Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Re: David Berliner on ‘A Nation at Risk’: Three Decades of Lies #2 – ADDENDUM” [Hake (2013)]. The abstract reads:
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ABSTRACT: In a previous post, “Re: David Berliner on 'A Nation at Risk': Three Decades of Lies #2” [Hake (2013)] at http://yhoo.it/10dPm4V, I quoted Ken Bernstein's comment on Diane Ravitch’s blog at http://bit.ly/13uNGbs (slightly edited): “Berliner was right in Manufactured Crisis (Berliner & Biddle, 1995/1996 at http://amzn.to/PGOfcT) about the ‘Nation at Risk’ report http://bit.ly/ZJ8Tyi of 30 years ago and is right today."
Berliner & Biddle wrote: “[The Nation at Risk report] made many claims about the ‘failures’ of American education, how those ‘failures’ were confirmed by ‘evidence’ and how this would damage the nation. (Unfortunately, none of the supposedly supportive ‘evidence’ actually appeared in ‘A Nation at Risk’ nor did this work provide citations to tell Americans where that ‘evidence’ might be found.) . . . . . . . . . When one actually examines the evidence, one discovers that it simply will not support the fiction that America has a generally failing system of education. This claim is nonsense.
SO IS AMERICAN EDUCATION OK?? In “Should the Culture of University Science Education Be Changed?” [Hake (2011)] at http://bit.ly/iegznz, I argued that it is *NOT*. For example, in Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5 at http://bit.ly/dtQhbS it's stated that (see that report for the references): (1) Sixty-nine percent of United States public school students in fifth through eighth grade are taught mathematics by a teacher without a degree or certificate in mathematics [NCES (2003)]; (2) Ninety-three percent of United States public school students in fifth through eighth grade are taught the physical sciences by a teacher without a degree or certificate in the physical sciences [NCES (2003)]; (3) The United States ranks 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving undergraduate degrees in science or engineering [OECD (2009a)]; (4) The United States ranks 20th in high school completion rate among industrialized nations and 16th in college completion rate [OECD (2009b)]; (5) The average American K-12 student spends four hours a day in front of a TV [McDonough (2009)]; (6) Sixty-eight percent of U.S. state prison inmates are high school drop-outs or otherwise did not qualify for a diploma [Harlow (2003)].
For one attempt to improve U.S. K-12 science education see "8+1 Science: A new concept in science education" [Michigan State (2012)] at http://bit.ly/Hz898n.
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To access the complete 14 kB post please click on http://yhoo.it/10g1iTV.
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
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REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 25 April 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “Re: David Berliner on ‘A Nation at Risk’: Three Decades of Lies #2 – ADDENDUM,” online on the OPEN Net-Gold archives at http://yhoo.it/10g1iTV. Post of 25 Apr 2013 13:09:11-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.
Showing posts with label Gathering Storm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gathering Storm. Show all posts
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Should Global Competitiveness Be the Main Driver of Education Reform?
Some blog followers might be interested in a recent discussion-list post “Should Global Competitiveness Be the Main Driver of Education Reform?” The abstract reads:
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ABSTRACT: EDDRA2’s Michael Paul Goldenberg pointed to a guest post by Gerald Coles “Educating to Compete in the ‘Global Economy’: Creating Idiot Savantism” at http://bit.ly/NdBMLd. Coles, in turn, pointed to Diane Ravitch's “Flunking Arne Duncan” at http://bit.ly/Ks75SY. Ravitch wrote: “. . . . the nation forgot that education has a greater purpose than preparing our children to compete in the global economy.”
I agree with Coles and Ravitch that “global competitiveness” should not be the main driver of education reform. In a discussion list post “Is the 'Skills Slowdown' the Biggest Issue Facing the Nation?” at http://bit.ly/9kIHAW, I countered David Brooks’ claim http://nyti.ms/LfJp1K that it was, arguing that the “Threat to Life on Planet Earth” was the biggest issue facing the nation.
Likewise, I think the “Threat to Life on Planet Earth,” and NOT “global competitiveness,” should be the main driver of education reform, contrary to the themes of NRC reports: (a) Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Future of 2007 at http://bit.ly/a3g4P3; (b) Is America Falling Off the Flat Earth?" of 2007 at http://bit.ly/qwdyDu; and (c) Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5 of 2010 at http://bit.ly/dtQhbS.
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To access the complete 23 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/KtxakF.
