Our Out-Of-Control Schools: Is This The Worst Yet?

As this sad tale about one high school student killing another and two fifth-graders in the same public school system having sex in a classroom reveals, the stories of out-of-control student behavior just get worse: SPEARSVILLE, La. (AP) -- Two fifth-graders had sex on a classroom floor while two others fondled each other in the classroom, according to a teacher at Spearsville High School.Union

Sports Saturday: JOCKular Spelling Lessons Needed!

If the misspelling of their home state's name on those tank-tops is any indication, we suppose that West Virginia's public schools and colleges are in need of some serious EduHelp: CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- West Virginia may have won the National Invitation Tournament, but the Mountaineers' commemorative T-shirts are less than championship material.They contain a misspelling.The "West Virginia"

Today's Non Sequitur: Hypocrite Alert!

John Travolta, the revolting hypocrite.Heh. Maybe that extra-large gas-guzzler jet aircraft parked in Tony Manero's Travolta's driveway is a symptom that he's compensating for something...

Presidential candidate has appropriate sense of humor

Fodder for the Richardson lovefest. Notice what gets the big cheer in his litany of "we've got to's ..."

Spitzer gets his charters

A few months into his term, Spitzer gets what Pataki could not. Haven't had time to read or digest, but here's the scoop.

Deestantz

I took a year off between high school and college and volunteered with the Israeli Scouts, the "Tsofim." The Tsofim have a small staff of adults in a few centralized locations, but for the most part teenagers run the show. They run the daily activities, they plan the camping expeditions, and for one week over the summer they orchestrate a gigantic village for their "tribe" out of rope, long poles, and a lot of youthful creativity.

The teenage Tsofim are big on something they call "deestantz" (distance), their way of widening the small gap between themselves and the scouts they're in charge of. In leadership sessions they discuss ways to maintian the appropriate deestantz, including ways of dressing, speaking, acting, etc.

Deestantz is something I've been thinking about a lot recently with respect to my own students. I've never felt fully comfortable with the idea of creating an artificial barrier between yourself and your students to maintain some sort of authority. Then, for one of my classes I read a tome called The First Year Teacher's Survival Guide by Julia G. Thompson, which has this to say on the subject:

Just as actors create characters when they are at work, you will need to develop a strong image of yourself as a teacher. ... You will realize that when your students are critical of you, they really do not know you at all. They are only reacting to your professional self -- a person who has to set limits and correct mistakes.

My first reaction to this is "really?" I mean, obviously I am not going to reveal everything to my students that I would to my friends, but do I really need to invent a fake self to stay sane?

Is deestantz really necessary?

The Monsters Among Us: What's The Remedy?

Once again, we have female teachers (one of which is married) who have been charged with seducing their young male students. Only this time, there are allegations of deep-rooted racist overtones:CLINTON, S.C. — The arrest of two female teachers on charges of having sex with their male students has brought cries of lingering racism in one of South Carolina's most conservative counties and evoked

Review of "Powers of the Mind. . ."

From TC Record:

Title: Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning in America
Author(s): Donald N. Levine
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, Chicago
ISBN: 0226475530 , Pages: 256, Year: 2006

reviewed by James Horn � March 05, 2007
Search for book at Amazon.com

Even as the University of Chicago’s rich liberal arts foundations were still being poured in 1918, former faculty member Thorstein Veblen (1918), offered this observation on the ambitious rise of the American university superstructure:

It is always possible, of course, that this pre-eminence of intellectual enterprise in the civilization of the Western peoples is a transient episode; that it may eventually—perhaps even precipitately, with the next impending turn in the fortunes of this civilization—again be relegated to a secondary place in the scheme of things and become only an instrumentality in the service of some dominant aim or impulse, such as a vainglorious patriotism, or dynastic politics, or the breeding of a commercial aristocracy (Chapter 1, para 18).

Like many insights neglected long enough for them to become prophetic, Veblen’s prescience became clear to Donald Levine near the end of a career at Chicago that paralleled and crisscrossed the high times for the Chicago tradition of liberal learning.

Donald Levine began his undergraduate education at the University of Chicago in 1946, and he has been there pretty much ever since. His retirement in March 2007 marked forty-five years of distinguished service, including a stint as Dean of the College (the undergraduate program) during the 1980s. Sociologist, Simmel scholar, historian of liberal arts education, and aikido enthusiast, Levine embodies the spirit of the University of Chicago’s cross-disciplinary tradition, and it is that same decorous, yet bold, civilizing spirit that directs Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Arts Learning, Levine’s homage to the University of Chicago’s first hundred years of ground-breaking undergraduate curriculum making.

If the ongoing educational project at Chicago first resembles something akin to an unstable emulsion of experimentalism added to perennialism, it is because of the creative tension that began and which still emanates from the mixed influences of John Dewey and Robert Maynard Hutchins, the two titans who shaped the University’s “most distinctive contribution to the general education movement” (p. 185). If Dewey and Hutchins provided the philosophical material to work with, crafting the synthesis became the mission of subsequent generations of truly gifted and dedicated communities of scholars and curriculum makers, whose innovations into this century continue to honor the legacy of both Dewey and Hutchins. Levine gives two of these innovators, in particular, their own chapters: Richard McKeon, the brilliant and lastingly-influential scourge of many former University of Chicago undergraduates, including Susan Sontag and Richard Rorty; and Joseph Schwab, political moralist, maverick, methodological pluralist, and the pragmatist’s pragmatist in all matters pedagogical.

As proponents for liberal arts learning, both McKeon and Schwab focused on preserving the best of the past by continuing to reconceptualize it in ways that allow humans to experience the world anew and with good benefit to their intellectual and moral catholicity. Always fresh, interdisciplinary, and forward thinking, neither, in fact, ever became trapped by epistemic antiquarianism or by a sacrosanct shelf of books canonized for the benefit of its own exclusive perpetuation. Thus, in the ongoing undergraduate curriculum experiments at Chicago by McKeon, Schwab, Redfield and others, Hutchins’ propensity for preservation became mollified by Dewey’s instrumentalism, just as Dewey’s potential for idealization became solidified by Hutchins’ textual grounding.

It is this theme, then, of cogent consensus-building between the two alternating currents of Dewey and Hutchins that Levine massages throughout this engaging chronicle, collective biography, and undergraduate curriculum map all rolled together into a classy Chicago blend of pedagogical history. If in the process of epistemic peacemaking, Levine allows Hutchins’ and Dewey’s differences to be airbrushed by a coating of commonalities that fails to entirely cover in places, such a gloss is made forgivable by Levine’s repeated demonstrations of Dewey’s democratic experimentalism and Hutchins’s carefully-packed perennialism blended and layered to make a half-century of truly impressive examples of general education initiatives intent upon exploiting the relevance of the past to preserve a better future.

Not all of Levine’s focus is toward the past. In fact, he offers to the 21^st century no less than a new paradigm for the continued reconfiguration of the liberal arts core, one based on neither subject nor discipline, but on the powers of the mind that become defined by each generation as the universal skills needed by modern civilization. Rather than seven elements that form the trivium and quadrivium, the Eight Powers are grouped under two quartets: the Powers of Prehension and the Powers of Expression. Quite ingeniously, it seems to me, Levine grounds these distinctions and their components in the most basic of human activities—breathing. Whereas prehension involves taking in, or inhaling (whether perceiving, moving, comprehending, or understanding), expression entails the outward movement toward forming, integrating, inventing, and communicating. Just as prehension fits the Hutchins focus on intellectual receptivity, expression embodies Dewey’s mandate for creative action. This continued enfolding of the Hutchins-Dewey complementarity is no coincidence. By extending it, Levine proves, once again, that he is thoroughly Chicago, in the best sense of that designation.

Levine tells us that on the way to writing this book, which began as a defense of the intellectual and moral development goals that have guided liberal arts education at Chicago, he ran into a bigger threat to the Chicago tradition than the misdirected ideological sniping that had broken out following the appearance of Allen Bloom’s (1987) The Closing of the American Mind. Who could have known 20 years ago, when Bloom was crafting a defense of his own version of the liberal arts tradition, that the most potent threat to the liberal arts would not come in the form of the anti-humanistic bogeymen of postmodernism, but, rather, in an out-of-control and amorphous form of modernism, itself.

