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Mark Twain And Grant's Memoirs - Ta-Nehisi Coates - National - The Atlantic

"…beautiful thing about writing is it has no real respect for credentialism. You can get various degrees in writing. (…my initial plan was to get MFA.) But a degree can't make you a writer in the way that JD can make you a lawyer.

Great writing comes from all classes people…all kinds of experience. Edith Wharton was raised rich. EL Doctorow was not.

When I visit schools around country I consistently repeat this—not because I think school is worthless, but b/c, very often, there are kids in audience who are lost, just as I once was. I don't come there to contravene their education…to tell them to drop out. On the contrary, I try to reinforce the ethic of hard work. But they need to know that a grade in a class, is not who they are—and I would say that whether the grade is an A or F. I failed English in HS…then failed British Literature in college. For whatever reason, it simply wasn't my time. But had I taken those grades as an eternal mark, I doubt I would be talking to you now."

ulyssessgrant frederickdouglass civilwar abrahamlincoln eldoctorow marktwain learning readiness grading grades deschooling unschooling education credentialism credentialing credentials writing ta-nehisicoates _grades from delicious
february 2012 by robertogreco

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George Dyson - Looking Backward to Put New Technology in Focus - NYTimes.com

"You left the cocoon of Princeton when you were 16. Why?

I was a rebellious adolescent. It was the ’60s. Everyone was rebellious. I hated high school. When they wouldn’t let me graduate early because I hadn’t taken gym, I quit altogether and went off to BC. It was a time when a lot of kids ran away from home. My father didn’t stop me…Being there was so liberating — getting my own food, making my own living…I did this for about 20 years.

And today you make your living as a historian of science and technology. How does a high school dropout get to do that?

Hey, this is America. You can do what you want! I love this idea that someone who didn’t finish high school can write books that get taken seriously. History is one of the only fields where contributions by amateurs are taken seriously, providing you follow the rules and document your sources. In history, it’s what you write, not what your credentials are."

georgedyson autodidactism autodidacts 2011 interviews dropouts unschooling education history historyofscience adolescence technology historyoftechnology amateurism credentials
december 2011 by robertogreco

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Apprenticeships and internships « Re-educate Seattle

"I’m using these two words—apprenticeship and certification—in a way that’s overly simplistic, but I’m doing it to make a point: when your daughter heads off to school each morning, does she treat it like an apprenticeship or an internship?

Is she more concerned with learning something interesting, or her GPA? Is she developing deep relationships with mentors, or merely securing snazzy letters of recommendation? Is she learning something useful right now, or participating in a ritual as preparation for the future?

* * *

Here’s perhaps the most important question: does your daughter’s school view it’s work as closer to providing apprenticeships, or internships?"

stevemiranda 2011 pscs learning apprenticeships internships unschooling deschooling learningbydoing credentials grades grading tcsnmy toshare usefulness meaning purpose pugetsoundcommunityschool from delicious
november 2011 by robertogreco

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Teaching Social Innovation | Austin Center for Design

"“We [need to] teach decidedly unglamorous, small scale tools that allow people to make meaning in as significant ways possible, not only in terms of outcomes, but in terms of process.” That’s precisely the right message for design educators – to emphasize significance in process, rather than object, and focus on small-scale, deep impact. It’s a rejection of an exhausted focus on metrics, scale, and artifacts, and for many of us, it means ignoring the hype of design tourism. I’m positioning the program at AC4D on creating founders who have a sensitive, passionate, and intellectual approach to their work. And I’m thrilled to see more and more programs embracing social innovation, and re-evaluating – and in many cases, massively overhauling – tired design curricula."

jonkolko design education learning socialinnovation designeducation projectbasedlearning 2011 metrics measurement success humanitariandesign depthoverbreadth timelines time lcproject unschooling deschooling ac4d meaning meaningfulness eziomazini helenwaters commitment relationships tcsnmy communityengagement krissdeiglmeier socialimpact assessment tracking accreditation credentials convenience responsibility designtourism entrepreneurship from delicious
august 2011 by robertogreco

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Badges - MozillaWiki

"Today's learning happens everywhere, not just in the classroom. But it's often difficult to get credit for it. 
Mozilla and Peer 2 Peer University are working to solve this problem by developing an Open Badges infrastructure. 
Our system will make it easy for education providers, web sites and other organizations to issue badges that give public recognition and validation for specific skills and achievements. 
 
And provide an easy way for learners tomanage and display those badges across the web -- on their personal web site or resume, social networking profiles, job sites or just about anywhere. 
 
The result: Open Badges will help learners everywhere unlock career and educational opportunities, and regonize skills that traditional resumes and transcripts often leave out."

education learning technology games online gaming gamification badges opensource openbadges recognition achievement credentials skills via:monikahardy from delicious
july 2011 by robertogreco

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The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism: On the Matter of Empathy [To be applied also with teachers and students, claiming to know them better than they know themselves.]

