DaveShearon

Singing Past the Graveyard (Huh?)

Time for a little fun.  I've always enjoyed Sam Cooke's Wonderful World.  It even has a plan for improving schools:

Now I don't claim to be an A student
But I'm tryin' to be
Oh maybe by being an A student, baby
I can win your love for me

Yep.  When girls start chasing the top male candidates for valedictorian, president of the chess club, science fair winner, debate team members, etc., school performance will go up (at least for guys).  A fantasy?  You betcha.  But no more so than the fantasy so many school boards operate under -- that some administration-imposed curriculum, pedagogy, dress-code, grading scale, or what have you is going to make schools perform better.  In fact, if forced to choose, I'd rather try to get teenage girls to value smarts. 

Hey!  That suggests a poll!  So, here it is:

5/15/2005  OK.  Poll's closed.  Here are the final results:

School Improvement Which approach is most likely to improve any given school system? Get teenage girls to prefer "brains" first 59% 16 Get teachers working together in small groups to improve instruction 30% 8 Implement the right program in the right way 11% 3 Get a shake-things-up superintendent 0% 0 total votes: 27 Free polls by www.snappoll.com

You just can't beat a Harvard education!

"I'd rather be governed by the first 100 people in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty." William F. Buckley, Jr.

Non-standardized tests

From James Lileks:

After music lessons, phonics. We were studying the Short U vowel sound, and she had to circle the relevant pictures. To my dismay she circled a picture of scissors and paper.

“Is that a short U sound?” I asked, noncommittally.

“Yes,” she said. “Cut.”

Wow. Add to that something else she announced this morning: “Can I go to Barbie dot com on the internet?”

The wrong reason

The wrong reason to play baseball ... or pick a major ... or start a career... (Warning: link will make sense July 5 only!)

Kids!

No wonder kids don't value reference books!

(Click it while it's hot. Link won't make sense after June 17!)