This new metastasizing variety of modernism re-defines progress as unconstrained, runaway economic growth that, in the process of redefining students and faculty as tuition-generating and grant-generating units, respectively, sacrifices the health of the host in order to feed what will eventually cause its death if left untreated. In the process of writing this book, then, Levine realized that the real threat to sustaining the Chicago tradition was a creeping corporatism that assesses every curricular decision on the singular basis of generating more dollars for the university. That this book provides a retrospective on Chicago’s expansive experiments rather than a more current accounting is a sad reminder of “the ethos now sweeping the world and therewith many universities, an ethos that prizes quick fixes, instant gratifications, self-aggrandizement, and expanded gated communities based increasingly on the market model” (p. xiii).

As rich as the Chicago story is, then, and as quietly exuberant as Levine remains for the relevance of the Chicago tradition to the educational mission of advancing humanity, there runs through this book an inescapable sense of loss that is not matched by any appropriate level of indignation. Though there is ample rational justification to look to Chicago’s past accomplishments for sound clues to building a future for humanistic learning, Levine’s gentle persistence, in the end, represents an exiled intellectual’s note in a carefully-prepared bottle, offering precise coordinates and detailed directions to a handsome treasure that may be found with a little luck and some hard digging. Only time will tell whether those steaming past on their busy commercial vessels will ever take note of this bobbing speck of shimmering hope for the future of the liberal arts mission.

References

Bloom, A. (1987). The closing of the American mind. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Veblen, T. (1918). The higher learning in America: A memorandum on the conduct of universities by business men. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://www.ditext.com/veblen/veblen.html

Review of "Powers of the Mind. . ."

From TC Record:

Title: Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning in America
Author(s): Donald N. Levine
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, Chicago
ISBN: 0226475530 , Pages: 256, Year: 2006

reviewed by James Horn � March 05, 2007
Search for book at Amazon.com

Even as the University of Chicago’s rich liberal arts foundations were still being poured in 1918, former faculty member Thorstein Veblen (1918), offered this observation on the ambitious rise of the American university superstructure:

It is always possible, of course, that this pre-eminence of intellectual enterprise in the civilization of the Western peoples is a transient episode; that it may eventually—perhaps even precipitately, with the next impending turn in the fortunes of this civilization—again be relegated to a secondary place in the scheme of things and become only an instrumentality in the service of some dominant aim or impulse, such as a vainglorious patriotism, or dynastic politics, or the breeding of a commercial aristocracy (Chapter 1, para 18).

Like many insights neglected long enough for them to become prophetic, Veblen’s prescience became clear to Donald Levine near the end of a career at Chicago that paralleled and crisscrossed the high times for the Chicago tradition of liberal learning.

Donald Levine began his undergraduate education at the University of Chicago in 1946, and he has been there pretty much ever since. His retirement in March 2007 marked forty-five years of distinguished service, including a stint as Dean of the College (the undergraduate program) during the 1980s. Sociologist, Simmel scholar, historian of liberal arts education, and aikido enthusiast, Levine embodies the spirit of the University of Chicago’s cross-disciplinary tradition, and it is that same decorous, yet bold, civilizing spirit that directs Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Arts Learning, Levine’s homage to the University of Chicago’s first hundred years of ground-breaking undergraduate curriculum making.

If the ongoing educational project at Chicago first resembles something akin to an unstable emulsion of experimentalism added to perennialism, it is because of the creative tension that began and which still emanates from the mixed influences of John Dewey and Robert Maynard Hutchins, the two titans who shaped the University’s “most distinctive contribution to the general education movement” (p. 185). If Dewey and Hutchins provided the philosophical material to work with, crafting the synthesis became the mission of subsequent generations of truly gifted and dedicated communities of scholars and curriculum makers, whose innovations into this century continue to honor the legacy of both Dewey and Hutchins. Levine gives two of these innovators, in particular, their own chapters: Richard McKeon, the brilliant and lastingly-influential scourge of many former University of Chicago undergraduates, including Susan Sontag and Richard Rorty; and Joseph Schwab, political moralist, maverick, methodological pluralist, and the pragmatist’s pragmatist in all matters pedagogical.

As proponents for liberal arts learning, both McKeon and Schwab focused on preserving the best of the past by continuing to reconceptualize it in ways that allow humans to experience the world anew and with good benefit to their intellectual and moral catholicity. Always fresh, interdisciplinary, and forward thinking, neither, in fact, ever became trapped by epistemic antiquarianism or by a sacrosanct shelf of books canonized for the benefit of its own exclusive perpetuation. Thus, in the ongoing undergraduate curriculum experiments at Chicago by McKeon, Schwab, Redfield and others, Hutchins’ propensity for preservation became mollified by Dewey’s instrumentalism, just as Dewey’s potential for idealization became solidified by Hutchins’ textual grounding.

It is this theme, then, of cogent consensus-building between the two alternating currents of Dewey and Hutchins that Levine massages throughout this engaging chronicle, collective biography, and undergraduate curriculum map all rolled together into a classy Chicago blend of pedagogical history. If in the process of epistemic peacemaking, Levine allows Hutchins’ and Dewey’s differences to be airbrushed by a coating of commonalities that fails to entirely cover in places, such a gloss is made forgivable by Levine’s repeated demonstrations of Dewey’s democratic experimentalism and Hutchins’s carefully-packed perennialism blended and layered to make a half-century of truly impressive examples of general education initiatives intent upon exploiting the relevance of the past to preserve a better future.

Not all of Levine’s focus is toward the past. In fact, he offers to the 21^st century no less than a new paradigm for the continued reconfiguration of the liberal arts core, one based on neither subject nor discipline, but on the powers of the mind that become defined by each generation as the universal skills needed by modern civilization. Rather than seven elements that form the trivium and quadrivium, the Eight Powers are grouped under two quartets: the Powers of Prehension and the Powers of Expression. Quite ingeniously, it seems to me, Levine grounds these distinctions and their components in the most basic of human activities—breathing. Whereas prehension involves taking in, or inhaling (whether perceiving, moving, comprehending, or understanding), expression entails the outward movement toward forming, integrating, inventing, and communicating. Just as prehension fits the Hutchins focus on intellectual receptivity, expression embodies Dewey’s mandate for creative action. This continued enfolding of the Hutchins-Dewey complementarity is no coincidence. By extending it, Levine proves, once again, that he is thoroughly Chicago, in the best sense of that designation.

Levine tells us that on the way to writing this book, which began as a defense of the intellectual and moral development goals that have guided liberal arts education at Chicago, he ran into a bigger threat to the Chicago tradition than the misdirected ideological sniping that had broken out following the appearance of Allen Bloom’s (1987) The Closing of the American Mind. Who could have known 20 years ago, when Bloom was crafting a defense of his own version of the liberal arts tradition, that the most potent threat to the liberal arts would not come in the form of the anti-humanistic bogeymen of postmodernism, but, rather, in an out-of-control and amorphous form of modernism, itself.

This new metastasizing variety of modernism re-defines progress as unconstrained, runaway economic growth that, in the process of redefining students and faculty as tuition-generating and grant-generating units, respectively, sacrifices the health of the host in order to feed what will eventually cause its death if left untreated. In the process of writing this book, then, Levine realized that the real threat to sustaining the Chicago tradition was a creeping corporatism that assesses every curricular decision on the singular basis of generating more dollars for the university. That this book provides a retrospective on Chicago’s expansive experiments rather than a more current accounting is a sad reminder of “the ethos now sweeping the world and therewith many universities, an ethos that prizes quick fixes, instant gratifications, self-aggrandizement, and expanded gated communities based increasingly on the market model” (p. xiii).

As rich as the Chicago story is, then, and as quietly exuberant as Levine remains for the relevance of the Chicago tradition to the educational mission of advancing humanity, there runs through this book an inescapable sense of loss that is not matched by any appropriate level of indignation. Though there is ample rational justification to look to Chicago’s past accomplishments for sound clues to building a future for humanistic learning, Levine’s gentle persistence, in the end, represents an exiled intellectual’s note in a carefully-prepared bottle, offering precise coordinates and detailed directions to a handsome treasure that may be found with a little luck and some hard digging. Only time will tell whether those steaming past on their busy commercial vessels will ever take note of this bobbing speck of shimmering hope for the future of the liberal arts mission.