"unfortunately, too many lay people look to credentials as opposed to experience when it comes to understanding non-normative conditions. Recently, in response to one autistic person’s upset at mainstream theories of impaired autistic empathy, an autism parent said that the experts should know all about it, since they’ve been studying the issue for years. & those of us who have lived it for even longer? If we were talking about the difference btwn a non-Jewish scholar of Judaism & a practicing Jew, most people would say that the practicing Jew would be the expert on Judaism. & yet, autistic people are rarely accorded this level of respect. 
 
A refusal to listen to our experiences & to be sensitive to the real-life consequences of pervasive stereotypes shows a problematic relationship w/ empathy, to put it mildly. In the midst of this lack of true autism awareness, any assertion that autistic people lack empathy is nothing less than a textbook case of pot calling kettle black."

psychology empathy autism aspergers understanding credentials experts experience 2011 behavior cognitive cognitiveempathy emotionalempathy expressedempathy testing measurement nonverbal nonverbalcommunication stereotypes from delicious
july 2011 by robertogreco

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The crusade against college [via http://www.downes.ca/post/55638/ ]

"if we are to lose faith in college degrees, how can we best represent what an individual is capable of? Could LinkedIn-style social portfolios, w/ testimonials ranked according to built-in trust metrics, fill the gap? Or will we be left having to take peoples’ word for their own achievements? 
 
I’m inclined to think we’ll figure out a strong, decentralized, less-elitist way of going about this. But there’s a bigger question in all of this, too. If you take salaries away & look only at the overall education of a person, & the overall knowledge of our global society at large, don’t universities have some inherent value? 
 
I would argue that they do. I also think that looking at direct salaries as the sole measure of ROI in an institution is a short-term, short-sighted way to look at the world. Sure, some degrees yield less well-paying jobs than others. However, the contribution to our overall well-being, & to our economy, shouldn’t be overlooked. The world is a complex system…"

benwerdmuller highereducation highered economics unschooling deschooling elitism sarahlacy peterthiel publiceducation schools education learning credentials salaries society louismenand compensation 2011 via:steelemaley lcproject democracy colleges universities from delicious
june 2011 by robertogreco

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INTHECONVERSATION: Art Leisure Instead of Art Work: A Conversation with Randall Szott [Truly too much to quote, so random snips below. Go read the whole thing.]

"Sal Randolph talks w/ Randall Szott about collections, cooking, "art of living," & infra-institutional activity."

"undergrad art ed seemed overly concerned w/ 'how & what to make' sorts of questions…"

"in my possibly pathetic & overly romantic vision of considered life, I am quite hopeful about ability of (art & non-art) people to improve their own experience & others' in both grand & mundane ways"

"I would like to build along model of public library. Libraries meet an incredibly diverse set of needs & desires"

"art is a great conversation…tool for making meaning & enhancing experience, but it is highly specialized, & all too often, closed conversation of insiders"

"I am deeply committed to promoting "everyday" people who are finding ways to make lives more meaningful - devoted amateurs to a variety of intellectual pursuits, hobbyists, collectors, autodidacts, bloggers, karaoke singers, crafters, etc…advocate for a rich, inclusive understanding of human meaning-making."

2008 salrandolph randallszott leisure art living collecting food cooking life slow thinking philosophy unschooling deschooling credentials artschool education learning skepticism everyday vernacular language work leisurearts dilletante generalists cv distraction culture marxism anarchism situationist lcproject tcsnmy intellectualism elitism meaning sensemaking interdisciplinary multidisciplinary projectbasedlearning projects openstudio crossdisciplinary transdisciplinary thewhy why audiencesofone from delicious
may 2011 by robertogreco

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Joichi Ito Named Head of M.I.T. Media Lab - NYTimes.com

"For centuries diplomas have been synonymous w/ the nation’s universities.

That makes MIT’s decision to name a 44-year old Japanese venture capitalist who attended, but did not graduate, from 2 American colleges as director of one of the world’s top computing science laboratories an unusual choice…

Mr. Ito first attended Tufts where he briefly studied computer science but wrote that he found it drudge work. Later he attended the U of Chicago where he studied physics, but once again found it stultifying…later wrote of his experience: “I once asked a professor to explain the solution to a problem so I could understand it more intuitively. He said, ‘You can’t understand it intuitively. Just learn the formula so you’ll get the right answer.’ That was it for me.”

Mr. Ito’s colleagues minimize the fact that he is w/out academic credentials. “He has credibility in an academic context,” said Lawrence Lessig…"

mit medialab joiito larrylessig innovation dropouts postcredentials credentials alternative alternativeeducation learningbydoing 2011 creativecommons unschooling deschooling connectivism connections mozilla venturecapital from delicious
april 2011 by robertogreco

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Sal Kahn Out To Disrupt Education | O'DonnellWeb

[Kahn:] we should “decouple credentialing from learning.” Instead of handing out degrees, standardized assessments would be measure of employee competence. 
 
