1. Too Much Emphasis on Literary Analysis, Not Enough Career Research and Analysis
The typical four-year high school English curriculum consists almost entirely of studying fictional literature as a means by which to improve reading comprehension, improve writing ability and develop analytical thinking ability. While reading and analyzing literature is a critical part of a well-rounded education, it is overemphasized. Furthermore, this overemphasis within the high school English curriculum has failed to achieve its primary goal: inspiring a love of fine literature in its students. This particular issue will be addressed in a later section, but back to the matter at hand.
I would replace the standard fiction-focused syllabus of a college bound or honors freshman English class with a Career Research and Analysis class in which students improve their reading comprehension, improve their writing ability, and develop analytical thinking ability while learning about different career fields and job opportunities. Different career fields and job opportunities that students could study include:
1. Engineering: Project Engineer, Civil Engineer, Structural Engineer, Environmental Engineer, Biomedical Engineer
2. Health Care: Physician, Nurse, Physical Therapist, Physician Assistant
3. Technology Sector: Software Architect, Systems Engineer, Software Engineer, IT Analyst
4. Business Administration: Entrepreneur, CEO, CIO, CMO
5. Finance & Accounting: Investment Broker, Accountant, Actuary, Financial Adviser
6. Psychology: Counselor, Psychiatrist, Forensic Psychologist, Cognitive Neuroscientist
7. Natural Sciences: Biologist, Chemist, Physicist, Botanist, Virologist, Forensic Scientist
8. Social Sciences: Anthropologist, Economist, Sociologist, Lawyer
Over the course of six months, students would take tests and write essays regarding a variety of different career fields, job opportunities, and educational pathways. The class would also include inviting guest speakers from every different career field to discuss their experiences in the industry, what is necessary to succeed in their industry, what it is like working in the industry, and what level of education is necessary to get different types of jobs in said industry. These guest speakers — most of whom would be students' parents — would be asked to have a few talking points prepared for their presentation. Naturally, this presentation would then be followed by a question and answer period. The teacher would also incorporate some of the guest speaker's points into the next test. Ideally, at least one guest speaker would be brought in every other week and there would be at least one from every different career field.
After six months of career research and analysis, the class would begin two months of college research and analysis. Students would research different colleges, would compare and contrast them in their essays, learn about their different admission requirements, tuition costs, their ROI rankings and so on. They would furthermore have the opportunity to learn about different scholarship requirements and financing options. Former students, who are now attending college, as well as a few professors, would be brought in as guest speakers. The class could also visit a few different local colleges throughout the course of the school year.
As a result of taking this course, students will be able to conduct the rest of their high school career with a sense of purpose. They will also have three more years to conduct further independent research, to reflect on their interests and to arrive at a final decision before they choose what college to attend and what subject they will major in. Similarly, I would like to see most colleges replace their current literature-focused first semester freshman English courses with a Career Research and Analysis course or, at the very least, offer it as an elective.
2. Students Are Not Asked to Study Current Events
The typical High School Social Studies curriculum consists entirely of studying history. The question arises; why aren't students studying, analyzing and discussing both historical events and current events during their social studies classes? The whole point of studying history is that we apply its lessons to contemporary issues. Otherwise, we are doomed to repeat our past mistakes. However, high school students — and even the overwhelming majority of college students — are NEVER asked to compare and contrast current events with past events, current political issues with past political issues, current economic conditions with past economic conditions, current wars with past wars and so on. In other words, while the purpose of studying history is that we applies its lessons to contemporary issues, students are not being asked to do this; they are simply made to memorize and then regurgitate historical facts without ever putting them to practical use.
"Practical application is the only mordant which will set things in the memory. Study without it is gymnastics, and not work, which alone will get intellectual bread." - James Russel Lowell
Why do many students find history boring? Well, what causes something to be boring? Among other things, irrelevancy. Unless students are able to relate historical wisdom to something that can affect their lives in the world today, history is entirely irrelevant. It may contain a few interesting stories but without application, historical knowledge is nothing more than trivia.
"Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more." - 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, Henry St. John
Students should never be asked to study history without simultaneously spending an equal amount of time studying and researching the modern world. Aspects of the modern world that students should be asked to research MUST include multiple opposing viewpoints regarding contemporary politics at the local, state and federal level. Otherwise, how are we to expect them to be informed voters by the time they turn eighteen? Students should also be asked to study opposing viewpoints regarding modern U.S. economic conditions, global economic conditions, U.S. foreign policy, U.S. domestic policy and a variety of other countries' unique cultures in addition to their domestic and foreign policies.
Some ideas for compare/contrast papers that students could write include:
The Iraq War and the Vietnam War
The War on Terror and the Cold War
The United States and the Roman Republic
The Great Recession and the Great Depression
President Obama and Any Former President
One's Current Governor and Any Former Governor
The Advent of Wireless Electricity and the Advent of Wireless Internet
3. Students are Not Studying Opposing Viewpoints
As it stands today, there does not seem to be a single high school, college or university in the world that asks students to study opposing viewpoints on both contemporary and historical issues as an integral part of their social studies and social science programs. Rather, students are asked to simply regurgitate the biases of their textbooks, teachers and professors. This would be a perfect system for people living under a monarchy, in which citizens are to simply do as they are told, but as we live in a Republic, this makes absolutely no sense. Having students simply regurgitate what they are told not only biases students towards a rigid political ideology (whether liberal, conservative or otherwise), but it is dreadfully boring, inherently mind-numbing and utterly fails to prepare students for the real world.
"The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject is by hearing what can be said about it be persons of every variety of opinion and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by ever character of mind. No wise man has ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this." - John Stuart Mill
"It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind." - James Arthur Baldwin
"Difference of opinion leads to inquiry, and inquiry to truth." - Thomas Jefferson
First, let's address high school and college history courses. While there are historical facts we can all agree on, every history textbook is, to some extent, politically biased. For example, most history textbooks paint Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a savior who helped Americans survive the Great Depression. However, seldom will you find any mention of the fact that the immediate response to the Depression of 1920 was to cut the federal budget in half, reduce the national debt by one-third and slash taxes for all income levels. Many textbooks fail to even mention the Depression of 1920 at all, even though the initial downturn was actually worse than that of the Great Depression. Why is this not mentioned? In my opinion, it is because the economy recovered in eighteen months and what followed was the economic prosperity that defined the Roaring Twenties. For those who advocate huge increases in government spending during economic downturns, this makes absolutely no sense. So they skip over it. Meanwhile, Herbert Hoover's response to the Great Depression was not to avoid government intervention, as is popularly believed, but rather to take it to an unprecedented level. Herbert Hoover’s response to the market crash of 1929 was to increase federal spending by over 50% between 1929 and 1932, undertake huge public works projects and raise tariffs at an unprecedented rate with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act, a piece of legislation Henry Ford told Harding was “economic stupidity” . Then, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected and further escalated the amount of government spending. In my opinion, this is why the Great Depression lasted ten years. (For more on this, check out FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression by Jim Powell or Dr. Thomas Wood's article The Forgotten Depression of 1920)
But while I feel confident in my assessment, I would never want to indoctrinate students with my own personal political, economic and social viewpoints. Rather, high school and college students should be allowed to study multiple opposing viewpoints, apply some critical thinking, evaluate the evidence, discuss the issue with their peers and come to their own evidence-based conclusions. Beginning in freshman year of high school, every student should learn how to identify their social studies textbook's point of view and begin studying contentious issues regarding U.S. History, World History and current events. Again, the Opposing Viewpoints series provides us with a good starting point. Opposing Viewpoints in American History Volumes I and II, Opposing Viewpoints in World History I and II as well as a number of other entries in the Opposing Viewpoints series can serve as vital resources in helping students pick issues to study and begin their research. However, students should not be restricted to only considering the arguments presented by the editors of the Opposing Viewpoints series; it is merely a good foundation and starting point for further research and analysis.
