Interesting New York Times article about how to breed and educate leaders, focusing on the Deans and the Bushes:
… If you look at Bush and Dean, even more than prep school boys like John Kerry (St. Paul's and Harvard), Al Gore (St. Alban's and Harvard) and Bill Frist (Montgomery Bell Academy and Princeton), you detect certain common traits.The first is self-assurance. Both Bush and Dean have amazing faith in their gut instincts. Both have self-esteem that is impregnable because it derives not from what they are accomplishing but from who they ineffably are. Both appear unplagued by the sensation, which destroyed Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, that there is some group in society higher than themselves.
Both are bold. Bush is an ambitious war leader, and Dean has set himself off from all the cautious, poll-molded campaigns of his rivals.
Both were inculcated with something else, a sense of chivalry. Unlike today's top schools, which are often factories for producing Résumé Gods, the WASP prep schools were built to take the sons of privilege and toughen them into paragons of manly virtue. Rich boys were sent away from their families and shoved into a harsh environment that put tremendous emphasis on athletic competition, social competition and character building.
As Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Caroline Hodges Persell write in "Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools," students in traditional schools "had to be made tough, loyal to each other, and ready to take command without self-doubt. Boarding schools were not founded to produce Hamlets, but Dukes of Wellington who could stand above the carnage with a clear head and an unflinching will to win."
As anyone who has read George Orwell knows, this had ruinous effects on some boys, but those who thrived, as John F. Kennedy did, believed that life was a knightly quest to perform service and achieve greatness, through virility, courage, self-discipline and toughness.
Manly virtue, greatness, virility, courage, self-discipline. Usually such words are used nowadays with more of an ironic sneer than you see here. Interesting. The 9/11 effect on educational thinking?
Nancy Lebowitz has just commented on the posting immediately below, and included a link to the MIT OCW (that's Massachusetts Institute of Technology OpenCourseWare) site. It's a long time since I've been so impressed by an educational website, of any sort.
Welcome to MIT OpenCourseWare a free, open, publication of MIT Course Materials. We invite you to view all the courses available at this time.
I went to the FAQ page.
1. What is MIT OpenCourseWare?
The idea behind MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is to make MIT course materials that are used in the teaching of almost all undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. MIT OCW will advance technology-enhanced education at MIT, and will serve as a model for university dissemination of knowledge in the Internet age. This venture continues the tradition at MIT, and in American higher education, of open dissemination of educational materials, philosophy, and modes of thought, and will help lead to fundamental changes in the way colleges and universities utilize the Web as a vehicle for education.
Free of charge. That was the bit that got my attention. That's what Nancy had said, but there it was in black and white, with them saying it. That means, among a million other good things, that blogs can link there way right into the middle of this stuff.
Well, I assume they can. And I do that because the whole site just oozes the feeling that these people know exactly what they are doing, and, equally important, what they are not doing. They are dishing out course materials. They are not going to tell anyone on your behalf that you have paid any attention to them, nor, in general, do they offer to preside over your education.
If you want to have an email correspondence with your preferred MIT faculty member, forget it.
2. How do I contact a specific member of the MIT Faculty?
MIT OCW is intended as a publication of MIT course materials on the Web, and not as an interactive experience with MIT faculty. It provides the content of, but is not a substitute for, an MIT education. The most fundamental cornerstone of the learning process at MIT is the interaction between faculty and students in the classroom, and among students themselves on campus. MIT OCW does not offer visitors to the Web site the opportunity for direct contact with MIT faculty. Inquiries related to specific course materials will be forwarded to the MIT faculty member associated with that course for their consideration. However, due to the tremendous volume of email inquiries received, it is unlikely he or she will answer all emails.
I've heard about this in a vague way, but have never even properly scratched the surface of the website before. I am extremely impressed. I'll be back. In fact I left a comment there saying this.
In general, I think that we can expect many more major institutions with world-wide reputations (and not just educational institutions) to just give stuff away. The BBC, for instance, has recently said that it may be about to do this.
Meanwhile the educational impact of this particular MIT give-away can only be guessed at.
My deepest thanks to Nancy, and particularly for the URL.
I know nothing about this at all, other than the email I got about it today:
The Global Virtual Classroom project opened for business this week.It's a collaborative cross-border experience for primary and secondary schools, allowing them to develop both web and global communication skills so necessary today.
A mention in your blog would be greatly appreciated for this non-profit endeavor that is still searching for sponsors.
Frank Patrick
Project Manager
Global Virtual Classroom Project
Give Something Back International
fpatrick@gsbi.org
Comments anyone?
The regulations and the initiatives pile up. Teachers have to do bureaucracy. The teachers protest. So a "deal" is done that says the teachers can just teach. But the schools have to pay other people to do bureaucracy. The schools may have a bit more money, but that was supposed to be for teaching, not bureaucracy, and in any case to get the extra money, you have to do bureaucracy. So, the schools can't make the deal work.
It has been hailed as the magic bullet, the deal that will slay the beast of bureaucracy and put an end to years of complaints from teachers that their work is choked by endless administration. The first stage of the three-year workload agreement was introduced last week, with the start of new school year.But already it looks to be unravelling, with hundreds of schools claiming they cannot afford to employ the extra staff they need to make it work. Classroom unions have threatened industrial action unless head teachers stick to the new contractual limits imposed by the deal, but, with schools gripped in financial crisis, thousands of teachers have found themselves agreeing to do just as much cutting, pasting, typing and photocopying as ever before.
Plus, once they do employ all those bureaucrats, there'll be an interest group in place to keep the idiot bureaucratic regulations and bizarre initiatives in place for ever and ever. Education will then become "inherently" more expensive.
Don't read the national press about anything. It will only depress you.