While I’m 110% behind idea of separating education & credentialing, I’m not sure standardized assessments are the answer. Human beings are not standardized…we should stop pretending a test score or diploma has any real predictive ability regarding human behavior. A teacher that is passionate is far more valuable than [one] that aced test & got diploma. But you can’t measure passion, you can only observe it. 
 
[Kahn:] lectures would become homework & teacher tutoring would occur during class time. 
 
Is there any larger waste of time in the education establishment than making 20-200 students assemble in room to listen to instructor ramble on from memorized notes? If you can’t interact w/ instructor there is no reason to bother being in the same room…"

chriso'donnell teaching learning salkhan education standards standardization standardizedtesting passion schools memorization lectures unschooling deschooling homeschool diplomas credentials assessment truelearning lcproject tcsnmy competency khanacademy from delicious
february 2011 by robertogreco

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Techno Constructivist: The #Edreform Paradox

"Schooling & education are not the same thing & are often at odds with each other. Instruction does not necessarily beget learning but it did for most of those who instruct. Technology has changed what it is learners need schools for. Policies are shaped largely by those who needed schools to provide something different for them in the past than they are needed for learners now. Policies shape what schools do & provide/dictate how we measure success. How we measure a school's success determines what gets taught & cut. What schools do & how they are assessed often lead to a confusion btwn what makes for good instruction & what makes for good learning & policy mandates this condition. Therefore, the actual purpose of school & purpose most people believe it is for are not the same… Those who enter into the business of schooling will likely come from the ranks who were rewarded under this system & thus perpetuate the cycle driving the wedge further between schooling & education."

education policy us technology success assessment measurement learning deschooling unschooling tcsnmy lcproject credentials business data datadrivenmismanagement from delicious
february 2011 by robertogreco

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UnCollege | self-directed higher education

"The mission of UnCollege is to support individuals on self-directed odysseys of learning and introspection by creating a community of like-minded peers and mentors. 
UnCollege is not an accredited, degree-granting institution. UnCollege rather provides students with a framework to pursue their own journey of learning and self-discovery. Upon completion of the UnCollege program, students will create experience transcripts to demonstrate their learning from real-world accomplishments.The long-term goal of UnCollege is to revolutionize higher education, providing an example of College 2.0. In the future, UnCollege will become a fully accredited, degree-granting institution. 
However, there will be no campus and no professors."

education unschooling deschooling highereducation highered learning autodidacts self-directedlearning schools schooling online credentials problemsolving academia the2837university agitpropproject from delicious
february 2011 by robertogreco

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The Trouble With Experts : CJR

"By abandoning the assumption that gold-plated credentials equal expertise, the press might even change history. Could journalists have helped to take down, say, Bernie Madoff, before the feds did if they had questioned the sec’s experts more? Shirky wonders. 
 
And then there’s the chance that authentic experts (not necessarily credentialed experts) could become journalists of some kind. It’s happening already. Take the flock of professor-bloggers masticating the news on the Foreign Policy Web site or economist bloggers like Tyler Cowen. There are journalists who have become experts via either peer or crowd review…To cheaply paraphrase Isaiah Berlin, journalists can’t all be clever hedgehogs, but perhaps some generalist foxes can start growing some quills."

society journalism generalists specialization specialists credentials experts expertise autism jennymccarthy science blackswans tunnelvision via:coldbrain vaccines amateur amateurism unschooling deschooling clayshirky from delicious
january 2011 by robertogreco

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How Design Can Get Kids On the Path to Tech Careers | Co.Design

"whenever you say the word 'school,' it conjures up mental images & models of our experiences and behavior in a place -- & accompanying that 'place model' is a kaleidoscope of memories & emotions about how that place looked & worked -- how we felt in it, what was rewarded, celebrated & expected, & who we were supposed to be as learners in that place. Unfortunately, many of these mental models of how we should learn in school are completely at odds w/ how real learning happens & how it's demonstrated in the real world. False proxies for learning often erode our children's vibrant intellectual & creative potentials because they diminish the excitement of real learning & discovery. Everyone knows that finishing a course and a textbook does not mean achievement. Listening to a lecture does not mean understanding. Getting a high score on a high-stakes standardized test does not mean proficiency. Credentialing does not mean competency. Our children know it, too, yet it persists."

education design management designthinking learning unschooling discovery deschooling trungle stephaniepacemarshall imsa illinois chicago science math gifted talented schools schooldesign credentials credentialing whatmatters cv ap collaboration teaching challenge interaction interdisciplinary multidisciplinary crossdisciplinary problemsolving criticalthinking teacherasmasterlearner teacherascollaborator inquiry inquiry-basedlearning studentdirected research names naming language words from delicious
december 2010 by robertogreco