"In our media-intensive culture it is not difficult to find differing opinions. Thousands of newspapers and magazines and dozens of radio and television talk shows resound with differing points of view. The difficulty lies in deciding which opinion to agree with and which 'experts' seem the most credible. The more inundated we become with differing opinions and claims, the more essential it is to hone critical reading and thinking skills to evaluate these ideas. Opposing Viewpoints books address this problem by directly by presenting stimulating debates that can be used to enhance and teach these skills. The varied opinions contained in each book examine many difference aspects of a single issue. While examining these conveniently editing opposing viewpoints, readers can develop critical thinking skills such as the ability to compare and contrast authors' credibility, facts, argumentation styles, use of persuasive techniques, and other stylistic tools. In short, the Opposing Viewpoints Series is an ideal way to attain the higher-level thinking and reading skills so essential in a culture of diverse and contradictory opinions." - Mitchell Young
As for high school and college social science courses, whether the subject is economics, political science, global studies, sociology or social psychology, there is some level of political bias both in the textbooks and in the lectures. The consideration of opposing viewpoints should be integrated into all of these courses so that again, students can apply some critical thinking, thoroughly evaluate the evidence, discuss contentious issues with their peers and come to their own evidence-based — not ideology-based — conclusions.
4. Students are Not Studying Public Policy
Every high school and college in America should have a required course regarding opposing viewpoints on public policy. Rather than studying a textbook, students could be provided with books from the opposing viewpoints series, videos of formal debates and similar resources so that they could dedicate their time to studying, researching, writing about and discussing the issues that every American should have an informed opinion about. For example:
1. The Middle East
2. The War on Terrorism
3. Gun Control
4. Welfare
5. Health Care
6. Genetic Engineering
7. Global Warming
8. Civil Liberties
9. Abortion
10. Criminal Justice
11. Government Spending
12. Global Resources
A course on public policy could be incorporated into any college curriculum. As part of a high school curriculum, I would make it the area of study in a Junior English Class. Thus:
Freshman English: Career Research and Analysis
Sophomore English: Literary Analysis
Junior English: Public Policy
Senior: Elective
5. Art Classes are Suppressing Students' Creativity with Rigid Curricula
One would think that in an art class, you would be able to dedicate your time to creative self-expression. If a student wants to learn how to paint portraits in art class, he or she could find a few books on the subject, agree on a set of projects with the teacher and then proceed to begin learning and perfecting his or her art work. If one week you feel like learning how to draw cars, you could pick up a book on it in the library and immediately start drawing cars. If you feel like painting a wedding scene, you can paint a wedding scene. If you want to paint something that represents the effect that your father's passing away had on you, you could spend some time figuring out how to represent it in a painting and then proceed to do so. But not so fast! In an art class you have to draw, paint, sculpt or graphically design what the teacher tells you to. If he or she wants everyone to draw flowers, you are all drawing flowers. If the teacher wants everyone painting landscapes this week, you are spending your week painting landscapes.
But why? What successful artist spends their time drawing, painting, graphically designing or sculpting things they do not want to? What is art without passion? A complete waste of time. In art classes, every student should have a self-directed curriculum based upon their areas of interest, their passions and their personal objectives. If a student wants to draw comic books, for God's sake, let him draw comic books! Then grade him based solely upon whether his artistic ability is steadily improving over time. In such a class setting, the art teacher could dedicate their time helping students decide on what their projects will be from week-to-week, providing specific feedback on completed projects and giving help to students who specifically ask for it. Furthermore, students would be able to teach each other how to draw certain things or how to draw with a certain style. In this way, the students' self-directed learning would also have a very positive and rewarding social aspect. I mean honestly, who wouldn't have enjoyed teaching their high school or college crush how to paint or draw something?
6. Students are not Developing a Practical Life Philosophy
Every high school student should graduate with a comprehensive life philosophy; ideally one based on continually improving themselves and the world around them, and have the practical knowledge necessary to lead a successful life. A life philosophy course would be an interdisciplinary course that would address such questions as:
1. What is my ideal lifestyle?
2. What are my ambitions, my dreams and my goals?
3. What are my values?
4. How does one overcome social conflict?
5. How does one have a successful marriage?
6. What are my ethical principles?
7. How can I continually improve both myself and the world around me?
When students address the questions, sources would include their own personal experiences, self-improvement literature, positive psychology, relationship psychology, the field of ethics, sociology and so on.
