Posts tagged with “Education”

Link Post 34
Notes
Posted 2 months ago

Wonklife: The college premium

The numbers show a conflicted yet striking pattern. Real earnings for men, 25 to 34, with bachelor’s degrees are down 19 percent since 2000, and for female college graduates of that age they are down 16 percent since 2003.

Yet the wage differential between college graduates and high school…

“It’s now common that a fire chief has to have a master’s degree. That may sound silly and it would be easy to think that a master’s degree has not very much to do with putting out fires. Still, often it is desired that a firefighter is trained in emergency medical services, anti-terrorism practices, fire science (such as putting out industrial fires), and there is a demand for firefighter who, as they move into leadership roles, can do public speaking, interact with the community, and write grant proposals. A master’s degree is no guarantee of skill in these areas, but suddenly the new requirements don’t sound so crazy.”

Tyler Cowen’s response to the NYTimes Room for Debate topic, “Should College be for Everyone?”

via wonklife
Photo Post 121
Notes
Posted 3 months ago
politicalprof: A thought worth considering.  h/t: Bartcop Zoom

politicalprof:

A thought worth considering. 

h/t: Bartcop

via politicalprof
Photo Post 58
Notes
Posted 5 months ago
jtotheizzoe: pope-daddy-d asked: A majority of my peers hate science because it’s “boring/complicated”. I will admit, I am no science expert, but I am fascinated by it. Even if I am faced with something that is too complex for me to understand, I still marvle at its complexity and wonder. My question is, how do you feel about the way science is taught here in the States? Do you feel it may be the fault of lack of teacher-student engagement, or are America’s teens just getting dumber every year? (I assume the latter) I don’t think that America’s teens are getting dumber. They aren’t. We are a more talented, more productive, more advanced society than has ever existed on Earth. More than that, we still do a bad-ass job of training scientists. In fact, we do too good a job. We have too many of them, according to the people who write articles about those things. The American teenager can do things that the world’s most intelligent person could not have imagined even 200 years ago, like type a message on a tiny hand-held robot machine, use electricity to shoot it to space (or a radio tower), where another teenager would get it, and then they would eat tacos. This is amazing for two reasons: That kind of talk would have gotten you thrown in jail by the Church in Galileo’s time. They had no idea what tacos were 200 years ago. But the way that our teenagers (and really everyone) are being educated about science is kinda awful. Instead of all the awesome, the beauty, the creativity, the inquisitiveness and the wow that goes along with real science, you’re forced to focus on the dry, the boring, the facts, the memorization. I ask myself more creative questions in a day than most science students ask all year. It’s not all the teachers’ fault. They teach what they are told to, if not forced to, often in very regimented systems. Real science is about creative inquisition and the excitement of discovery. We’ve taken that and replaced it with fear … fear of boredom. Time to replace the fear with wonder. That’s how we create a more scientific society. Not by creating more scientists. Keep spreading the science love to all your friends.  Amen. Zoom

jtotheizzoe:

pope-daddy-d asked:
A majority of my peers hate science because it’s “boring/complicated”. I will admit, I am no science expert, but I am fascinated by it. Even if I am faced with something that is too complex for me to understand, I still marvle at its complexity and wonder. My question is, how do you feel about the way science is taught here in the States? Do you feel it may be the fault of lack of teacher-student engagement, or are America’s teens just getting dumber every year? (I assume the latter)

I don’t think that America’s teens are getting dumber. They aren’t. We are a more talented, more productive, more advanced society than has ever existed on Earth.

More than that, we still do a bad-ass job of training scientists. In fact, we do too good a job. We have too many of them, according to the people who write articles about those things. The American teenager can do things that the world’s most intelligent person could not have imagined even 200 years ago, like type a message on a tiny hand-held robot machine, use electricity to shoot it to space (or a radio tower), where another teenager would get it, and then they would eat tacos.

This is amazing for two reasons:

  1. That kind of talk would have gotten you thrown in jail by the Church in Galileo’s time.
  2. They had no idea what tacos were 200 years ago.

But the way that our teenagers (and really everyone) are being educated about science is kinda awful. Instead of all the awesome, the beauty, the creativity, the inquisitiveness and the wow that goes along with real science, you’re forced to focus on the dry, the boring, the facts, the memorization. I ask myself more creative questions in a day than most science students ask all year. It’s not all the teachers’ fault. They teach what they are told to, if not forced to, often in very regimented systems.

Real science is about creative inquisition and the excitement of discovery. We’ve taken that and replaced it with fear … fear of boredom.

Time to replace the fear with wonder. That’s how we create a more scientific society. Not by creating more scientists.

Keep spreading the science love to all your friends. 

Amen.