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College Is Only Good for Helping Rich People Get Richer - Education - GOOD

"truth is that students hardly work in college, & that they learn almost nothing while they’re there. College is a place where already advantaged youths spend 4 years enjoying themselves, & upon completion, receive considerable rewards for having done almost nothing…Arum & Roksa find that almost half of students have no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, & writing…after 2 years in college…colleges are increasingly places for the rich. It’s too simplistic, but this is pretty much the story. Colleges admit already advantaged Americans. They don’t ask them to do much or learn much. At the end of four years, we give them a certificate. That certificate entitles them to higher earnings. Schools help obscure the aristocratic quality to American life. They do so by converting birthrights (which we all think are unfair) into credentials (which have the appearance of merit)."

[via: http://stevemiranda.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/the-importance-of-following-directions/ ]

college good highered education learning lcproject schooliness unschooling deschooling oligarchy wealth advantage credentials criticism criticalthinking aristocracy from delicious
december 2010 by robertogreco

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Dr. Tae — Building A New Culture Of Teaching And Learning on Vimeo

via: http://jorgebarahona.posterous.com/the-need-for-connection-engagement-in-educati

drtae teaching learning education lcproject tcsnmy technology schools science skateboarding mythbusters brain connectivism culture wikipedia math sharing unschooling deschooling reform iteration practice failure motivation scientificresearch classsize time agesegregation schoolcalendar persistence authority coersion self-motivation certification grades grading self-evaluation intrinsicmotivation physics calculus mastery cheating honesty mentoring tfa mythbuster distributedteaching credentials change gamechanging coercion from delicious
november 2010 by robertogreco

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Teaching for America - NYTimes.com

A copy of Thomas Friedman's op-ed on education that has been marked up using Diigo. Orginal here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/opinion/21friedman.html

rttt education reform policy finland denmark singapore southkorea korea us arneduncan meritpay teaching schools learning competition misguidedenergy credentials unions 2010 from delicious
november 2010 by robertogreco

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education should be inefficient [Great post from Astra Taylor, way too much to pull quotes, but here are two anyway.]

"I think one reason highly educated and credentialed people latch on to alt ed theories is there’s a sense that we are at heart autodidacts, despite schooling.… 
 
I was unschooled without highspeed Internet (first logged on freshman year of highschool); my youngest sister doesn't remember life without constant highspeed access. I would say for both of us though, unschooling has been more about slowness, about paying attention, immersing ourselves bizarre art projects, volunteering, staring off into space, talking to friends, and reading books, reading books, reading books. We sometimes learned quickly, when motivated or excited to master some skill, but typically we learned at our own pace, which was often slow (sometimes so slow it looked as though we were doing nothing at all) and with lots of detours." [A reply is here: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/1877]

astrataylor unschooling slow inefficiency learning deschooling glvo slowlearning boredom credentials schools schooling education from delicious
november 2010 by robertogreco

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Higher education and wages: Study leave | The Economist [Chart]

"YOUNG people often worry whether the qualification for which they are studying will stand them in good stead in the workplace. According to the OECD, college and university leavers are better placed in the labour market than their less educated peers, but this advantage is not even in all countries. Young graduates living in Spain are particularly likely to end up taking low-skilled work, while those in Luxembourg rarely take anything other than a graduate job. American and British students appear to have the biggest incentive to study: British graduates aged 25-34 earn $57,000 on average. Their Swedish peers earn $37,400."

education college colleges universities credentials salaries comparison us uk sweden labor overeducated work markets international from delicious
september 2010 by robertogreco

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dy/dan » Blog Archive » WCYDWT: Dirt

"Frankly, Dan, graduate school will be mostly a waste of time for you. You’re already so far ahead of the thinking of so many mathematics teachers and, dare I say it? mathematics teacher-educators that I wonder if what you’re going to be exposed to and expected to conform to in a doctoral program will improve or dull your mind. Maybe that’s unfair to Stanford, or merely reflective of my own ambivalent relationship with doctoral programs and academia. And perhaps also part of my fond wish that more folks with really great, original minds just forego the rigidity of traditional Ph.D programs if at all possible and carve out their own ground, establish legitimacy through the high quality of their work (as you are CLEARLY well on your way to doing), and let the paper chasers do what seems to pass for establishing their bona fides as insiders who alternately sneer at and quake from fear of originals and iconoclasts."

gradschool education academia alternative altgdp unschooling deschooling schools learning iconoclasm cv breakingout closedsystems rigidity convention degrees credentials legitimacy from delicious
august 2010 by robertogreco

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“. . . ready to welcome the ecstatic experience” « Re-educate

"There are plenty of smart people of good character who would love to teach. But maybe they don’t want to teach full time, don’t want to spend thousands of dollars & 18 months getting a teaching credential, & they certainly don’t want to teach classes in subjects that don’t interest them or their students. And so they miss out on the electric feeling that teaching gives. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

We can build a network of community schools on every street corner, ones that not only provide safe, loving, nurturing environments for kids, but also provide an opportunity for adults in the community to share what they love. Imagine a city in which every adult had the chance to have their lives enriched by the experience of teaching & learning in an environment that was designed to fuel people’s passions. Imagine how alive we would all feel!