For example, students might choose to read the 7 Habits by Stephen Covey:
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, first published in 1989, is a self-help book written by Stephen R. Covey. It has sold more than 25 million copies in 38 languages since first publication, which was marked by the release of a 15th anniversary edition in 2004. Covey presents an approach to being effective in attaining goals by aligning oneself to what he calls "true north" principles of a character ethic that he presents as universal and timeless.
Each chapter is dedicated to one of the habits, which are represented by the following imperatives:
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Take initiative in life by realizing that your decisions (and how they align with life's principles) are the primary determining factor for effectiveness in your life. Take responsibility for your choices and the subsequent consequences that follow.
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Self-discover and clarify your deeply important character values and life goals. Envision the ideal characteristics for each of your various roles and relationships in life.
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Plan, prioritize, and execute your week's tasks based on importance rather than urgency. Evaluate whether your efforts exemplify your desired character values, propel you toward goals, and enrich the roles and relationships that were elaborated in Habit 2.
Habit 4: Think Win-Win
Genuinely strive for mutually beneficial solutions or agreements in your relationships. Value and respect people by understanding a "win" for all is ultimately a better long-term resolution than if only one person in the situation had gotten his way.
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
Use empathetic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you. This creates an atmosphere of caring, respect, and positive problem solving.
Habit 6: Synergize
Combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork, so as to achieve goals no one person could have done alone. Get the best performance out of a group of people through encouraging meaningful contribution, and modeling inspirational and supportive leadership.
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle.
7. Students are Not Studying Recent Developments in Science, Technology and Medicine
What is the purpose of high school science courses? Is it so that the small-percentage of students that go on to pursue careers involving the application of physics, chemistry or biology can get a head start on their studies? That would be quite a tremendous waste of time and energy for the rest of students now would it not? I would say the purpose of the high school science curriculum should be that every student is better able to understand the implications of recent developments in science, technology and medicine. Progress in these closely-related areas is radically transforming the nature of everyone's existence; thus studying them is fascinating and inherently valuable regardless of what career path one chooses.
However, high school students — and indeed, the overwhelming majority of college students — are rarely, if ever, asked to study recent developments in science and technology. Furthermore, very few, if any students are asked to regularly apply what they've learned in their textbooks to understanding recent developments in science and technology. I would dedicate the entire first month of a high school course in biology to just studying recent developments in science, technology and medicine that are directly related to biology. After peaking their interest in the course material, I would regularly ask students to apply what they're learning in their textbook to better understand recent scientific developments. Some new stories I might cover include:
Lab-Made Organ Implanted For First Time - CNN
New Hope May Lie In Lab-Created Heart - CNN
Cancer Patient Gets World’s First Artificial Trachea - Time
Scientists Look to Cure HIV with Gene Therapy - Fox News
Programmable DNA Scissors Found for Bacterial Immune System - Science Daily
8. Education Majors are Not Learning from the Most Successful Teachers
If you want to learn how to be great at doing something, what is the first thing you do? I would say it is to find a few people that are well-known for being absolutely amazing at doing it and rigorously study their methods and ideas. This applies whether we're talking about playing a particular sport, running a business, playing music, practicing medicine, performing surgery, parenting and yes, teaching. However, very few, if any education majors are asked to study the methods and ideas of the best teachers in recent history; teachers like Marva Collins, Dr. Lorraine Monroe, Rafe Esquith and Jaime Escalante. All of these teachers have received widespread acclaim for their ability to take under-performing students from impoverished and crime-ridden areas and transform them into lifelong honors students who go on to become highly successful doctors, engineers, civil rights lawyers, business owners, professors, teachers and so on.
