Parents ‘n Schools

“In school redesign, we are constantly battling the gravitational pull of school as usual.” (Billie Donegan, Colorado educational consultant, ASCD’s Educational Leadership, p. 56, May 2008)
Government schooling in Alberta is a nearly $6 billion per year business. In Canada, nearly $60 billion per year. In North America, nearly $600 billion per […]

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Robert Fulford in his National Post commentary recently described a newly published book by Barbara Demick providing insight into personal lives within the now 65 year old totalitarian regime in North Korea:
“She leads us carefully and thoughtfully through desperate lives. A kindergarten teacher reports that the hardest part of her job was watching her pupils […]

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(GLO — July 2010 — From about 2 years ago… I recently returned to work full-time, after 10 years as a stay-at-home-parent to our now middle-school-aged children. I’ll likely now be better able to relate to working parents and the challenges of involvement in their children’s schooling. A recent “Entourage” episode on HBO captured some […]

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Peter Drucker, in his “The Practice of Management” wrote this about management:
“Performance: The Test of Management”
The ultimate test of management is performance. Management, in other words, is a practice, rather than a science or profession, although containing elements of both. No greater damage could be done to our economy or to our society than to […]

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People worry about “kids today”.
I don’t, so much.
I’m concerned more about the parents.
Kids have it good. When I was a kid, we’d be handed lawn darts and told “go play”. In hindsight, that does not seem wise.
Bike helmets hadn’t been invented yet that we were made aware of. Seatbelts were tucked away under […]

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From Whitney Tilson’s blog recently, a piece that educates on the “race” in the world of academia to combat cheating via technology with proctoring via technology. Children can be led to cheat in school in the same fashion as they are led to steal copyrighted material. Because it is easy, and others get away with […]

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(GLO — July 2010 — From 2 years ago. The tilting continues, in its extreme. Change the way the dollars move, and the system changes automatically. The bulk of the work of status quo schooling advocacy is maintaining the financial status quo. Almost blindly. As if it is a given that what is “best” for […]

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The most recent Fast Company magazine features a long look at Apple and its success, and includes this excerpt:
Steve Jobs has often cited this quote from Henry Ford: “If I’d have asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’ “
This is Jobs’s defense of Apple’s reluctance to listen […]

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Pedagogy is one of those ten-dollar-words that get tossed around in the world of schooling which help to make it hard to follow without a glossary at hand. What I think it means is “theory”… as in a certain pedagogy is a certain theory of schooling… a certain way of schooling… […]

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My daughter advises that next year, at her middle school, the students will be allowed/encouraged to bring their own computers to school. Because they don’t have enough… never have enough… and they aren’t very good.
So now the problem will be solved. By parents. And peer pressure.
How many parents will know that their child’s “portable” computer […]

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