References

Bloom, A. (1987). The closing of the American mind. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Veblen, T. (1918). The higher learning in America: A memorandum on the conduct of universities by business men. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://www.ditext.com/veblen/veblen.html

The Carnival Of Education: Week 112

Welcome to the midway of the 112th Carnival of Education!Here's this week's roundup of entries from around the EduSphere. All entries this week were submitted by the writers themselves.If you're interested in hosting an edition of The Carnival Of Education, please let us know via this email address: edwonk [at] educationwonks [dot] org.As always, we give a hearty "thank you" to everybody who

Fascinating New Article on Education and Global Development

I found this article by Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee fascinating. In the second half, he explores the evidence around the relationships between education and development, focusing on India. While this is far out of my area of expertise (Raji?) the article feels pretty evenhanded. He expores the complexities involved in figuring out what aspects of a particular system result in social changes more broadly, finding an almost endless hall of mirrors in the "answers" different economists have found.

An interesting paragraph:

Consider, as an illustration, one of the perennial favorite projects in the policymaking world: investing in education. There are three things that cross-country data tells about this. First, richer countries invest a higher fraction of their incomes in education. Second, more education in 1960 predicts faster subsequent income growth. Third, and much more surprising, between 1960 and 1985, there seems to be no relation between investment in education (measured by the increase in the number of years the average person spends in school) and growth in incomes. Some of the countries that invested the most in education grew very fast (Taiwan, Singapore, Korea), but others (Angola, Mozambique, Zambia) did disastrously.

And part of his overall conclusion, which, of course, resonates with the experience in the US:

The problem, in the end, is that we economists and development experts are still thinking in machine mode—we are looking for the right button to push. Education is one such button. Within education, there are more buttons: Economists talk of decentralization, incentives, vouchers, competition. Education experts talk about pedagogy. Government officials seem to swear by teacher training. If only we could do it right, whatever the favored “it” might be, we would be home free.

The reason we like these buttons so much, it seems to me, is that they save us the trouble of stepping into the machine. By assuming that the machine either runs on its own or does not run at all, we avoid having to go looking for where the wheels are getting caught and figuring out what small adjustments it would take to get the machine to run properly. To say that we need to move to a voucher system does not oblige us to figure out how to make it work—how to make sure that parents do not trade in the vouchers for cash (because they do not attach enough value to their children’s education) and that schools do not take parents for a ride (because parents may not know what a good education looks like). And how to get the private schools to be more effective—after all, at least in India, even children who go to private schools are nowhere near grade level. And many other messy details that every real program has to contend with.

(Also see this nice summary of current writing on poverty in the US)

Fascinating New Article on Education and Global Development

I found this article by Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee fascinating. In the second half, he explores the evidence around the relationships between education and development, focusing on India. While this is far out of my area of expertise (Raji?) the article feels pretty evenhanded. He expores the complexities involved in figuring out what aspects of a particular system result in social changes more broadly, finding an almost endless hall of mirrors in the "answers" different economists have found.

An interesting paragraph:

Consider, as an illustration, one of the perennial favorite projects in the policymaking world: investing in education. There are three things that cross-country data tells about this. First, richer countries invest a higher fraction of their incomes in education. Second, more education in 1960 predicts faster subsequent income growth. Third, and much more surprising, between 1960 and 1985, there seems to be no relation between investment in education (measured by the increase in the number of years the average person spends in school) and growth in incomes. Some of the countries that invested the most in education grew very fast (Taiwan, Singapore, Korea), but others (Angola, Mozambique, Zambia) did disastrously.

And part of his overall conclusion, which, of course, resonates with the experience in the US:

The problem, in the end, is that we economists and development experts are still thinking in machine mode—we are looking for the right button to push. Education is one such button. Within education, there are more buttons: Economists talk of decentralization, incentives, vouchers, competition. Education experts talk about pedagogy. Government officials seem to swear by teacher training. If only we could do it right, whatever the favored “it” might be, we would be home free.

The reason we like these buttons so much, it seems to me, is that they save us the trouble of stepping into the machine. By assuming that the machine either runs on its own or does not run at all, we avoid having to go looking for where the wheels are getting caught and figuring out what small adjustments it would take to get the machine to run properly. To say that we need to move to a voucher system does not oblige us to figure out how to make it work—how to make sure that parents do not trade in the vouchers for cash (because they do not attach enough value to their children’s education) and that schools do not take parents for a ride (because parents may not know what a good education looks like). And how to get the private schools to be more effective—after all, at least in India, even children who go to private schools are nowhere near grade level. And many other messy details that every real program has to contend with.

(Also see this nice summary of current writing on poverty in the US)

Talk on Oxbridge

Hey guys,

The first Descartes talk was held last Sunday, with Nathaniel Tan giving us his take on his experience at Harvard University. We attracted a small crowd, with Dr Goh Cheng Teik, the interviewer in Malaysia for undergraduate admission into the college making a surprise appearance. ;)

This coming Saturday, we'll be holding a talk, this time on two universities across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom, Oxford and Cambridge. The details are as follows:

Topic: Life & Experiences @ Oxford & Cambridge Universities
Date: 31st March (Sat)
Time: 4.00 pm
Venue: DECC, 55-1 Jalan SS21/1A, Damasara Utama (Uptown), 47400 Petaling Jaya

Speakers:

Allen Ng

Allen was the president of the Cambridge University Malaysia Society in 2001. He is currently work as a practising Economist with Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), having completed his degree in Economics on the BNM Scholarship. Prior to that, he completed his 'A' Levels with Taylors College.

Allen originates from Ipoh and is contemplating crossing the bridge with a MPhil degree in Economics from Oxford University.

Tony Pua (that's me)

Tony graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Philosophy, Politics & Economics in 1991 with a scholarship from MTC Foundation. Prior to that, he had his secondary education at Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College in Singapore under the ASEAN Scholarship.

He worked in a multinational consulting company for almost 2 years before venturing out to set up his own company in 1997. He listed the company in the Singapore Exchange in 2001 before divesting his stake in the company in early 2007 to focus solely on socio-political community work.

Read also my earlier write ups on application and my personal experiences at Oxford.

We hope to attract a bigger crowd to establish the Descartes series of talks. Future talks currently being planned include the ASEAN Scholarship, application to top US universities, workshop on writing university application essays, picking the right courses etc.

A token fee of RM10 is collected to help defray the cost of the running DECC.

So please help spread the message around to interested parties. You can also reach me at tonypua(at)yahoo.com. ;) See you!

Will the cap follow me from NY to MN?

Stay tuned.

C.O.E. Entries Are Due!

Entries for the 112th midway of The Carnival Of Education (hosted this week by us here at The 'Wonks.) are due today. Please email them to: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net . (Or use this handy submission form.) Submissions should be received no later than 9:00 PM (Eastern), 6:00 PM (Pacific). Contributions should include your site's name, the title of the post, and the post's URL if

The Watcher's Council Has Spoken!

Each and every week, Watcher of Weasels sponsors a contest among posts from the Conservative side of the 'Sphere. The winning entries are determined by a jury of 12 writers (and The Watcher) known as "The Watchers Council."The Council has met and cast their ballots for last week's submitted posts. Council Member Entries: Big Lizards took first place with The Contranomics of Global

Midnight musings

It's way past my bedtime but I'm lying awake with a migraine and a leaking bathroom ceiling, so I'll put this question to my readers: Is differentiated instruction unegalitarian?

Our students are in the process of writing their first essay in Global Studies: "What political, economic and social conditions lead to revolutions?" The students have done a lot to prepare to write the essay, and we are beginning to work out outlines. The class for whom I am primarily responsible will be starting their outlines tomorrow by coming up with thesis statements.

I've been having minor discipline problems in that class from kids who are either way ahead of everyone else and bored, or way behind and lost. Writing an essay, I fear, is only going to amplify that problem. So I proposed differentiating: doing a mini-lesson on writing thesis statements, and then breaking out into groups according to level to write thesis statements of varying complexity. The students who need the most help, for instance, might write a thesis such as "There are many conditions that lead to revolutions," while more advanced students might come up with something like "People start revolutions when they feel life is unfair and they have no other way to change it."

I pitched the idea to my cooperating teacher, who responded that he has never grouped kids according to ability level, and sees doing that as "tracking." In his words, shouldn't all the kids have the opportunity to see what thesis statements of varying complexity look like?

I definitely see where he's coming from, and I'm torn. His perspective is egalitarian: it holds all students up to the same standard and provides them all with the same level of support. And don't kids rise to the expectations we hold for them?

I don't know what the answer is, but I thought I'd throw it out to the more experienced teachers among you.