1. Jaime Escalante
2. Dr. Lorraine Monroe
3. Marva Collins
What do all these teachers have in common? For one, they were more than just teachers! They were also leaders and marketers. As leaders, they totally and completely believed in every student's ability to succeed despite their surroundings and they communicated this belief to their students in sincere, charismatic and inspiring ways. Even though school officials, parents, other teachers and even some students tried to convince them otherwise, these teachers were unfazed and continued to communicate this belief to the point that the students themselves came to believe it and so began studying with real passion and a sense of purpose. As marketers, these teachers were all able to "sell" what they were teaching before they taught it. In other ways, these teachers effectively and passionately communicated the value of what they were teaching before they began it. Students were never left asking, "Why are we learning this?" These teachers were able to answer that question long before they started teaching the material. But unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of teachers never learn how to "sell" they are teaching to their students. Furthermore, as I have addressed in former sections, much of what we are teaching students is not valuable and the course content needs to be altered accordingly. Even the best salesman will have a hard time selling a bag of dirt. Thus, we are currently a nation great at marketing consumer products but terrible at marketing the value of studying to our students. This is just one of the many important lessons that we can learn from some of the most successful teachers in recent history.
"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
--George Bernard Shaw
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats
So if education majors aren't learning from the proven methods of the most successful teachers in recent history, what are they learning? For the most part, they are being taught a series of unproven theories and cheap gimmicks with absolutely no real-world results to back them up. For example, there is a recent theory that student should not be asked to remember facts and take tests but rather should only be taught how to be critical thinkers. However, they fail to take into consideration that if you do not know what the facts are then you cannot separate them from opinions and then think critically about those opinions. For example, if a student does not learn about the agreed-upon facts of the Vietnam War, how can or she possibly decide whether it was an ill-advised war that needlessly cost tens of thousands of young Americans their lives or a strategic military action necessary to halt the spread of communism?
9. Students Are Not Being Encouraged to Pursue Any Level of Self-Education
You would think that in school, at least half of what a student reads would be books, essays and articles that he or she chooses to read based on his or her own unique, individual interests. But alas, most students have very little, if any freedom at all over the path of their own education. However, some do.
In her most recent book, The Reading Zone, Nancie Atwell advocates English class reading workshops in which grade school, middle school and high school students are able to pick what books they want to read from the school library and read them both in-class and at home rather than being assigned specific books to read. While she's only applied this to fiction and literary non-fiction, her method has proven wildly successful not only in improving children's reading and writing levels but transforming children into passionate, lifelong readers. Here are a few passages from The Reading Zone:
Over my twenty years of teaching reading in a workshop, the annual average for a class of seventh and eighth graders is at least forty titles. In the lower grades at our school, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), the numbers are similarly remarkable. The K6 teachers and I make time every day for our students to curl up with good books and engage in the single activity that consistently correlates with high levels of performance on standardized tests of reading ability. And that is frequent, voluminous reading. A child sitting in a quiet room with a good book isn't a flashy or, more significantly, marketable teaching method. It just happens to be the only way anyone ever grew up to become a reader.
And that is the goal: for every child to become a skilled, passionate, habitual, critical reader—as novelist Robertson Davies put it, to learn how to make of reading a personal art.” Along the way, CTL teachers hope our students will become smarter, happier, more just, and more compassionate people because of the worlds they experience within those hundreds of thousands of black lines of print.
We know that students need time to read, at school and at home, every day. And we understand that when particular children love their particular books, reading is more likely to happen during the time we set aside for it. The only surefire way to induce a love of books is to invite students to select their own.
So CTL teachers help children to choose books, develop and refine their literary criteria, and carve out identities for themselves as readers. We get that it’s essential that every child we teach be able to say, "These are my favorite authors, genres, books, and characters this year, and this is why.” Personal preference is the foundation for anyone who will make of reading a personal art.
Starting in kindergarten and going straight through until the end of high school, free choice of books should be a young readers right, not a privilege granted by a kind teacher. Our students have shown us that opportunities to consider, select, and reconsider books make reading feel sensible and attractive to children right from the start and that they will read more books than we ever dreamed possible and more challenging books than we ever dreamed of assigning to them.
I can personally testify for the effectiveness of Nancy Atwell's methods. At the beginning of my fifth grade at St. Raymond's Elementary School, I was a below-average student who spent the majority of his time playing video games and watching television. However, during my first week in Ms. Grassi's classroom I saw a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on a bookshelf in the classroom, started reading it in class, read it on the bus ride home, read it when I got home and stayed up until four-a-clock in the morning until I passed out with the book still in my hands. I believe I finished the rest of the book in about three or four days and read the other three books that had been published thus far in less than two weeks. I'm not sure how many books I read in fifth grade but in sixth grade we had reading journals. Students were required to read at least five books over the course of the school year. I read eighty-seven, all of them fantasy-fiction. In seventh grade, I was tested for ADHD because I wasn't paying attention in class. One of their tests showed that I was at a thirteenth-grade reading level and a twelfth-grade writing level. And what was the psychiatrist's diagnosis? I had ADHD. He wrote me a prescription for Adderall. I'm not kidding.
