As a professional writer and English teacher for the past decade, I’ve been prone to think frequently about the role of language in life. One of the recurring themes in my thoughts — occasioned at least in part by some of my grad school studies in philosophy, anthropology, and sociolinguistics, and also by my being…
Category: Education
Listen up, kids: More college DOES NOT equal more money
Diane Auer Jones, who in addition to being the president of the education-oriented policy institute Washington Campus is a former assistant secretary for postsecondary education in the U.S. Department of Education, recently wrote a blog post for The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Brainstorm blog (“Straddling 2 Centuries,” April 29) that should be required reading for…
Education and the pleasure of thinking
Edith Hamilton — a worthy intellectual companion indeed — once said something that ought to be emblazoned on the wall of every classroom and discussed at length by every teacher and teacher-wannabe, so wonderfully does it encapsulate a vital truth that cuts neatly through the endless layers of bullshit that encrust the contemporary theory and…
The importance of reading long, difficult, serious books
I’m finally taking the plunge and getting an e-book reader, either a Sony Reader or a Kindle. My birthday is next month and I’m asking my family to contribute funds toward the cause. On a regular basis I read so very many things in electronic format, both for my professional writing activities and for my…
News flash: New study shows formal learning requires effort!!!!
If my tone in this post sounds sarcastic, don’t worry, you’re not imagining things. My tone really is sarcastic. Some things, I’ve learned, positively beg for a rich heaping of irony. The latest issue of Education Week contains the following article, published online June 16 and published in print June on 17: Effort, Engagement, and…
An Economic Day of Reckoning for America’s Colleges
Interesting video from The Chronicle of Higher Education showing speakers and attendees at the Chronicle‘s Leadership Forum, held on June 7-8 in Washington, D.C., hashing over the question of just how worried colleges ought to be about the economy, and how they ought to respond to the crisis. Their bottom line: Brace for serious change….
The last generation’s successes become the next generation’s problems
An interesting recent article from The Chronicle of Higher Education that explains one effect of California’s epic budget crisis on its college system spells out a principle with much wider applications for our culture and civilization at large. “California’s ‘Gold Standard’ for Higher Education Falls Upon Hard Times” (June 15) explains how the fabled California…
America’s Colleges at a Crossroads – Part 3
You might want to catch up on Parts 1 and 2 of this series before reading this final installment, although this one, like the others, can stand on its own. In the first post in this series, I talked about the economic crisis that will force and is currently forcing the realignment and, in many…
America’s Colleges at a Crossroads – Part 2
If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, you might want to go back and catch up before reading this one. Trashing education A few weeks ago I posted a link to the article that forms the backbone of part one of this series — which, again, is “A Straight-Talk Survival Guide for Colleges” by Peter…
America’s Colleges at a Crossroads – Part 1
This is the first of a three-part series. (Also see parts 2 and 3.)In this post I’ll simply point to the problem and refer to a couple of recently published pieces that lay it out in bleak detail. In the next two, to be published over the course of this week, I’ll lay out some…