TAR College Not Recognised

A few weeks ago, both Kian Ming and I wrote on the issue that the Malaysian government does not recognise degrees granted by the top universities in China - Peking and Tsinghua University. Currently, they don't even recognised these universities' degrees in Chinese studies. This is despite the fact that our Malaysian government recognises medical degrees from Uganda, Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Iraq.

However, I just found out late last week, that even diplomas and degrees from our very own local Tunku Abdul Rahman College (TARC) which has been established for many years, and accepted widely by the Malaysian private sector, is not recognised by Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awan (JPA). Hence any TARC graduate seeking employment with the civil service will be rejected outright.

Network Engineer, Soo Pak Leong who graduated from TARC in 2003 has been applying to join the Royal Malaysian Police Force (PDRM) for the past 3 consecutive years, but has failed to be even shortlisted for an interview. Soo is now past the 25 year old limit for new PDRM recruits, and his dreams to be a police officer has effectively ended.

To fulfil his dreams of joining the force, Soo even downgraded his entry level to that of an Inspector, instead of a Cadet Assistant Superintendent (ASP) in his final application in the hope of achieving his ambitions.

Subsequently, he only found out from unofficial sources within the police force, much to his horror, that applications from TARC graduates are not accepted by the Government service.


Clarifications from the JPA (as above) confirmed that his academic qualification is "yet" to be recognised by the Government. Over the past seven months, Soo has written to all the MCA leaders and parliamentarians, the Education Ministries as well as the Prime Minister himself. He received no answers as to why his qualification cannot be recognised. YB Wee Ka Siong, MCA Youth Education bureau chief could only reply that this wasn't the first instance, and they will "pursue the issue further".

Hence this matter raises a few serious questions:

• Firstly and obviously, what are the reasons that the Government, after so many years, is still adamant in not granting recognition of diplomas conferred by TARC, especially since TARC was set up by Barisan Nasional's very own key coalition partner, MCA. Given that many other local institutions of more dubious standing has been granted recognition, there's absolutely no reason why TARC should not be granted immediate recognition for Government employment.
  
  
• Secondly, it raises the question as to whether the Government is indeed serious about its talk to raise the number of non-Malays in the Malaysian civil service, given that a large proportion of its students are of non-Malay origins. In fact, only last week, the leaders of PDRM have openly called for more non-Malays to join the force.
  
  
• Thirdly, if indeed the Government has no intention of granting recognition to TARC, then it is critical for TARC administrators to make this information known to all potential students, so as to not mislead them in their future careers. While the private sector is happy to accept many of its graduates, those keen on the civil service should instead apply to other recognised colleges.

It pains me to say this, but the whole episode of the Government not granting recognition to degrees from Chinese top universities, and certificates conferred by TARC which was set up by the MCA, with the government's blessings, hints strongly at systematic disrimination by the civil service, and by implication, our top government leaders to marginalise the Chinese education community.

I hope that the Government will take immediate actions to rectify the above wrongs and demonstrate that the above is all but an exception to the rule that the Government has no intent on marginalising Malaysians of non-Malay descent.

Harry Potter and the BTM

... Bad Teenage Moustache, that is. I've worked with enough adolescent males to recognize one when I see it (who can forget the BTM hero of Final Fours past?). Now Daniel Radcliffe is trying desperately to shake his Harry Potter image by baring it all and sporting a little facial hair.

Civic values

Much has been said about the fact that Americans are more interested in participating in reality TV democracy than in political democracy.

I'd love to participate more in this discussion but brain meltage will only allow me to contribute this: just a minute ago on "Dancing with the Stars," Tom Bergeron just said something along the lines of "our forefathers said we were endowed with certain unalienable rights. Vote for your favorite dancing couple now, and somewhere Thomas Jefferson will be smiling."

This ranks up there with the President's Day commercial for Marshall's that asked "what would the Presidents want you to be doing on President's Day? Go shopping!"

Today's Non Sequitur

The Mainstream Media has it all wrong.Anna Nicole Smith did not die due to an accidental drug overdose.She threw her life away died due to complications resulting from a case of self-induced terminal stupidity. -------------------------------See our latest posts.

More Hollywood Idiocy: "Wristcutters: A Love Story"

Considering the epidemic of self-injury that's already affecting many American students, life is difficult enough without this sort of nonsense being thrown at them by the Hollywood Crowd: NEW YORK -- Fifteen suicide prevention groups are dead set against After Dark Films' proposed campaign for the comedy "Wristcutters: A Love Story," which is set to bill itself with signs showing people killing

UK vs US: A Different Perspective

I wrote a while back on the general perception of United Kingdom vs United States universities. It attracted a fair bit of interest and a lot of comments. Tilia Wong, who's studying at San Jose State University, with a prior stint at a Australian university, wrote in to express her differing views from my post(s). She has kindly permitted me to reproduce her letter here, and share her views with our readers. ;)

"I was reading your blog titled United Kingdom vs. United States dated the 24th of April 2006 and I feel rather compelled to write to you about it. I started looking for blog posts on this topic after my father had a conversation with some of his friends where they passed some rather derogatory remarks concerning the American education system. At this point, I should state that I am a junior at San Jose State University studying civil engineering.

In your blog post, you wrote that you thought a UK degree was more specialised and a US one is more generalised. Well, I have not studied in the UK, but I did do one year of civil engineering in Australia whose system, I understand, is very similar to the British one. I studied in Australia for year and then I found that I did not enjoy life there and decided to transfer to the United States. I redid many of the same courses and therefore I think that I am fully equipped to make a comparison of the two.

The subjects taken during the course of the degree are highly similar. However, when you compare the content of the subject, the American degree is actually more in depth than the Australian one. I will compare the first year subjects since I did them in both countries and therefore can make a fairer assesment. In Australia, I did two semesters of math which was a mix of calculus, matrices and so on. In America, I did 3 semesters of calculus, one of differential equations and another of linear algebra. In Australia, I did one semester of Engineering Mechanics which consisted of statics and dynamics. In America, the subjects were split up with one semester dedicated to each. The American semester is about 16 weeks long and the Australian semester has about 13 weeks worth of lecture. Please feel free to draw your own conclusions from these figures.

Your blog post also stated that one does not have to decide which specialisation until the second year in America. Basically, the system does not FORCE you to declare a major until you feel like it. However, if you do not have a clear major in mind from the very beginning and follow a strict program, you will not graduate in four years. It is no different from going to the UK, declaring one major and then switching to another. In the US, you just call the first major undeclared and you are free to take a myriad of subjects to figure out what you want to do. However, if you do so, most of the courses will not go towards your degree and some people take seven years to graduate. Its not as if you are free to bum around, take 2 years of art history courses and then decide to major in accounting later. You will pay the price if you do that.

You stated that your friend Kian Ming "did it right" by doing undergrad in UK and postgrad in the US. I do not think there is any "right" way of doing it. Some people have very good memories and can cram for final exams that are worth 70% of your grade. Others, prefer doing research, working on projects, and accumulating knowledge slowly over the semester. Both systems have their merits and to say that doing undergrad in UK is the right way is somewhat derogatory.

Personally, I felt stifled and cooped up in Australia. Coming to America has exposes you to new technology, a level of diversity that is incomparable, and an opportunity to learn things you would normally never even dream of reading about. I am a civil engineer but the American general education system has taught me political science, public speaking techniques, writing techniques, art history, yoga, salsa, and kinesiology to name a few. On top of that, I do believe that I have a strong grounding in civil engineering.

If American universities provided such a poor and shallow education on the specific major since it is not as in depth, then how does America beat so many nations on every level? Because of America's good postgraduate programs? The majority does not do postgraduate studies.

Now that I have spoken my piece on American universities, I would like to comment on university rankings.

I do have to make the observation that you tend to focus on and place great weight on top ranking universities. I do agree that attending a top ranking university carries with it great prestige and an enhanced university experience. However, your blog is probably read by a lot of people and statistically speaking, most of them should be average both in academic results and financial might. If your aim is to advise people on the best course to take, a lot of the paths you have suggested are out of the question for 95% of the population.

I realise that you have placed a note at the bottom of most of your posts that you realise that national rankings may be inaccurate. However, I would like to cite you an example using my university demonstrating exactly how irrelevant university rankings can be. San Jose State University is not highly ranked on the overall national scale. However, it is ranked 10th in the nation for undergraduate engineering and 5th for industrial and computer engineering. It is only ranked 41st of the universities in the West for the overall ranking. It is not fair to judge a university graduate's degree based on the national overall ranking alone. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to the public if you would educate them by pointing out the potential for large disparities between the national ranking and the specific course ranking.

