Archive for the ‘Society’ Category
Restoring teacher authority
Guest Post by Alex Standish Good teaching is essential to learning, yet interference by politicians, policymakers and business in schools has undermined the authority of teachers. We need to value the transfer of knowledge for its own sake and give teachers the freedom to educate. Elizabeth Green’s recent article the New York Times Magazine (“Building a better teacher”) contains some […]
Education: society doesn’t affirm adult authority
Last week I posted about the Obama administration’s support for closing schools, and Diane Ravitch’s response. Elizabeth Green’s feature in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, “Building a better teacher,” certainly provided a helpful corrective to the Bush and Obama top-down approaches, as it highlighted how much depends on the skills of the individual teacher. But as education professor […]
Ravitch: school firings “mean and punitive”
Speaking to the US Chamber of Commerce on Monday, President Obama praised the Rhode Island school board that dismissed the entire Central Falls High School faculty and staff (93 in total). This came as he was outlining his proposal to offer $900 million in federal grants to states and school districts that take drastic steps to address under-performing schools. […]