The first chapter begins with where we all hate to begin, but we must: The Freud problem. Despite having loosed his grip on the world of psychological science many decades ago, Freud’s hold on the collective imagination and definition of psychology persists. Stanovich points out that fewer than 10% of members of the American Psychological…
Or, in which I decide to make a descriptive title instead of a good one. I’ll admit that I have little experience with evaluating national science standards, or with constructing curricula meant to be used by thousands of teachers. So I’ll just describe some of my impressions of the new standards, from what I can…
I have a new guest post up at All Things Education, with my reactions to the latest salvo in the ongoing battle between research papers and blogs, and between high stakes testing education reform and its discontents. Please head there and read it, and comment. I would love to hear reactions from my loyal readers.
The challenges of the modern era are great. How can we restore our global economic might? How can we accept anthropogenic climate change as a problem and being to address it? Belief in one of the foundational theories of science (evolution) is low and trending lower, how do we restore trust in science? Despite the…
Welcome friends and critics from my Scientific American Guest Blog piece: Deselection of the Bottom 8%, Lessons from Eugenics for Modern School Reform. This post addresses a common concern of mine in modern education reform debates, I hope it helps continue the conversation in a productive direction. “Defenders of the Status Quo” Many critics of…
> I’ve been reading The Information by James Gleick, (NYT review, exerpt) which, like most Gleick books that I have read (Chaos, Genius) is an absolute nerdgasm of science, technology, and history. But it gave me a context of thinking about Rachel’s latest foray into the big time, a little kerfluffle with mostly-progressive Matt Yglesias.In…
>I read a really interesting and provocative essay about the web a few days ago that has really stuck with me. I thought I’d share it with my five loyal readers, and ask what they thought. Here is the essay: The Web is a Customer Service Medium, by Paul Ford I think it is worth…
Lately I have found myself drawn into commenting on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog over at the Atlantic. For a regular columnist, I find him a sophisticated commentator on issues of race, class and American history, as well as a writer whose prose is a joy to read. But what really drew me in was the other…
>Amanda Ripley has an article in the Atlantic about comparing individual states to international test scoreshttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/your-child-left-behind/8310/Given that the Atlantic seems to be publishing a few sophisticated pieces on education, I read it with higher expectations. In cases like these, that makes me even more angry when the reporters use all the trappings of scientific writing…
Permit me a little grumpiness and snark. Pieces like this recent one in Wired, 7 Essential Skills You Didn’t Learn In College (look, now with list-power, and SEO-bait!) drive me a little crazy. They are part of a recent trend in some corners of the smart set to suppose that college needs a complete reinvention….