Another example of national overall university rankings having very little to do with the calibre of the student (at least in the United States) is this. San Jose State University is surrounded by high ranking, ivy league powerhouses. Stanford, and Santa Clara Unversity are less than twenty minutes drive away. In a 5 hour driving radius, you can find USC, UCLA, and UC Berkeley just to name a few. All of these are higher ranked than San Jose State University. However, San Jose State supplies the highest number of graduates in the world to Silicon Valley with companies like Intel, Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Cisco and so on. Why are these companies choosing lower ranked university graduates over the ivy league ones if national ranking really tells a person so much about how good their graduate is? It cannot be from the lack of applications from other unversity graduates. A recent survey stated that Silicon Valley pays out the highest median income in the United States. Yet a university ranked 41st in the West is trouncing other universities in terms of employment in Silicon Valley.

Well, these are my opinions on the American education system and university rankings. I hope that you will give them some thought."

Snag -- can you help?

We've run across a snag in the WWI podcast project: GarageBand. We have no idea how to use it, and were mystified when we tried to figure it out. That means it's going to be that much harder to teach to a whole class of 9th and 10th graders. (Although, in reality, they could probably figure it out faster than we can.)

Has anyone out there used this program? Do you have any tips? Do you think it's user-friendly enough for students?

National vs Vernacular Schools

Hey, I have my first article published in The Sun yesterday, entitled "Schools Debate Not a Zero Sum Game". It was originally rejected by another local daily. I've written various posts on national versus vernacular schools before, particularly from the perspective of where I should send my daugther for school in the coming years. However, this article attempts a balanced look at the important question of how the Government should be treating vernacular schools.

The recently launched National Education Blueprint 2006 by Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein focuses purely on “strengthening the national schools”, with vernacular schools representing just a statistic in Malaysia's education landscape. Vernacular schools are often neglected or treated with suspicion due to their ethnically Chinese or Tamil nature. There are widespread fears that the strengthening or even the presence of vernacular schools in Malaysia is antithetical to achieving national unity.

Chinese and Tamil educationists on the other hand, fear the strengthening of national schools will erode the future character and viability of vernacular schools. For many of them, every facet of the existing vernacular education must be protected at all cost. Otherwise, they fear detractors will pounce on any signs of weakness to destroy vernacular education in this country.

As a result, parties on both sides of the equation treat the issue of national versus vernacular schools as a zero sum game -- one party's gain is the other's loss. However, such views are certainly flawed and works against the interest of a multi-racial and multi-cultural country like Malaysia. They are bred through mistrust and hardened by years of negative experiences.

Even the Education Minister has admitted in an exclusive interview with Nanyang Siangpau that “people should not regard the various types of schools in the country as a hurdle to be cleared. After all, this is not a zero-sum game because multi-culturalism is an added advantage and a strength for the country.” In fact, treating vernacular schools as obstacles to national unity is akin to the fallacious argument that national unity can only be achieved through cultural assimilation.

Hence, the only way to break this self-perpetuating cycle of combativeness and mutual distrust is, well, to build trust. It is important for the government and its officials to gain the confidence of the guardians of vernacular education. They must fully believe in its rhetoric that “multiculturalism is an added advantage and a strength for this country”, and take concrete steps to demonstrate its sincerity to the people.

To a large extent, the Chinese and Tamil educationists cannot be blamed for their fear of marginalisation. The government's disbursement of RM1.4 million to 248 Chinese primary schools, or a meagre RM6,000 per school as hyped by Deputy Education Minister Datuk Hon Choon Kim in the vernacular press, pales in comparison to the RM709 million allocated to building 15 new Mara Junior Science Colleges (MRSMs), and more for upgrades and repairs of existing MRSMs.

In addition, despite the consistent claim by the government that it will build more vernacular schools in accordance to the needs of the people, the number of Chinese primary schools have declined from 1,333 in 1957 to 1,288 today while enrolment has more than doubled from 310,000 to 636,000. At the same time, the number of Tamil primary schools has been reduced from 526 in 2001 to 523 in 2006 despite a 12.7% increase in enrolment from 88,810 in 2001 to 100,142 in 2006.

Vernacular school educationists are also, understandably, unconvinced by the “national unity” argument because the government has taken steps to build and expand MRSM secondary schools which are almost exclusive domains of ethnic Malays. Pre-university matriculation colleges which limit the intake of non-bumiputeras to 10% are also set up as an alternative to national two-year STPM programmes.

At the same time, it is important for vernacular schools to play up its Malaysian character to improve its perception amongst government officials and Malaysians in general. Instead of taking an overly defensive stance of protecting “mother tongue education”, it should perhaps focus greater on its nation building contributions and Malaysian character.

For instance, it should share its expertise in helping national schools get their stuttering mother tongue language programmes off the ground. This is an education policy which has been delayed by some two years already. By introducing such programmes in national schools, it will ensure that students will be able to preserve their cultural identity in multi-cultural environment. Strengthening national schools should hence not be seen as a threat to the survival of vernacular schools, but instead be treated as complementary to the very cause pursued by the latter.

Overall, the Chinese vernacular schools have for example, provided consistently high teaching and academic standards which has led to better educated Malaysians. It is for this reason, that many parents of all ethnic groups are increasingly attracted to these schools despite their typically overcrowded and under-equipped nature. Recently, at a Malay wedding, I was surprised to find out from a Malay parent who sends her daughter to a Chinese primary school in Ampang that the school had approximately 20% non-Chinese students in its most recent intake. Surely, there can be no better endorsement of vernacular education than its multi-racial character, which contributes immensely to our nation building process.

The emphasis of mother-tongue education in vernacular schools should not colour our judgement of their national unity contributions. Instead, its contribution to society should be judged by the quality of students, their patriotism to the country and in turn, their future contributions back to Malaysian society.

Hence, it is critical for the government to have faith in its own rhetoric, that not only does vernacular education contribute to the richness of the Malaysian education system, it weaves the very fabric of our diverse multi-cultural identity. The government must take the first step to win back the trust of the vernacular education community by giving priority to their development via coherent and well-funded programmes, instead of handing out piecemeal breadcrumbs. As a matter of fact, continued neglect of the vernacular education system may ironically sow the seeds of national disunity, the very outcome which our government has been seeking to avoid.

Our Failing Public Schools: When The State Steps In

St. Louis' public school system has gotten so bad that the State of Missouri is taking over: JEFFERSON CITY — With one St. Louis student in custody and scores of other students and parents choking on tears of frustration, the State Board of Education on Thursday revoked the accreditation of the 169-year-old St. Louis Public Schools and voted to turn its operation over to a businessman with

TV trivia Thursday

After nearly two years of untamed growth, I got my hair cut today in Astor Place. As in,

An Astor Place cut
and she thinks she's Joan of Arc,
something something something,
slut of Washington Square Park.

Ten participation points to anyone who knows where that comes from (without Googling it)!

Technology!

I'm really excited about a project we're planning for an upcoming unit: World War I podcast of soldiers from the field. My cooperating teacher was a bit wary when I first brought it up (I wanted to do a podcast when we were studying Napoleon), but he went to a PD over the weekend with these guys and was convinced we could do it.

The unit question is going to be something like "what was it like to be a soldier during World War I?" What I'm picturing is that students will get together in small groups (of 4?) and choose a nationality to focus on. Then they will do research to learn about what it was like for a soldier. They will have to write a script that will go through a peer critique process. We're going to use Mac laptops and Garage Band to record and edit their voices, and add contemporary music.

Anyone have any experience with this kind of thing? Any suggestions? Possible pitfalls?

First Descartes Talk

Yes, we are finally getting the Descartes Education Counselling Centre programmes underway! We are kicking off our activities with our first guest speaker, Nathaniel Tan to discuss about his life and experiences at Harvard University this coming Sunday morning.

Details are as follows:

Date: 25 March 2006 (Sun)
Time: 10.30 am
Venue: DECC, 55-1 Jalan SS21/1A, Damansara Utama, 47400 Petaling Jaya

About the speaker:

Nathaniel graduated from Harvard University in 2004 with a Bachelor of Arts degree specialising in “Peace & Conflict Studies”. Prior to that he completed his education at SRK Damansara Utama, SM Sri Cempaka for SPM as well as Sunway College for his 'A' Levels.