(Source: jtotheizzoe)

via jtotheizzoe
Photo Post 7399
Notes
Posted 6 months ago
collegeproblems: aaawww someone put these up around BU please Lately, we could use a bunch of these too.

collegeproblems:

aaawww someone put these up around BU please

Lately, we could use a bunch of these too.

via collegeproblems
Link Post 25
Notes
Posted 6 months ago

A step in the right direction.

“For college students everywhere feeling the pinch of the cost of textbooks, there’s good news: the end of the $200 textbook might be on its way. A new initiative in Washington state, the Open Course Library, represents a huge step in the right direction.

The goal of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges project is to boost college completion rates by making higher education more affordable…”

Dear New England and the Mid-Atlantic, for all of the universities (public and private) that inhabit your borders with nearly every demographic attending said higher education institutes, why aren’t you trying the same thing?

Link Post
Posted 7 months ago

Someones has to do it. Why not Hova and the Oracle of Omaha?

“Secret Millionaires Club is simultaneously launching “Learn and Earn,” an initiative to teach students a well-organized series of lessons on financial literacy. To that end, the program is providing more than 100,000 educational kits to teachers, and putting a pretty fantastic collection of free, downloadable materials online.”

Photo Post 1685
Notes
Posted 7 months ago
world-shaker: xnikkiheart: Sad but this is so true. A superintendent or principal in Michigan had actually written the Governor’s office requesting that his school be turned into a prison so his students could get the funding they needed. I dare someone to tell me something is right with this picture.

world-shaker:

xnikkiheart:

Sad but this is so true.

A superintendent or principal in Michigan had actually written the Governor’s office requesting that his school be turned into a prison so his students could get the funding they needed.

I dare someone to tell me something is right with this picture.

(Source: thelittlethingsarelove)

via world-shaker
Link Post 37
Notes
Posted 10 months ago

ACT NOW: Tell President Obama to Save Pell Grant Funding

markcoatney:

savepell:

Save PellStudents struggling to afford higher education are at risk of being among the first victims of Washington’s current budget battle. 

One GOP leader recently called Pell Grants “the welfare of the 21st century.” Another top Republican called this critical financial-aid program “unsustainable” and blamed it for the skyrocketing cost of college — despite both empirical evidence and common sense.

Poor and working-class students have already contributed to deficit reduction. With the elimination of the summer Pell program earlier this year, they “contributed” $4 billion per year to debt reduction. Enough is enough!

We need to make it clear to President Obama that protecting Pell Grant funding is non-negotiable. He needs to know that we must not sacrifice even a single dollar of support for hard-working, poor and working-class students.

Follow, and do likewise.

Pay attention, college students, part II

Its no secret that college degrees have become a near-necessity to survive in a 21st-century professional workforce. Cutting Pell grant funding would effectively slice the chances of numerous poor and working-class students of working their way towards an improved economic future for themselves through higher-education institutions. How is this even a debatable topic?

Follow savepell and sign the petition for all the students and families you know who are struggling to pay their way through college for a brighter future.

via markcoatney
Link Post 24
Notes
Posted 1 year ago

10 Reasons Why Schools Should Be Teaching Financial Literacy To Our Kids

world-shaker:

Great list. Here are the first four. Click through for the rest.

  1. They don’t know enough. Studies by the Jumpstart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth have shown that many young people have little understanding of finance and economics. They are spending and borrowing without knowing that interest builds up, or that credit cards aren’t free money.
  2. They are starting younger. The weekly-allowance system is used in many families. Five dollars for the candy store may not seem so bad, but pre-teens stretching $25 over one week will need a bit more guidance.
  3. There are greater temptations. A few minutes on the Internet and a kid can find more than a few toys or CDs to ask for. When they’re old enough to buy, online shopping makes it a little too easy. It’s more important than ever to tell them the value of saving and delayed gratification early on.
  4. They have more debt options. A report by the Federal Reserve showed that 53,000 student credit card accounts were opened in 2008, and by 2009 there were some 2 million student credit cards in circulation. Agreements between banks and colleges have made it easy for students to get debt— more students are paying tuition with credit cards every year in addition to charging schoolbooks and other expenses.

TODAY, IN THINGS THAT ARE TRUE ENOUGH TO DESERVE CAP LOCKS.

via world-shaker
Video Post
Posted 2 years ago

“Don’t Dream its Over”- P.S. 22 Chorus (originally by Crowded House)
Directed by Mr. Gregg Breinberg.

Hit play (set to 480p) and read this post.
If there was ever a simple reason why I’d ditch what I’m doing to go into teaching music, its because of teachers like Breinberg and my own history with passionate music teachers.

Right now, public school boards across the country are considering/have made cuts to their arts and music programs due to the shrinking size of their school budgets. Please support your local public school arts and music programs in any way they possible, so kids across the nation can have the means to witness the magic that music can make in a life; the kind of passion that you can read on the faces of these children.

In an ideal world, funding should never be an obstacle to a learning mind’s capacity for creativity.
“Don’t let them win.”