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
rrhake@earthlink.net
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Academia: http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake
Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/rrhake
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
“The global population is precariously large, and will become much more so before peaking some time after 2050. Humanity overall is improving per capita production, health, and longevity. But it is doing so by eating up the planet’s capital, including natural resources and biological diversity millions of years old. Homo sapiens is approaching the limit of its food and water supply. Unlike any species before, it is also changing the world’s atmosphere and climate, lowering and polluting water tables, shrinking forests, and spreading deserts. Most of the stress originates directly or indirectly from a handful of industrialized countries. Their proven formulas for prosperity are being eagerly adopted by the rest of the world. The emulation cannot be sustained, not with the same levels of consumption and waste. Even if the industrialization of the developing countries is only partially successful, the environmental aftershock will dwarf the population explosion that preceded it.”
- E.O. Wilson (1998)
“The paleoclimate record makes it clear that a target to keep human made global warming less than 2°C, as proposed in some international discussions, is not sufficient - it is a prescription for disaster. . . .[[my italics]]. . . Assessment of the dangerous level of CO2, and the dangerous level of warming, is made difficult by the inertia of the climate system. The inertia, especially of the ocean and ice sheets, allows us to introduce powerful climate forcings such as atmospheric CO2 with only moderate initial response. But that inertia is not our friend - it means that we are building in changes for future generations that will be difficult, if not impossible, to avoid.”
- James Hansen & Makiko Sato (2011)
REFERENCES [All URL’s accessed on 30 May 2012, most shortened by http://bit.ly/.]
Hake, R.R. 2012. “Should Global Competitiveness Be the Main Driver of Education Reform?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/KtxakF. Post of 30 May 2012 19:44:01-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are also being transmitted to several discussion lists.
Hansen, J.E. & M. Sato. 2011. “Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change,” 20 July, online at http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0968v2; to appear in Berger, Mesinger, and Sijaci, eds., Climate Change at the Eve of the Second Decade of the Century: Inferences from Paleoclimate and Regional Aspects: Proceedings of Milutin Milankovitch 130th Anniversary Symposium (Springer, in press), a popularization of this paper is online as a 213 kB pdf at http://1.usa.gov/AuzXMw.
Wilson, E.O. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Knopf. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/JQXfrq, note the searchable “Look Inside” feature.
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ABSTRACT: EDDRA2’s Michael Paul Goldenberg pointed to a guest post by Gerald Coles “Educating to Compete in the ‘Global Economy’: Creating Idiot Savantism” at http://bit.ly/NdBMLd. Coles, in turn, pointed to Diane Ravitch's “Flunking Arne Duncan” at http://bit.ly/Ks75SY. Ravitch wrote: “. . . . the nation forgot that education has a greater purpose than preparing our children to compete in the global economy.”
I agree with Coles and Ravitch that “global competitiveness” should not be the main driver of education reform. In a discussion list post “Is the 'Skills Slowdown' the Biggest Issue Facing the Nation?” at http://bit.ly/9kIHAW, I countered David Brooks’ claim http://nyti.ms/LfJp1K that it was, arguing that the “Threat to Life on Planet Earth” was the biggest issue facing the nation.
Likewise, I think the “Threat to Life on Planet Earth,” and NOT “global competitiveness,” should be the main driver of education reform, contrary to the themes of NRC reports: (a) Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Future of 2007 at http://bit.ly/a3g4P3; (b) Is America Falling Off the Flat Earth?" of 2007 at http://bit.ly/qwdyDu; and (c) Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5 of 2010 at http://bit.ly/dtQhbS.
**************************************************
To access the complete 23 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/KtxakF.
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
rrhake@earthlink.net
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Academia: http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake
Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/rrhake
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
“The global population is precariously large, and will become much more so before peaking some time after 2050. Humanity overall is improving per capita production, health, and longevity. But it is doing so by eating up the planet’s capital, including natural resources and biological diversity millions of years old. Homo sapiens is approaching the limit of its food and water supply. Unlike any species before, it is also changing the world’s atmosphere and climate, lowering and polluting water tables, shrinking forests, and spreading deserts. Most of the stress originates directly or indirectly from a handful of industrialized countries. Their proven formulas for prosperity are being eagerly adopted by the rest of the world. The emulation cannot be sustained, not with the same levels of consumption and waste. Even if the industrialization of the developing countries is only partially successful, the environmental aftershock will dwarf the population explosion that preceded it.”
- E.O. Wilson (1998)
“The paleoclimate record makes it clear that a target to keep human made global warming less than 2°C, as proposed in some international discussions, is not sufficient - it is a prescription for disaster. . . .[[my italics]]. . . Assessment of the dangerous level of CO2, and the dangerous level of warming, is made difficult by the inertia of the climate system. The inertia, especially of the ocean and ice sheets, allows us to introduce powerful climate forcings such as atmospheric CO2 with only moderate initial response. But that inertia is not our friend - it means that we are building in changes for future generations that will be difficult, if not impossible, to avoid.”