He has since been active in various non-governmental organisations and participated in various international activities. Some of the more offbeat places he had spent time at includes Dili in East Timor, Freetown in Sierra Leone with the UN-GOSL SCSL and Banda Aceh in Indonesia with JRS Indonesia.

A token RM10 fee will be collected to defray the cost of holding the event. DECC is a not-for-profit higher education counselling centre.

For those who are in town, and are interested in helping out at DECC, please drop by as well, as we can then have a short meeting to see how we can move forward. Anybody who requires any further information, please feel free to email me @ tonypua(at)yahoo.com ;)

Another Example Of Teachers Being Left Behind

The annual cost for a student to attend Harvard University has now reached $45,620.Which is more than the annual salary of many of America's public school teachers.What does that say about Our EduTimes?Update: (03/23) In other Harvard-related News, can these people be for real? -----------------------------See our latest posts.

On falling on your butt in front of 25 teenagers

It almost happened to me today. Never before have I had the attention of such a high percentage of the class.

Richardson '08

One more reason New Mexico is awesome on education.

From the legislation:

"K-3 plus" is created as a six-year pilot project that extends the school year for kindergarten through third grade by up to two months for participating students and measures the effect of additional time on literacy, numeracy and social skills development. The purpose of K-3 plus is to demonstrate that increased time in kindergarten and the early grades narrows the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and other students and increases cognitive skills and leads to higher test scores for all participants.

Alternative 'paths'

I'm heading to Boston this weekend for an academic conference so I thought I'd have one last post before heading off for a weekend of intellectual discussion and just enjoying the city of Boston with my wife (hopefully more of the latter and less of the former). I read this interesting profile of Malaysians in the Star who opted to take alternative career paths instead of focusing on getting all those A's for their SPM.

There's King Wei, who opened her own seafood restaurant in Bukit Tambun, Penang, instead of going to university after scoring 10A1s for her SPM.

There's Jack Tang who only 4As (out of 9) for his SPM and "worked in a cybercafe for 10 months, studied information technology (IT) and networking on his own and started I Venture Circulation (IVC), a web-hosting company that has grown into a large business with offices in the United States, Singapore and China...and became a millionare at 23"

There's Huey Ying, who scored 7As out of 9 for her SPM and "studied finance and accounting in Kolej Tunku Abdul Rahman and Portsmouth University, Britain. She started her career in financial advising in September 2004, and finally bought a BMW recently."

There's Aida Nurlin Hanif who also scored 7As out of 9 for her SPM and "went on to study actuarial science in Universiti Teknologi Mara and was inspired by her sister Nor Akmar to get involved in business. Waking up early to meet clients before class started, Aida was committed back then to closing five-digit transactions of unit trusts every day. Today, the sisters are both millionaires."

There's Nicol David, who scored 7As for her SPM at the same time as she was climbing the squash rankings (and later became the first Asian woman to win the squash World Championships).

There's Aaron Gill, also a 7A scorer for his SPM, started his own company selling computer speakers after graduating from the Multimedia University with a degree in engineering.

Indeed, one could easily put our own Tony Pua in this category (though he is probably older than all of these young 'kids') since he started his own company after working for Accenture for a couple of years and taking his company public in the Singapore before finally selling off his share of Cyber Village earlier this year.

I think this article reminds me of two things:

Firstly, that we should be encouraged to take alternative academic paths. I, like Tony, commended Tiara for her efforts to promote alternative thoughts on higher education and where to go to study overseas. I highly recommend her blog to our readers especially those who want to explore different educational exepriences. Not all of us should dream of going to Harvard, Yale, Cambridge or Oxford (even though there's nothing wrong with going to these schools). Sometimes, Durham University (UK), Reed College (US), Multimedia University (Malaysia), NTU (Singapore) might be better options or more suitable for one's individual needs.

Secondly, that we should be encouraged to take alternative career paths. Not all of us should think about being a partner in a law firm or an accountancy firm by 35 or become a millionaire before we're 30 (even though there's nothing wrong with acheiving this). Sometimes, it might be more worthwile to pursue our dreams of opening up a restaurant or being a travel writer, a musician, a marine biologist, a social worker, and the list goes on.

Finally, if we're fortunate enough to be successful (financial or otherwise) in our endeavors, don't forget to give back to society!

PhD scholarships University of Sheffield

Got this from a friend who's doing his PhD in Geography in Sheffield. It's rare that a UK university is this generous (with fees and stipend) for non-UK/EU students. I'd encourage those who are thinking of doing a PhD in these related fields to look into this scholarship. Details below:

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
DEPARTMENT OF TOWN AND REGIONAL PLANNING
POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH STUDENTSHIPS AND AWARDS

For September 2007

Applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates wishing to study in one or more of the following areas:
· Society, space and power
· Postcolonial studies and the global South
· Urban and regional studies
· Spatial policy analysis and governance
· Property market analysis and housing studies
· Planning, theory and practice
· Comparative European studies in planning and regional governance

The Department is England’s highest-rated Planning Department (5a in the last RAE; 23/24 in the Teaching Quality Assessment) and fosters a lively research culture in its postgraduate Research School.

For more information about the Department visit: www.sheffield.ac.uk/trp

University of Sheffield Studentships

There is also the opportunity for UK, EU and international candidates to apply for
University Studentships which offer tuition fees at the UK/EU rate, a maintenance
grant of between £6,300-£12,300 per annum, and a Research Training Support Grant.

This scheme will offer both one-year and three-year maintenance awards to new
postgraduate students.

Further details can be found at: www.shef.ac.uk/pgresearch/studentships

Applications for admission should be made before 30 March and applications for the Studentships should be made to the Department by 2 May 2007

University of Sheffield Fee Scholarships

A limited number of University Fee Scholarships are also available which cover
UK/EU tuition fees or part international tuition fees.

See www.shef.ac.uk/pgresearch/staff/studentships/bursaries

Further information

For an informal discussion about research interests and topics, contact Dr. Margo
Huxley (M.Huxley@sheffield.ac.uk Tel: 0114 222 6929).
For general information about application procedures, contact Keely Robinson
(K.Robinson@sheffield.ac.uk Tel: 0114 222 6180)

4 Malaysians accepted by MIT

At the risk of sounding like an elitist, I was recently informed by Andrew Loh that 4 Malaysians got into MIT for the next academic year, fall of 2007 or Class of 2011. Congrats to Sugasini (BNM scholar), the humble Ashley, the kiasu Tung Shen who's already frantically downloading his courses for the fall semester (are you sure you didn't study in Singapore?) and Wei Jian, the Math genius who's currently studying in Singapore. I'm sure you guys will have a great time at MIT figuring out how to put firetrucks on top of buildings! But seriously, it is indeed rare for 4 Malaysians to get into MIT in one year. Hopefully, these fellas won't have set the bar too high for other Malaysians to get into MIT in the future!

The Carnival Of Education: Week 111

Welcome to the midway of the 111th Carnival of Education!We proudly present this week's roundup of entries from around the EduSphere. All entries this week were submitted by the writers themselves.If you publish a website and are interested in hosting an edition of The Carnival Of Education, please let us know via this email address: edwonk [at] educationwonks [dot] org.Thanks to everyone who

Monbukagakusho Scholarship

The Monbukagakusho:MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan) offers scholarship to Malaysian students who wish to study at Japanese universities as research students under the Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho:MEXT) Scholarship Program for the academic year 2008.

The fields of study include:

• Humanities and Social Sciences:
  
  Literature, History, Aesthetics, Laws, Politics, Economics, Commerce, Pedagogy, Psychology, Sociology, Music, Fine Arts, Business Administration & etc.
  
  
• Natural Sciences:
  
  Pure science, Engineering (Biomedical Eng, Civil Eng, Environmental Eng & etc.), Agriculture, Fisheries, Pharmacology, Medicine, Dentistry, Home Economics & etc.

The tenure of scholarship is 5 years except for Medicine and Dentistry 7 years as from April 2008 inclusive of 1-year intensive Japanese language Course. The grantee who has graduated and been admitted into the master’s course of a graduate school during the term of scholarship could have his/her term of scholarship extended as a result of selection. Scholarship term will be extended for two years at the maximum, and no extension shall be made beyond this period.

For more information, check out the scholarship details here. Good luck! ;)

Carnival Entries Are Due!

Entries for the 111th midway of The Carnival Of Education (hosted this week by us here at The 'Wonks.) are due today. Please email them to: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net . (Or use this handy submission form.) Submissions should be received no later than 9:00 PM (Eastern), 6:00 PM (Pacific). Contributions should include your site's name, the title of the post, and the post's URL if possible.If

The Watcher's Council Has Spoken!