That being said, I believe that at least half the books students read should be informative non-fiction. For example, in a high school career research and analysis class, I would ask students to read at least five non-fiction books relevant to their career interests. For example, a student interested in entrepreneurship and business management might read:
The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
"Eric has created a science where previously there was only art. A must read for every serious entrepreneur—and every manager interested in innovation."
—Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Opsware Inc. and Netscape
“This book should be mandatory reading for entrepreneurs, and the same goes for managers who want better entrepreneurial instincts. Ries’s book is loaded with fascinating stories—not to mention countless practical principles you’ll dearly wish you’d known five years ago.” —Dan Heath, co-author of Switch and
Made to Stick
“Ries shows us how to cut through the fog of uncertainty that surrounds startups. His approach is rigorous; his prescriptions are practical and proven in the field. The Lean Startup will change the way we think about entrepreneurship. As startup success rates improve, it could do more to boost global economic growth than any management book written in years.” —Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Entrepreneurship, Harvard Business School
“The Lean Startup is the book whose lessons I want every entrepreneur to absorb and apply. I know of no better guide to improve the odds of a startup's success."
—Mitchell Kapor, Founder, Lotus Development Corp.
"At Asana, we've been lucky to benefit from Eric's advice firsthand; this book will enable him to help many more entrepreneurs answer the tough questions about their business."
—Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.
The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in an age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
He may also read books like:
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape Our Economic Lives by Michael Shermer
Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School by Philip Delves Broughton
The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup by Noam Wasserman
In a Public Policy Course, a student could choose to read:
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book) Teacher's Edition: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction - Jon Stewart
It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom - Andrew P. Napolitano
Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama - Bill O' Reilly
Alternative Energy: Beyond Fossil Fuels - Dana Meachen Rau
Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future - Robert Bryce
In her Career Research and analysis class, a student interested in both medicine and psychology might read:
The Future of Medicine by Stephen C. Schimpff
The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care by Dr. Jerome H. Grossman
On Becoming a Doctor: Everything You Need to Know about Medical School, Residency, Specialization, and Practice by Tania Heller
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
Some people might protest, "But they won't understand everything in those books!" Exactly! I read plenty of books in high school filled with concepts I was unfamiliar with. The things I wasn't familiar with, I would simply look up on an online encyclopedia. (Of course, it would have been better had I access to the digital version of the Encyclopedia Britannica.) The things I still couldn't understand filled me with the desire to (Gasp!) read textbooks so that I'd have the prerequisite, foundational knowledge to better understand the concepts underlying all the exciting books I was reading. Books like:
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci by Michael Gelb
Nicomachean Ethics - Aristotle
The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule by Michael Shermer
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson
Truth in Virtue of Meaning - Russel Gillian
Bad News: The Decline of Reporting by Tom Fenton
The Great American Jobs Scam by Greg Leroy
Myth, Lies and Downright Stupidity by John Stossel
Of course, my only interests at the time were philosophy, psychology, politics and public policy — none of which directly offer me a career path I'd be interested in — but I have since expanded my interests to include business management, entrepreneurship and education.
10. Students are Not Being Provided with the Chance to Study Math at Their Own Pace
Solving a set of math problems is like solving a puzzle. One person might take two hours to solve a puzzle; another might take one and a half hours, another ten minutes. Why then, do twenty-five students in a classroom all have to cover math material at the same pace? Why do some students have to be bored in class while others have to feel incompetent because they need some extra time to cover certain material?
As it stands now, the one-size-fits-all approach is the norm but there are already dozens of schools that are starting to break the mold:
“This,” says Matthew Carpenter, “is my favorite exercise.” I peer over his shoulder at his laptop screen to see the math problem the fifth grader is pondering. It’s an inverse trigonometric function: cos-1(1) = ?
