, try new approaches and take reasonable and healthy risks as they learn to master their world.
Here are 9 safe and sane things you can do NOW with your children that can make a significant difference LATER.
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After a long absence from blogging, I am back, prompted by what I perceive as an ongoing and never ending decline in the efficiency and quality of our education system. Although I do not pretend to have all the answers to this vexing problem, I believe I do have some good ideas that are worth exploring and developing, and that is exactly what I plan to do.