We can do this. But we have to build new schools that are, as Emily Dickinson wrote, “ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”"

stevemiranda pscs pugetsoundcommunityschool emilydickinson teaching schools lcproject tcsnmy credentials community schooldesign alternative learning from delicious
august 2010 by robertogreco

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Harvard Kennedy School - New Study: Teacher Effectiveness in Classroom Unrelated to the College Teacher Attended

"study finds that a teacher’s effectiveness at lifting student performance in reading & math is unrelated to preparation teachers have received, whether it is the college they attended, or whether they received a major in education, or earned a master’s degree...

teaching schools hiring compensation administration management tcsnmy leadership experience credentials meritpay education policy
june 2010 by robertogreco

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More Like Us — Meredith Jung-En Woo, Dean of Arts & Sciences and Buckner W. Clay Professor

"there is perhaps something to the argument that we as a nation have become excessively focused on credentials...I sometimes discern this tendency in the steadily upward trend in multiple majors over the past decade. The requirements for more than one major can be strenuous, crowding out the flexibility for students to venture out to new fields, experiment in ways that push the limits of knowledge. In the College, we offer some 3000 course sections, & I wonder whether something essential is lost when students trade in a broad liberal arts curriculum in order to satisfy the new requirements for an additional credential.

credentials liberalarts education creativity multidisciplinary crossdisciplinary generalists interdisciplinary unschooling deschooling specialization competition japan us highered colleges universities innovation tcsnmy jamesfallows davidhalberstam exams testing messiness disorder individualism can-doattitude 1980s 1990s meredithjung-enwoo
april 2010 by robertogreco

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The Future of Education | IdeaEconomy.Net

"Indeed, it is difficult to find many people with anything good to say about our current educational system. Traditional schools are not able to keep up with changing demands and technological advancements. How can universities possibly deliver graduates with in-demand skills when the world is changing so fast?

sethgodin kenrobinson personalmba alternative education learning schools society altgdp future lcproject knowledgenomads universityofthepeople universities colleges credentials
april 2010 by robertogreco

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College and the Reputation-based Economy - GOOD Education - GOOD

"A young person without much money or connections can build whuffie by trading what they do have: time and energy. These days, you can contact just about anybody you admire or whose work you are interested in through the Internet and ask them if you can help them in any way, ask them to be your mentor, or just simply ask them a question.

deschooling unschooling education colleges universities schools diy socialnetworking meritocracy cv glvo change lcproject tcsnmy accreditation credentials connections money whuffie admissions highereducation
april 2010 by robertogreco

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elearnspace › Lack of Sympathy

"Before universities existed, most people learned by apprenticeship. As Harold points out, before WWII universities apprenticed elites; priests, doctor, scholars, teachers, etc. . .. The mode of learning was still an apprenticeship model and most elite education ended with a very specific apprenticeship practice like a dissertation or medical residency, or for the wealthy, an initiation into “the club”. But educational theory ignored the way things worked and stressed knowledge over doing, knowledge that was represented by a degree.

education knowledge apprenticeships history learning degrees credentials doing do deschooling unschooling colleges universities
february 2010 by robertogreco

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Fortnightly Mailing: We must ..... a call to action to create the university of the future

"1. We must encourage the reuse and remixing of rich media. ... 2. We must embrace the full promise of mobile devices as learning platforms. 3. We must award credentials based on learning outcomes. 4. We must enable a culture of sharing. 5. We must take care that open resources include the context that will enable its use and understanding."

education learning teaching students sharing pedagogy openaccess openness colleges universities mobile phones mobilelearning change gamechanging manifestos remixing reuse credentials learningoutcomes access highered
november 2009 by robertogreco

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Favela Chic education | Beyond The Beyond [in reference to: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_for_99_a_month.php]

"*...I don’t understand why these online educationaly enterprises even need to *pretend* to be a “college.” If we’re really looking at Clayton Christensen style “disruption,” we ought to be abandoning the whole idea of “education,” of degrees, schooling, grades, papers, publishing, theses, doctorates, any of that. *You just get on line and you start messing with stuff. At some point, the other practitioners notice you and start linking to you. And they buy stuff from you, or they praise you for what you are doing. And then you know that you know it. And that’s an end to it. *Maybe somebody could invent some formal tests for you, if they were all worried about it. Otherwise, what the heck: bring on the rocket-science and the brain surgery! Got all the instructables you can eat! *...we’re not “formally educated,” but...who cares about that? You can’t *make us* care. You are Main Stream Education and you are so over."