Carpenter, a serious-faced 10-year-old wearing a gray T-shirt and an impressive black digital watch, pauses for a second, fidgets, then clicks on “0 degrees.” Presto: The computer tells him that he’s correct. The software then generates another problem, followed by another, and yet another, until he’s nailed 10 in a row in just a few minutes. All told, he’s done an insane 642 inverse trig problems. “It took a while for me to get it,” he admits sheepishly.
Carpenter, who attends Santa Rita Elementary, a public school in Los Altos, California, shouldn’t be doing work anywhere near this advanced. In fact, when I visited his class this spring—in a sun-drenched room festooned with a papercraft X-wing fighter and student paintings of trees—the kids were supposed to be learning basic fractions, decimals, and percentages. As his teacher, Kami Thordarson, explains, students don’t normally tackle inverse trig until high school, and sometimes not even then.
But last November, Thordarson began using Khan Academy in her class. Khan Academy is an educational website that, as its tagline puts it, aims to let anyone “learn almost anything—for free.” Students, or anyone interested enough to surf by, can watch some 2,400 videos in which the site’s founder, Salman Khan, chattily discusses principles of math, science, and economics (with a smattering of social science topics thrown in). The videos are decidedly lo-fi, even crude: Generally seven to 14 minutes long, they consist of a voice-over by Khan describing a mathematical concept or explaining how to solve a problem while his hand-scribbled formulas and diagrams appear onscreen. Like the Wizard of Oz, Khan never steps from behind the curtain to appear in a video himself; it’s just Khan’s voice and some scrawly equations. In addition to these videos, the website offers software that generates practice problems and rewards good performance with videogame-like badges—for answering a “streak” of questions correctly, say, or mastering a series of algebra levels. (Carpenter has acquired 52 Earth badges in math, which require hours of toil to attain and at which his classmates gaze with envy and awe.)
Initially, Thordarson thought Khan Academy would merely be a helpful supplement to her normal instruction. But it quickly become far more than that. She’s now on her way to “flipping” the way her class works. This involves replacing some of her lectures with Khan’s videos, which students can watch at home. Then, in class, they focus on working problem sets. The idea is to invert the normal rhythms of school, so that lectures are viewed on the kids’ own time and homework is done at school. It sounds weird, Thordarson admits, but this flipping makes sense when you think about it. It’s when they’re doing homework that students are really grappling with a subject and are most likely to need someone to talk to. And now Thordarson can tell just when this grappling occurs: Khan Academy provides teachers with a dashboard application that lets her see the instant a student gets stuck.
“I’m able to give specific, pinpointed help when needed,” she says.
The result is that Thordarson’s students move at their own pace. Those who are struggling get surgically targeted guidance, while advanced kids like Carpenter rocket far ahead; once they’re answering questions without making mistakes, Khan’s site automatically recommends new topics to move on to. Over half the class is now tackling subjects like algebra and geometric formulas. And even the less precocious kids are improving: Only 3 percent of her students were classified as average or lower in end-of-year tests, down from 13 percent at midyear.
For years, teachers like Thordarson have complained about the frustrations of teaching to the “middle” of the class. They stand at the whiteboard, trying to get 25 or more students to learn the same stuff at the same pace. And, of course, it never really works: Advanced kids get bored and tune out, lagging ones get lost and tune out, and pretty soon half the class isn’t paying attention. Since the rise of personal computers in the early ’80s, educators have hoped that technology could solve this problem by offering lessons tailored to each kid. Schools have blown millions, maybe billions, of dollars on sophisticated classroom technology, but the effort has been in vain.
Khan’s videos are anything but sophisticated. He recorded many of them in a closet at home, his voice sounding muffled on his $25 Logitech headset. But some of his fans believe that Khan has stumbled onto the secret to solving education’s middle-of-the-class mediocrity. Most notable among them is Bill Gates, whose foundation has invested $1.5 million in Khan’s site. “I’d been looking for something like this—it’s so important,” Gates says. Khan’s approach, he argues, shows that education can truly be customized, with each student getting individualized help when needed.
