A Thinking Man's Blog

The best in education and society

• The Tower Of Babel May 22, 2013
    The Tower of Babel does exist amongst us; it’s called public schools We have various levels of English-speaking students in high school, from the recent arrival who doesn’t speak a word to those who have lived in the U.S. for 2-3 years or the youngsters who never bothered to learn the language well even though […]
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• Democratic Education May 18, 2013
  Rousseau wrote in his book Emile that all children are perfectly designed organisms, ready to learn from their surroundings so as to grow into virtuous adults, but due to the malign influence of corrupt society, they often fail to do so (Wikipedia, Philosophy of  Education) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the famous philosopher born in Geneva, Switzerland (as […]
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• My Future, Which One? May 14, 2013
  The next Einstein may well be an illegal immigrant already living amongst us I was just discussing with a fellow teacher our most important role in helping teens become independent as adults; I told him that I had met an ex-student, a special education one, working in a supermarket packing goods for customers. It was […]
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• My Top Five Websites On Self-Improvement May 12, 2013
  Top Five Websites “We are all close neighbors in today’s shrinking world” http://mecwrites25.wordpress.com/ A good friend who presents delightful insights and photos from her travels http://dougsboomerrants.wordpress.com/ He has helped me reflect on several aspects of education through his very accurate comments http://mscassidysclass.edublogs.org/ We can al […]
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• Courage Under Fire May 9, 2013
  “If you are afraid of the heat, don’t go to the kitchen“ It takes guts to become a teacher, not just knowledge and how to communicate effectively. Few people realize that facing 25 or more kids or teens is indeed a terrifying experience. I have seen novel teachers use the revolving door, that is, they […]
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• Ruining a Kid’s Life? May 6, 2013
    “Everybody is entitled to make a stupid mistake from time to time” Schools overall are overreacting to innocent pranks and/or innocuous objects brought to the classroom; the kid who had a ‘pistol’ made of cardboard was expelled: he was only 9 years old. The zero-tolerance policies are hurting students beyond reason, as happened to […]
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• I Was Nominated For The Liebster Award May 5, 2013
      My Duties Are: 1. Thank the Liebster Blog presenter who nominated you and link back to their blog. http://middleagedcoed.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/i-won-the-liebster-award/ My sincere thanks to Sharon, the middleagedcoed in question, for nominating my humble effort for the Liebster (from the German LOVER) award. 2. Post 11 facts about yourself, answer the […]
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• The Paper Trail May 2, 2013
  For the students, by the students, to the students Only two concepts should motivate teachers to act: 1) It benefits the student  2) It causes no harm to the student; everything else is secondary, especially the immense accumulation of paperwork. One teacher who trained to become a principal confessed in a moment of frankness that […]
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• I’m Rich, I Quit April 28, 2013
  Title: I’m Rich, I Quit “Being a teacher is a vocation, not a job” (The author) As an informal experiment, I asked 10 teachers in my school to answer the following question: “If you won the lottery biggest prize, what would you do?” Only 2 instructors answered that they would continue to teach for at […]
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• Let’s Hire Robots Instead of Human Teachers April 20, 2013
  “A superior teacher is born, not made” (The author) 1. “The push for high test scores undermines the very essence of teachers’ creativity and their ability to be responsive to the particular needs of their students, varying as they do from student to student, year to year, and classroom to classroom,” Milner writes. “Their ability […]
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