brucesterling futurism highered education learning disruption disruptive online unschooling deschooling credentials degrees schooling gamechanging publishing colleges universities mainstream future web internet autodidacts autodidactism testing
september 2009 by robertogreco

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Laurent Haug’s blog » Reinventing education

"In rich world, the need to adapt to a generation of kids who are more unique, social, connected, autonomous & collaborative, sometimes know more than professors themselves. In developing world, the need to adapt to the social context of millions who are left out of traditional system...Self education is not new...Collaborative learning beats top down processes...Education can be free...Diplomas are increasingly irrelevant...Education is a fascinating topic, one that is hard to deal with because everybody has an opinion on how it should happen. We are about to see a brutal evolution...Who will vehemently resist these ideas? Teachers...Like journalists when they saw millions of web users invade their territory, they will instinctively want to fight back & protect their experts status. It's a lost war, the wrong approach. Educators will eventually settle in their new, improved place in society. After all, isn’t it more rewarding to collaborate than to direct, monitor, grade & punish?"

sugatamitra unschooling deschooling laurenthaug schooling education change reform control autoritarianism politics power society lcproject tcsnmy hackingeducation dimplomas credentials collaboration assessment collaborative grades grading gamechanging autodidacts colleges universities teaching outdoctrination holeinthewall
june 2009 by robertogreco

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The Case for Working With Your Hands - NYTimes.com [so much here to quote, see also: http://www.slate.com/id/2218650/pagenum/all/]

"If the goal is to earn a living, then, maybe it isn’t really true that 18-year-olds need to be imparted with a sense of panic about getting into college. Some people are hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning to build things or fix things." ... "Those who work on the lower rungs of the information-age office hierarchy face their own kinds of unreality, as I learned some time ago." ... "A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this." ... "The visceral experience of failure seems to have been edited out of the career trajectories of gifted students. It stands to reason, then, that those who end up making big decisions that affect all of us don’t seem to have much sense of their own fallibility, and of how badly things can go wrong even with the best of intentions"

education learning well-being life cv making doing crisis highereducation colleges universities middlemanagement matthewcrawford alternative careers unschooling deschooling careerism society class failure moralhazard credentials gradschool degrees meaning happiness fulfillment economics mechanics macroeconomics philosophy
may 2009 by robertogreco

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Op-Ed Columnist - Learning How to Think - NYTimes.com

"The predictions of experts were, on average, only a tiny bit better than random guesses — the equivalent of a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board.

crowdsourcing predictions learning culture expertise credentials politics knowledge experts psychology accountability foxes hedgehogs
march 2009 by robertogreco

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What You Should Consider Before Education Graduate School - On Education (usnews.com)

"If you're thinking about going into teaching, take heed of this message from Katherine Merseth, a senior lecturer and director of the teacher education program at Harvard University: "The dirty little secret about schools of education is that they have been the cash cows of universities for many, many years, and it's time to say, 'Show us what you can do, or get out of the business.'"" No new news here, but I wish more people were aware of this fact.

teaching credentials academia gradschool education wasteofmoney cashcows cv residencies deschooling waste corruption worstpractices via:cburell
march 2009 by robertogreco

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The Public School

"THE PUBLIC SCHOOL is a school with no curriculum. At the moment, it operates as follows: first, classes are proposed by the public (I want to learn this or I want to teach this); then, people have the opportunity to sign up for the classes (I also want to learn that); finally, when enough people have expressed interest, the school finds a teacher and offers the class to those who signed up.

lcproject deschooling unschooling losangeles education activism participatory pedagogy alternative schools credentials autodidacts self-directedlearning learning
march 2009 by robertogreco

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ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL 202 « LEBBEUS WOODS [list of posts in this series here: http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=87058_0_24_0_C]

"as schools move toward obtaining official approval...some energy vital to their independence is lost. Not all, but enough to say that becoming legitimized by the professional architectural community extracts a price in freedom of thought and method. Not a fatally high price, necessarily, but enough to raise the question: why is professional certification necessary? Why cannot a school of architecture remain free? ... It used to be, in Europe, that the diploma from a highly regarded ‘academy’ would be accepted by universities and professional programs of study, but the ‘Americanization’ of European university education has all but ended that practice. In any event, there are two groups of people unconcerned about professional degrees: those who want to study architecture, but not practice it, and the idealists, who will find their own ways to practice, and on their own terms."

education history architecture pedagogy lebbeuswoods lcproject credentials idealism design academia cv
march 2009 by robertogreco

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Beyond Portfolios « The Elementary Educator [via: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/02/20/a-portfolio-instead-of-a-diploma/]

"After 13 years of work getting a K-12 education, why is it that all a student has to show for it is a diploma?...our goals should be much different: *writing: students should have a very rich blog w/ 100s of quality posts + several major self-published pieces *science: have >= 1 patent and/or 1 invention that they’ve actually created a prototype for *math: be able to balance checkbook, understand how to stay out of debt & avoid credit spending, understand how to interpret biased statistics & advertisements; able to solve any real-world math problem they may encounter *social studies: be able to read every article in newspaper & understand article’s significance & historical events that have led up to event + geography of location(s) being discussed + religious & political backgrounds of people/groups involved *Finally: students should be heading to post-K-12 life with plan for future, rather than just heading to college because everyone is doing it."