Each and every week, Watcher of Weasels sponsors a contest among posts from the Conservative side of the 'Sphere. The winning entries are determined by a jury of 12 writers (and The Watcher) known as "The Watchers Council."The Council has met and cast their ballots for last week's submitted posts. Council Member Entries: Eternity Road took first place with Serving While Republican.Non-Council

Elite it ain't

Erin at the Quick and the Ed posts some very interesting news about Davidson's announcement that its students will no longer need loans to afford tuition. Erin's taking the news with a grain of salt, but I'm taking it with a healthy helping of naive optimism.

...

Incidentally, I picked Davidson (a small college in North Carolina where I spent a summer) to win in the first round. I also picked Penn (my alma mater) to win its first round game, Duke (where my parents met) to advance two rounds, and Wisconsin (my sister's current school) to win it all. Needless to say, my pool hath run dry.

Educating the Whole Child - what we owe our students

Let me explain why I am posting this here. In a time when national educational policy is under serious discussion, it seems important to me that we consider issues beyond those that NCLB seems to address. While I wrote the material below for dailykos, as will be event by the text at the end, it seems relevant enough to offer it to this community as well. If people strongly object, let me know and I will come back and delete it.

Oh, and by the way, when I first tried to post it, it seemingly came up garbaged, so this is a repost after I deleted the original version.

crossposted from dailykos

Each moment we live never was before and will never be again. And yet what we teach children in school is 2 + 2 = 4 and Paris is the capital of France. What we should be teaching them is what they are. We should be saying: "Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been another child exactly like you. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel." -Pablo Casals

The quote above is an epigraph from a new report of "the Commission on The Whole Child" published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development entitled The Learning Compact Redefined: A Call to Action (this is a PDF). I urge you to keep reading.

For those who do not know about ASCD it describes itself as "a community of educators, advocating sound policies and sharing best practices to achieve the success of each learner" and consists of "175,000 educators from more than 135 countries and 58 affiliates. Our members span the entire profession of educators - superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members." I am a member of ASCD.

As a teacher I know that what occurs in my classroom is a small part of educating my students, even in my own domain of social studies. As a music major who teaches government and also coaches soccer, it has always been clear to me that school is about far more that mere intellectual development. History is replete with examples of the damage done when we develop the intellect and fail to develop behavior, morality, concern for others, physical awareness, and so on. And in a liberal democracy (for those two words are an accurate description in political science terms of our form of government) we should not be attempting to force all students to be the same - our society is enriched and enlivened by our variety and our differences, and our educational practices should be informed by an awareness of the importance of and respect for those differences.

I remind people that a few days ago I wrote a diary entitled Imagine in which I argued that given the exact uniqueness of each of us our educational system should reflect that, including in its assessment practices (one reason I have trouble, btw, with our overreliance upon high stakes standardized testing). At the time I wrote that diary I had not read this report.

Since it is a 36 page PDF that is available for free, I will not make extensive quotations. But I do want to give a few selections to whet your appetite for its contents.

The following two selections are from a letter from the Commission cochairs, Stephanie Pace Marshall and Hugh B. Price, and appear on page 6 of the PDF:

1. This report frames education within the most fundamental context - the personalized engagement and nurturing of the whole child.

2. It describes how the focus on one size fits all education has marginalized the uniqueness of our children and eroded their capacity to learn in whole, healthy, creative, and connect ways.

3. It offers a new learning compact with our children that rightly puts the children and learning needs within the center of every educational program and resource decision.

When we commit educating whole children within the context of whole communities and whole schools, we commit to designing learning environments that weave together the threads that connect no only math, science, the arts, and humanities, but also mind, heart, body and spirit - connections that tend to be fragments in our current approach.
If the whole child were truly at the center of each educational decision, as ASCD Executive Direct Gene Carter posits (see p. 4), we would create learning conditions that enable all children to develop all of their gifts and realize their fullest potential. We would enable children to reconnect to their communities and their own diverse learning resources, and we would deeply engage each child in learning. Finally, if the child were at the center, we would integrate all the ways children come to know the natural world, themselves, and one another, so that they can authentically take their place in creating a better future for all.
It is time that the United States begin a new conversation about K-12 education by asking, "What is possible now?" IT is our conviction that given what we now know about learning and development, we can do better and we can do more. And when we can do more, then we should do more."

ASCD has taken a position that academic achievement " is but one element of student learning and development and only a part of any system of educational accountability." It argues for a combination of elements that "support the development of a child who is healthy, Knowledgeable, motivated, and engaged." (this is from ASCD's position on the Whole Child which can be found on p. 7 of the PDF). It sees this as a cooperative effort by communities, schools, and teachers, each responsible for providing part of the necessary context. A few of the points for each sector (and in each case there are several more):

Communities:

- family support and involvement

- Government, civic, and business support and resources

Schools:

- challenging and engaging curriculum

- a safe, healthy, orderly, and trusting environment

- a climate that supports strong relationships between adults and students

Teachers:

- evidence-based assessment and instructional practices

- rich content and an engaging learning climate

- student and family connectedness

While I am going to urge people to download and read the entire report (don't I always encourage you to go to the source and not depend upon my interpretation? I do try to be a good teacher) I want to give two more summaries of what to expect.

The report will tell you on p. 10 (p. 14 in the PDF) that a whole child is

- intellectually active

- physically, verbally, socially, and academically competent

- empathetic, kind, caring, and fair

- creative and curious

- disciplined, self-direct, and goal oriented

- free

- a critical thinker

- confident

- cared for and valued

Elements of the compact are presented in a graphically rich display on p. 9 (p. 13 of the PDF)for which I give just the text:

- Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle

- Each student learns in an intellectually challenging environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults

- Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community

- Each student has accessed to personalized learning and to qualified, caring adults

- Each graduate is prepared for success in college or further study and for employment in a global environment

I have not had time to parse the document in as much detail as I might like. As with many things, there are points with which I might quibble. For example, on the last of the points of the compact, for far too many of our young people the economic future we are currently presenting to them has little connection with a global environment: flipping burgers or greeting people in a Walmart will seem very disconnected from anything global, and as a result may well not provide a motivation to be serious about present and future educational opportunities. But then, school cannot fix many of the problems of the larger society, and even this statement represents an aspiration, a goal to which we should be dedicated in the belief that we can model our schooling to match our hopes for all of our children and for the society which we will bequeath to them. We can hope, even against hope.

This diary is not part of the official Education Uprising /Educating for Democracy effort, that is, our efforts for the educational panel(s) at the forthcoming Yearlykos. But the content is intimately interconnected with the issues with which we have been wrestling in our presentations to you.

I hope that at least a few of you will find this useful, and that this diary will not simply scroll into oblivion with no notice. But that I leave to the larger community.

Educating the Whole Child - what we owe our students

Let me explain why I am posting this here. In a time when national educational policy is under serious discussion, it seems important to me that we consider issues beyond those that NCLB seems to address. While I wrote the material below for dailykos, as will be event by the text at the end, it seems relevant enough to offer it to this community as well. If people strongly object, let me know and I will come back and delete it.

Oh, and by the way, when I first tried to post it, it seemingly came up garbaged, so this is a repost after I deleted the original version.

crossposted from dailykos

Each moment we live never was before and will never be again. And yet what we teach children in school is 2 + 2 = 4 and Paris is the capital of France. What we should be teaching them is what they are. We should be saying: "Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been another child exactly like you. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel." -Pablo Casals

The quote above is an epigraph from a new report of "the Commission on The Whole Child" published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development entitled The Learning Compact Redefined: A Call to Action (this is a PDF). I urge you to keep reading.

For those who do not know about ASCD it describes itself as "a community of educators, advocating sound policies and sharing best practices to achieve the success of each learner" and consists of "175,000 educators from more than 135 countries and 58 affiliates. Our members span the entire profession of educators - superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members." I am a member of ASCD.

As a teacher I know that what occurs in my classroom is a small part of educating my students, even in my own domain of social studies. As a music major who teaches government and also coaches soccer, it has always been clear to me that school is about far more that mere intellectual development. History is replete with examples of the damage done when we develop the intellect and fail to develop behavior, morality, concern for others, physical awareness, and so on. And in a liberal democracy (for those two words are an accurate description in political science terms of our form of government) we should not be attempting to force all students to be the same - our society is enriched and enlivened by our variety and our differences, and our educational practices should be informed by an awareness of the importance of and respect for those differences.