- James Hansen & Makiko Sato (2011)
REFERENCES [All URL’s accessed on 30 May 2012, most shortened by http://bit.ly/.]
Hake, R.R. 2012. “Should Global Competitiveness Be the Main Driver of Education Reform?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/KtxakF. Post of 30 May 2012 19:44:01-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are also being transmitted to several discussion lists.
Hansen, J.E. & M. Sato. 2011. “Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change,” 20 July, online at http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0968v2; to appear in Berger, Mesinger, and Sijaci, eds., Climate Change at the Eve of the Second Decade of the Century: Inferences from Paleoclimate and Regional Aspects: Proceedings of Milutin Milankovitch 130th Anniversary Symposium (Springer, in press), a popularization of this paper is online as a 213 kB pdf at http://1.usa.gov/AuzXMw.
Wilson, E.O. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Knopf. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/JQXfrq, note the searchable “Look Inside” feature.
Friday, January 23, 2009
"The Threat to Life on Planet Earth" Is a More Important Issue Than David Brooks' "Skills Slowdown"
In the following two discussion list posts I argue that the"Threat to Life on Planet Earth" is a more important issue facing the Nation than David Brooks' "Skills Slowdown":
1. "Is the 'Skills Slowdown' the Biggest Issue Facing the Nation?" [Hake (2008a)] - ABSTRACT (see that article for the references):
G.S. Chandy of the Math-Teach list has called attention to David Brooks' Op-Ed piece titled "The Biggest Issue." Brooks wrote: "I point to these two research projects . . . ["The Race Between Education and Technology" (Goldin & Katz, 2008) and "Schools, Skills, and Synapses" (Heckman, 2008). . . . because the SKILLS SLOWDOWN IS THE BIGGEST ISSUE facing the country. . . . this slow-moving problem, more than any other, will shape the destiny of the nation. . . . America rose because it got more out of its people than any other nation. That stopped in 1970. Now, other issues grab the headlines and campaign attention. But this tectonic plate is still relentlessly and menacingly shifting beneath our feet." I argue that a bigger issue and a more menacing tectonic plate, seldom mentioned by editorialists such as Brooks, economists such a Goldin, Katz, and Heckman; and select committees - see, e.g., "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" [NAP (2007)] is the "Threat to Life on Planet Earth."
2. "Is the 'Skills Slowdown' the Biggest Issue Facing the Nation? - ADDENDUM" [Hake (2008b)] - ABSTRACT [see that article for references other than Hake & Mallow (2008)]:
Eugene Geis (2008) of the PHYSOC list pointed out a serious deficiency in my previous post "Is the 'Skills Slowdown' the Biggest Issue Facing the Nation?", writing "You could've attempted a paraphrasing of your concept of the 'Threat to Life on Planet Earth' . . . ." Rather than attempting to paraphrase the 22 references in Part 2 of Hake & Mallow (2008), I list seven of those references that reflect the work of Al Bartlett, James Duderstadt, Arjun Makhijani, Bill McKibben, Craig Nelson, Gus Speth, and Edward Wilson.
REFERENCES
Brooks, D. 2008. "The Biggest Issue," New York Times, 29 July; online at
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/opinion/29brooks.html?ref=opinion>. Because this piece may soon be available only to subscribers, I have copied an annotated and referenced version into the OPEN! AERA-L archives at <http://tinyurl.com/5ofthx>. Such copying is in accord with "fair use" of copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. For more information go to <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml>.
Hake, R.R. 2008a. "Is the 'Skills Slowdown' the Biggest Issue Facing the Nation?" online on the OPEN! AERA-D archives at <http://tinyurl.com/afg744>. Post of 4 Aug 2008 to AERA-D and other discussion lists.
Hake, R.R. 2008b. "Is the 'Skills Slowdown' the Biggest Issue Facing the Nation? - ADDENDUM," online on the OPEN! AERA-D archives at <http://tinyurl.com/cytr2h> . Post of 5 Aug 2008 to AERA-D and other discussion lists.
Hake, R.R. & J.V. Mallow. 2008. "Gender Issues in Science/Math Education (GISME)," over 700 Annotated References & 1000 URL's: Part 1 - All references in alphabetical order; Part 2 - Some references in subject order; both online at ref. 55 at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/>, and on this blog at
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