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february 2009 by robertogreco

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Hacking Education [see also: http://delicious.com/tag/usvsessions4]

"The Hacking Education Sessions event will bring together around 30 entrepreneurs, researchers, and educators for a day-long conversation about the impact of the web on education. Our goal is to encourage innovation in education by exposing educators to entrepreneurs whose appreciation for the web's technical and social architecture has enabled them to build important online services, and by exposing entrepreneurs to the challenges and opportunities of reinventing education using the web. We are also inviting researchers who study education policy and changes in learning, such as the emergence of self-directed studies and peer accreditation in online forums for everything from anime to open source."

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february 2009 by robertogreco

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Global Guerrillas: INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION?

"Since nearly all of the value of an education has been extracted by the producer, to the detriment of the customer, this situation has all the earmarks of a bubble. A bubble that will soon burst as median incomes are adjusted downwards to global norms over the next decade". lectures + application + collaboration. "When will the floodgates open? The shift towards online education as the norm and in-person as the exception will arrive, however, the path is unclear. It is currently blocked by guilds/unions, inertia, credentialism, and romantic notions."

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january 2009 by robertogreco

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The Value of College for Most Students - Creative Class
colleges universities tuition credentials life earningpower education learning value
january 2009 by robertogreco

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Education And Learning: A Paradigm Shift - Part 1 - Is Our Educational System Broken? - Robin Good's Latest News [part 2: http://www.masternewmedia.org/education-and-learning-a-paradigm-shift-part-2/]

"So, what's up everyone? Besides the few guys out there spending serious time researching and lecturing on today's educational challenges what are you doing to harmonize a little more what you have learned in the world of media and communication to the universe of learning and education your kids are immersed into? ... video clips I have asked a few friends to record ... Howard Rheingold, Jay Cross, Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Nancy White, Gerd Leonhard and Teemu Arina have all accepted to record a few short videos for me while addressing some of the issues relating to our educational system and its future.

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january 2009 by robertogreco

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For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time - WSJ.com

"Here's the reality: Everyone in every occupation starts as an apprentice. Those who are good enough become journeymen. The best become master craftsmen. This is as true of business executives and history professors as of chefs and welders. Getting rid of the BA and replacing it with evidence of competence -- treating post-secondary education as apprenticeships for everyone -- is one way to help us to recognize that common bond."

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december 2008 by robertogreco

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Op-Ed Contributors - Transitions - Should the Obama Generation Drop Out? - NYTimes.com

"Discrediting the bachelor’s degree is within reach because so many employers already sense that it has become education’s Wizard of Oz. All we need is someone willing to yank the curtain aside. Barack Obama is ideally positioned to do it. He just needs to say it over and over: “It’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it.”"

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december 2008 by robertogreco

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Weblogg-ed » “Oh, and You Have a Degree, Too?”

"Maybe I’m dreaming. Or maybe it’s because the last seven years have turned me into an “alternate route” learner and passion-based professional, and intellectually I’ve just loved this SO much more than when I went to college (though college did have its moments…just not usually in the classroom.) Either way, it just feels like there’s going to be some shift happening here in the next few years as well, and I, at least, have to start thinking about it sooner rather than later."

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december 2008 by robertogreco

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Beware School 'Reformers'

"Notice that these features are already pervasive, which means "reform" actually signals more of the same--or, perhaps, intensification of the status quo with variations like one-size-fits-all national curriculum standards or longer school days (or years). Almost never questioned, meanwhile, are the core elements of traditional schooling, such as lectures, worksheets, quizzes, grades, homework, punitive discipline and competition. That would require real reform, which of course is off the table. Sadly, all but one of the people reportedly being considered for Education secretary are reformers only in this Orwellian sense of the word. The exception is Linda Darling-Hammond...The favored contenders include assorted governors and two corporate-style school chiefs: Arne Duncan, whose all-too-apt title is "chief executive officer" of Chicago Public Schools, and his counterpart in New York City, former CEO and high-powered lawyer Joel Klein."