Any of my readers who missed this article should … unmiss it? Lots of homeschooling blogs have already referenced it, and really that's my point. There's no doubt that homeschooling in the USA is on the up-and-up.
Teach your children well — at homeHome schooling grows in popularity and credibility
Quite so. The article makes the point, though, that having only one parent at work is usually a precondition.
I just did a posting here on Internet cheating, and then I thought it made more sense for it to go on Samizdata, so I put it there, and deleted it here (in case anyone observed this and was wondering).
I say I did a posting. Actually I stole it all. From the New York Times. Hah.
The trouble with encouraging teachers to teach rather than become bureaucrats is that they then teach instead of becoming bureaucrats:
Heads believe one reason for the reluctance to take top jobs is the Government's attempt to persuade good teachers to stay in the classroom by offering them higher pay. A head of department may only earn £1,000 a year more than a teacher who refuses to take on extra responsibilities. Another is the high workload and increasingly bureaucratic nature of senior teaching posts.
Next: they'll encourage teachers to become bureaucrats, and then worry about the fact that they are becoming bureaucrats instead of teachers.
The word is Sovietisation. Under advanced Sovietisation (late Sovietisation?) there are so many objectives that in the end the teachers just say to hell with it, and reach for the vodka. The way to get purposelessness is to pile up the purposes until each separate purpose no longer matters. You can then play them all off against each other and do nothing.
Amid world-wide concern that Seattle may not have enough espresso to stay awake and keep up its side of conversation, coffee buffs rallied today in mass demonstration to support espresso and oppose taxes.What's our alternative to this well-meaning but ill-advised legislation to tax espresso in order to fund pre-school activities? Let a thousand espresso bars offer day care! After all, they are already doing it for the middle-aged.
Yes. But they must also serve ice cream.
See what I mean about how we don't want the government deciding what a school is. Great bloggers think alike.
Here's news of another punch exchanged in the endless battle about selective versus comprehensive education:
A plan to set up the first state-funded grammar school in England for more than 50 years was announced yesterday by Brunel University.It is the brainchild of Prof Steven Schwartz, the vice-chancellor, who has been asked by the Government to recommend ways of opening up good universities to bright children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
His solution will acutely embarrass Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, who is a fierce opponent of selective education.
Exploiting Government legislation that encourages private backers to set up state-funded city academies, Prof Schwartz is proposing to build a school for 300 "gifted and talented" pupils aged 14 to 19 on Brunel's campus at Runnymede, Windsor.
Just down the hill from where I spent the first two decades of my home life, in other words.
I suppose the key to this ruckus it is who exactly you think the "underprivileged" are. Are they the poor? Or are they the poor and stupid? (I don't know how to phrase that politely. I did give it some thought. Maybe not enough) Egalitarians have to have an answer, so that they can then set about helping the losers.
From where Clarke sits, Schwartz is wanting to dish out further help to people who are clever already, and who ought to be able to make it in regular schools. From where Schwartz sits, Clarke is ruthlessly cutting down the ladder for the very children most capable of climbing it and thus most in need of it.
This argument is not going to go away.
This is the sort of headline of which people say: "They don't write headlines like this any more." Except that they just did. It's further evidence that the nationalised education system of Britain is coming to resemble the old USSR.
So, next: Russian teachers, in England, out of their skulls on vodka, driven crazy by quotas.
Russian teachers, that is. It seems that being part of the EU isn't necessary.
The Independent's subheading says a lot in a few words, both about the pay, and about the work:
Highly qualified, they earn huge sums compared to pay back home. But there is the culture shock ...
That's going to be a fun story to track. Another part for Arnold Schwarzenneger maybe, if that Californian job doesn't work out. Red Heat meets Kindergarten Cop.
I've written here about the possibility of Brits sending their kids to Eastern Europe in the years to come. (Friends have reacted by suggesting that a more likely development is lots of Eastern European private tutors setting up shop here.) Now here's evidence of Americans who are already sending their children abroad for their education, in this case African Americans, sending their children across the Atlantic for their education, for all the usual reasons that I'm sure you can imagine. That's African African Americans – Americans who used quite recently to be Africans – sending their children back to African schools.
My thanks to Joanne Jacobs for the link, who also comments on the story, linking to someone who speculates that white people might start getting interested too.
In Britain I have tended to be scornful of the campaign that has sputtered on for years in favour of Education Vouchers. I have felt that these campaigners should have concentrated more on putting the broad case for free market education, and should then maybe mention vouchers at the end of their screeds, with the caveat that vouchers are a half-measure, because they still mean the government deciding what "Education" means. After all, you can't be allowed to spend your "Education" Vouchers at the Ice Cream Parlour, can you? That's not a "school", is it? But what if it is, sort of? What if they have books there, and internet connections, and things get learned? See what I mean? Personally I prefer to emphasise the benefits of people getting education for their children using freedom's own vouchers, money.
However, the vouchers picture may start to change here if things in the USA continue to develop there as they are developing over there. There vouchers are spreading fast, and if that leads to a definite gap in quality between the voucher schools and the regular schools, and if that gap is big enough to get noticed over here, then the argument here might shift.
Here is a piece by the Heritage Foundation's Krista Kafer about the growth of school choice, and here is evidence that they are willing to make the campaign politically forceful by making the political personal, the personal bit being about the school choices made by the politicians whom they are targetting.
To me, the big story is how the Americans are not just handing out vouchers to the poor. They are creating circumstances in which even poor people can use some of their own money to make a difference. This is the significance of the tax credit meme. You don't get your good education for free. But good education is brought within your financial range, if you are willing to make a sacrifice for it. That means that the parents who go for it will be the best ones, and that means that the product they buy will stay good, as it expands. A social and cultural change will be set in motion.
