Because of when you were born.

Several months ago I mentioned Robert Epstein’s book Teen 2.0.  In his chapter on the emergence of adolescence as a concept, Epstein also walks the reader through the history of compulsory education.  He mentions that when Massachusetts established the first public school system in 1827, which required students between the ages of eight and fourteen [...]

Attendance optional

I had cause to dig out an old post about how I’m often a wet blanket when it comes to cool new ideas for schools.  I decided upon reading through it that I think it bears repeating, so I’m posting an amended version. I don’t get as excited as I used to about great ideas [...]

Where the kids are

At some point when I was in college I decided to take all the classes I’d need to earn a teaching certificate, so I could work in a school.  I realized the other day that I didn’t make the decision because I wanted to be a teacher.  I made it because I wanted to work [...]

July

Parents often tell me that they’d consider taking their children out of school (when it’s not working) but they’re afraid their children would just want to play video games/ride their bikes/whine.  At least when kids are enrolled in school, parents only have to be the homework police. Many imagine that without school, they’d have to [...]

Ugh.

From Daniel Denvir at Salon… School: It’s way more boring than when you were there I like this piece as a reminder that kids’ resistance doesn’t just point to technology, or to parents who don’t raise them to value education, or to any garden variety laziness (expressed often as, more or less, “in-my-day-we-just-went-to-school-and-didn’t-whine-about-it”).  The forces [...]

Back

Seth Godin, yesterday, on school. Seth’s an authority on jobs and work, business and the economy, and how everything fits together.  He doesn’t talk about school and education as often as I wish he would, but when he does, he gets it really right. And interestingly, on his Facebook page which has more than 130,000 [...]

Harbinger

One of the kids I know arrived at my office this week with a droopy air about him.  I met him for the first time in late June, and I’ve only known him as a cheerful, curious, engaged person. Each time I’ve seen him he’s had new projects and experiences to report. I’ve heard about [...]

Not on a school night

Some of our most well-intentioned utterances fail because we’re on auto-respond when we utter them.  There are things we say to kids because we’ve heard them over and over, or said them over and over, though they aren’t what we really mean – they don’t actually serve the goals we have for kids or the [...]

Big college questions

Three provocative pieces about the value of college have come to my attention in the past 24 hours, so I thought I’d pass them along en masse. First, a very short one from Seth Godin. Second, a longer one from Sarah Lacy on TechCrunch. Third, an older one on NPR. All three are asking the question that [...]

On great new ideas for schools

I don’t get as excited as I used to about great ideas for new schools.  I may seem  like a bit of a Grinch about the whole thing so I thought I’d clarify.  It’s not that I don’t think the ideas are great. Great people have great ideas for schools and how to make them [...]