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Here’s a little joke for you. Or is it?
The little boy was getting poor marks in school. One day he said to his teacher, “I don’t want to scare you, but my daddy says that if I don’t start learning more, somebody is going to get a spanking.“
Here’s an interesting report on what’s happening to class sizes in the US. In a nutshell, a few years back it was fashionable to mandate smaller class sizes. Sadly, student achievement has not improved as a result but the reduced class sizes have been continued because they are very popular with parents/voters. Now, however, the huge and continuing expense of smaller classes is starting to bite, and many jurisdictions are no longer able to afford to maintain their class size reductions. It will be very interesting to see what happens as a result. Will student achievement fall? Will parents/voters express their displeasure at the ballot box? Will Ontario abandon its own class reduction initiative? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode.
This new policy paper from the Ontario Ministry of Education means that the province’s teachers are now allowed to penalize students who hand in their assignments late or not at all. This is a definite reversal of the Ministry’s trend towards ever more “progressive” policies. Is it possible that it signals a change in overall direction? We live in hope!
In today’s fast-paced world, kids seldom get enough sleep - and there are serious consequences, according to this article: depression, obesity, car accidents, and low grades to name a few. So perhaps bus pick-up times of 7:00 am are not such a good idea.
Another interesting article outlines some sensible things that can be done to improve student performance, above and beyond good teaching and curriculum. They are:
Basically, kids should just listen to their moms. But we already knew that…...
Do spelling and punctuation errors get you down? Then maybe you should join the Typo Eradication Advancement League. But beware! The intrepid members of this organization have been warned to "keep walking or they would make sure we didn't walk again". They have also been fined $3,000 and banned from speaking publicly about fixing typos. It seems that pointing out spelling and punctuation errors can be bad for your health and your pocketbook!
Since apostrophes seem particularly prone to abuse, here's a link to an excellent site called "The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes". And when it comes to spelling, we have a number of excellent articles in our newsletter archives (scroll down to Spelling).
This look at public transit in Toronto appeared in the business section (no less) of the Toronto Star. It is full of free advice for the TTC in how to improve customer service in the monopoly it enjoys. For those of you outside of Toronto, the Toronto Transit Commission has seen sleeping ticket-takers and overall eroding quality and service. An advisory panel has just released report that says the TTC will go off the rails unless it "creates a culture of customer service." The article writer asks, "But what exactly is a customer service culture? And how can a monopoly with a captive market turn itself into an empathetic organization that delights its customers?"
SQE has been asking the same of public education for decades. The answer is to challenge the monopoly. SQE has many solutions for school choice that readers can find out about here, here, and here.
Click here for a site that provides free help for students who are struggling with algebra - including free on-line tutoring and lessons.
It would be interesting to talk to an architect about Los Angeles' newest public high school. The $578M price tag seems a bit excessive, even for La-La Land, but it does exemplify a trend towards expensive schools that is occurring in Canada as well.
The question that I would like to pose to the architect is whether it would be possible to develop a dozen or so standardized blueprints, sort of like Pan-Abode buildings, that can be customized as needed but which can be built much more economically than one-off buildings. I mean, Tim Horton's and Wal-Mart do it and, while their buildings may not be architectural knock-outs, they're comfortable and functional, and they cost way less.
Of course, given the current funding model, there is no incentive for school boards to economize on school buildings. I'm guessing the concept of Pan-Abode schools won't be explored any time soon.
It must be the dog days of summer - there's not much in the news. So here's an excerpt from the perennially-valuable John Mighton (The End of Ignorance).
"In talking to various artists and scientists or reading their biographies, I've found that people who have actually made scientific discoveries or created works of art (as opposed to people who theorize about these things) tend to acknowledge the role of practice in their work. Writers and artists, for instance, know from experience how many years of studies and student exercises it can take before they find their voice or style. Ernest Hemingway, who eventually achieved a remarkable economy of style, as a young writer set himself the task of producing one decent sentence per day, and Paul Klee, whose mature paintings are imbued with a profound sense of mystery, spent ten formative years painting tonal exercises that would help him understand colour. Scientists and mathematicians in particular understand how much time they must devote to learning basic skills - as well as everything previously discovered in their area of specialization - before they can do original work. It is no accident that parents and academics who have a background in these fields have led the campaign for more rigorous standards in schools. When so many experts acknowledge the importance of training in the development of talent, and when so much evidence in cognition suggests that experts can be trained, why are schools so reluctant to expose children to anything that looks like rigorous training?" (p. 60)
""Kierkegaard once said that Hegel would have been the most profound thinker who ever lived if, when he had finished creating his monumental system of the world, he had simply admitted to himself that it was all only a beautiful thought-experiment. Anyone who works in education and develops theories about how children learn would be wise to keep this comment in mind." (pp. 260-261)
This Globe and Mail article reports that a judge has removed the Chair of the Toronto Catholic District School Board on conflict of interest grounds because her sons are substitute teachers for the board. There may also be a cloud over one of the other trustees whose daughter is an education assistant at the board.
The newspaper reports all this as if is a big story, but it is my impression that there are very few Ontario school boards without trustees with relatives or friends who work for their school boards. After all, it's normal for educators to get interested in running for trustee when they disagree with board policy and figure it would make a nice part-time job after they retire from teaching. Or maybe they are encouraged to run for trustee by one of the teachers' unions. Certainly, most school boards have former teachers among their trustees, along with educators who work or worked for other school boards.
All in all, I'm guessing there are precious few school boards in Ontario that are completely free of conflict of interest issues.