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december 2008 by robertogreco

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After Credentials

"Judging people by academic credentials was...an advance...seems to have begun in China...in 587 candidates for imperial civil service...take an exam on classical literature...Before...government positions were obtained mainly by family influence...bribery...great step forward to judge people by performance on a test... [not] a perfect solution...The use of credentials was an attempt to seal off the direct transmission of power between generations, and cram schools represent that power finding holes in the seal. Cram schools turn wealth in one generation into credentials in the next...History suggests that, all other things being equal, a society prospers in proportion to its ability to prevent parents from influencing their children's success directly...general solution...push for increased transparency, especially at critical social bottlenecks like college admissions...better way...make credentials matter less... If you could measure actual performance, you wouldn't need them."

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december 2008 by robertogreco

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Annals of Education: Most Likely to Succeed: How do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job?:The New Yorker [see comments here: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/08/malcolm-gladwell-on.html]

"Hanushek recently did a back-of-the-envelope calculation about what even a rudimentary focus on teacher quality could mean for the United States. If you rank the countries of the world in terms of the academic performance of their schoolchildren, the U.S. is just below average, half a standard deviation below a clump of relatively high-performing countries like Canada and Belgium. According to Hanushek, the U.S. could close that gap simply by replacing the bottom six per cent to ten per cent of public-school teachers with teachers of average quality. After years of worrying about issues like school funding levels, class size, and curriculum design, many reformers have come to the conclusion that nothing matters more than finding people with the potential to be great teachers. But there’s a hitch: no one knows what a person with the potential to be a great teacher looks like." Also on Gladwell's blog: http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2008/12/teachers-and-quarterbacks.html

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december 2008 by robertogreco

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growing changing learning creating: Goodbye college diplomas

"Disrupting Class assumes we'll continue to need college degrees to get the best paying jobs and to enter the current professions. the improvements in elementary and school programs from the disruptive innovations mentioned in the book seem valuable if college degrees remain essential. However, I am very suspicious that diplomas will be worth anything in a decade or so. Here's why:" via: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=46753

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october 2008 by robertogreco

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When Professors Print Their Own Diplomas, Who Needs Universities? - Chronicle.com

"Aristotle never reported to a dean or had to submit grades, and his students just explained to employers that they had studied with the great man. Now online tools let anyone hold court in chat rooms, Webcasts, or social networks.

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september 2008 by robertogreco

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An education in pure silliness - St. Petersburg Times [via: http://joannejacobs.com/2008/08/24/so-you-want-to-teach/]

"I understand the idea of "standards-based" education. But the standards to which I'm being held here are not high standards; they are just a high pile of standards, a mountain of detritus generated by various acts of legislation whenever new statistics come out showing that California schools are failing, that teachers are fleeing the state, that high school students can barely read. In a system so broken, why are they trying so hard to weed out anyone who, in spite of everything, still wants to come in and change a child's life?"

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august 2008 by robertogreco

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Gladwell on the mismatch problem (kottke.org)

"Gladwell says that while we evaluate teachers on the basis of high standardized test scores and whether they have degrees and credentialed training, that makes little difference in how well people actually teach."

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may 2008 by robertogreco

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Marginal Revolution: Make dentistry cheaper

"In Alaska, the A.D.A. and the state’s dental society had filed a lawsuit to block the program that trained people like Ms. Johnson, who are called dental therapists."

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may 2008 by robertogreco

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BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Google U: I wonder what distributed education will look like...

"....students can self-organize w/ teachers & fellow students to learn what they want how, where they want...education has a rude shocking coming unless it gets ahead of this change, figures out how to become less of an institution, more of a platform."

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february 2008 by robertogreco

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YouTube - Mob Rules (part 1 of 5)

"Closing keynote of WebDirections South 2007 - an exploration of the future of mobile communications, now that half of humanity has a mobile phone."

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november 2007 by robertogreco

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hyperpeople » Blog Archive » Mob Rules (The Law of Fives)

"ONE: The mob is everywhere. TWO: The mob is faster, smarter and stronger than you are. THREE: Advertising is a form of censorship. FOUR: The mob does not need a business model. FIVE: Make networks happen."

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How to Save the World - The Future of Education: A Conversation with Rob Paterson

'I think we have a complete mismatch between the education establishment and the kind of people we will need to get through peak oil, overpopulation, all those kind of things."

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november 2007 by robertogreco

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Badge Maker: Create an ID badge using your digital photographs

"Make your own ID card, press pass, name tag, unofficial Flickr badge, or any other kind of identification. Print it out, laminate it, wear it with pride! Make any kind of identification* easily in just a few seconds."

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october 2007 by robertogreco

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Design and the State | Metropolis Magazine

"The crux of the issue is whether or not a design degree is a good measure of skill." - the problem with credential... and not just in the design professions

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december 2006 by robertogreco

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russell davies: blogging and stuff

"Before long the blog will have replaced the resume/CV. Or whatever the next evolution of the blog is. If your job is having public ideas I suspect it'll become very surprising to people that you're not doing something like a blog."

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october 2006 by robertogreco

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