I remind people that a few days ago I wrote a diary entitled Imagine in which I argued that given the exact uniqueness of each of us our educational system should reflect that, including in its assessment practices (one reason I have trouble, btw, with our overreliance upon high stakes standardized testing). At the time I wrote that diary I had not read this report.

Since it is a 36 page PDF that is available for free, I will not make extensive quotations. But I do want to give a few selections to whet your appetite for its contents.

The following two selections are from a letter from the Commission cochairs, Stephanie Pace Marshall and Hugh B. Price, and appear on page 6 of the PDF:

1. This report frames education within the most fundamental context - the personalized engagement and nurturing of the whole child.

2. It describes how the focus on one size fits all education has marginalized the uniqueness of our children and eroded their capacity to learn in whole, healthy, creative, and connect ways.

3. It offers a new learning compact with our children that rightly puts the children and learning needs within the center of every educational program and resource decision.

When we commit educating whole children within the context of whole communities and whole schools, we commit to designing learning environments that weave together the threads that connect no only math, science, the arts, and humanities, but also mind, heart, body and spirit - connections that tend to be fragments in our current approach.
If the whole child were truly at the center of each educational decision, as ASCD Executive Direct Gene Carter posits (see p. 4), we would create learning conditions that enable all children to develop all of their gifts and realize their fullest potential. We would enable children to reconnect to their communities and their own diverse learning resources, and we would deeply engage each child in learning. Finally, if the child were at the center, we would integrate all the ways children come to know the natural world, themselves, and one another, so that they can authentically take their place in creating a better future for all.
It is time that the United States begin a new conversation about K-12 education by asking, "What is possible now?" IT is our conviction that given what we now know about learning and development, we can do better and we can do more. And when we can do more, then we should do more."

ASCD has taken a position that academic achievement " is but one element of student learning and development and only a part of any system of educational accountability." It argues for a combination of elements that "support the development of a child who is healthy, Knowledgeable, motivated, and engaged." (this is from ASCD's position on the Whole Child which can be found on p. 7 of the PDF). It sees this as a cooperative effort by communities, schools, and teachers, each responsible for providing part of the necessary context. A few of the points for each sector (and in each case there are several more):

Communities:

- family support and involvement

- Government, civic, and business support and resources

Schools:

- challenging and engaging curriculum

- a safe, healthy, orderly, and trusting environment

- a climate that supports strong relationships between adults and students

Teachers:

- evidence-based assessment and instructional practices

- rich content and an engaging learning climate

- student and family connectedness

While I am going to urge people to download and read the entire report (don't I always encourage you to go to the source and not depend upon my interpretation? I do try to be a good teacher) I want to give two more summaries of what to expect.

The report will tell you on p. 10 (p. 14 in the PDF) that a whole child is

- intellectually active

- physically, verbally, socially, and academically competent

- empathetic, kind, caring, and fair

- creative and curious

- disciplined, self-direct, and goal oriented

- free

- a critical thinker

- confident

- cared for and valued

Elements of the compact are presented in a graphically rich display on p. 9 (p. 13 of the PDF)for which I give just the text:

- Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle

- Each student learns in an intellectually challenging environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults

- Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community

- Each student has accessed to personalized learning and to qualified, caring adults

- Each graduate is prepared for success in college or further study and for employment in a global environment

I have not had time to parse the document in as much detail as I might like. As with many things, there are points with which I might quibble. For example, on the last of the points of the compact, for far too many of our young people the economic future we are currently presenting to them has little connection with a global environment: flipping burgers or greeting people in a Walmart will seem very disconnected from anything global, and as a result may well not provide a motivation to be serious about present and future educational opportunities. But then, school cannot fix many of the problems of the larger society, and even this statement represents an aspiration, a goal to which we should be dedicated in the belief that we can model our schooling to match our hopes for all of our children and for the society which we will bequeath to them. We can hope, even against hope.

This diary is not part of the official Education Uprising /Educating for Democracy effort, that is, our efforts for the educational panel(s) at the forthcoming Yearlykos. But the content is intimately interconnected with the issues with which we have been wrestling in our presentations to you.

I hope that at least a few of you will find this useful, and that this diary will not simply scroll into oblivion with no notice. But that I leave to the larger community.

The Bad Seed: 13-Year-Old Andrew Riley

This 13-year-old Ohio kid vicious little miscreant is charged with allegedly committing 128 felonies, including beating up the child who turned him in: The multitude of charges filed recently against a Nelsonville teen has astonished prosecutors, some of whom have practiced law since before he was born.Andrew Riley, 13, is charged with 128 felonies, in Athens County Juvenile Court. They include

Stifling Students at the LSE and Cambridge

I gravitate between feeling amused and frustrated when I see the Malaysian Students Department (MSD) overseas going out of their way to stifle Malaysia students abroad. Its latest attempt was to try to forcefully dissuade Malaysian student organizations at the LSE and Cambridge to pull out from organizing (or co-organizing) talks held by former Deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim.

You won't find this reported in any of the Malaysian newspapers. I was alerted about this by a fellow blogger and special assistant to Anwar, Nik Nazmi. You can read the full details here. I somehow fail to understand what the MSD in the UK hopes to achieve by 'pressuring' these student organizations. Will it make it less likely that any students who already intended to attend Anwar's talk would suddenlydecide not to go at the MSD's insistence? I think better of LSE and Cambridge students (hopefully, I'm not proven wrong). Will it make it more likely that the talks by Anwar will be cancelled? Not likely if he's been invited by the university and not the Malaysian student organizations situated in these universities.

The mentality underlying this sort of action also requires questioning. Does the MSD somehow hope to 'shield' our poor, influential and weak minded Malaysian students in the UK from falling under the 'evil spell' of opposition politicians and thoughts of wanting a more democratic and open Malaysia? Should the MSD also ban Malaysian students and student organizations from attending talks by other current and former dissidents such as Nelson Mandela or Jose Ramos Horta?

This kind of action taken by the MSD comes across as futile, silly and immature. The cynic in me says that they should not be overly worried about Malaysian students abroad getting 'influenced' by opposition sentiments. Because, the system can always 'co-opt' these individuals when they return to Malaysia.

Recognition of Beijing and Tsinghua degrees

Tony blogged about the recognition of degrees from Beijing and Tsinghua universities on the part of the Malaysian authorities earlier and I thought that this issue had already been resolved. After Chan Kong Choy (who has a degree in Chinese studies from the UM, if I'm not mistaken) stepped to intervene, I thought that the process of recognizing degrees in Chinese studies from Beijing and Tsinghua universities would have been completed by now. Apparently not, according to a recent column by Lee Ban Chen in Malaysiakini.

Pengiktirafan ijazah Universiti Peking dan Universiti Tsinghua
Lee Ban Chen
Mar 14, 07 2:19pm

Sikap teragak-agak kerajaan kita dalam mengiktiraf ijazah Jurusan Bahasa dan Sastera Tionghua dari Universiti Peking dan Universiti Tsinghua – dua Universiti yang tersohor bagi negara China, umpama Universiti Oxford dan Universiti Cambrigde bagi UK – telah menimbulkan tandatanya tentang kebijakan kerajaan kita dalam menangani perkara ini.

Malah, beberapa orang penulis dalam media tempatan secara sinis mengatakan ijazah yang mendapat pengiktirafan seluruh dunia itu, tidak memerlukan pengiktirafan negara kita, kerana nilainya tidak akan terjejas sedikitpun jika negara kita tidak mengiktirafnya, kerana dalam bidang terbabit, berbanding dengan China, negara kita seperti melukut di tepi gantang.

Sikap teragak-agak kerajaan kita ini mencerminkan dasar diskriminasi bahasa kerajaan kita dan telah mengakibatkan sikap berat sebelah dalam pengiktirafan ijazah-ijazah dari universiti dari China, juga Taiwan dan Hongkong selama ini.

Pada 9 Mac 2007, akhbar Oriental Daily telah melaporkan Encik Cao Kok Hing, Ketua Rombongan Perwakilan bagi Biro Kerjasama dan Pertukaran Pendidikan Negara China amat terperanjat dan tidak memahami kenapa kerajaan Malaysia masih teragak-agak untuk mengiktiraf ijazah Jurusan Bahasa (dan Sastera) Cina Universiti Peking dan Universiti Tsinghua.

Tanya beliau: “Jika Jurusan Bahasa (dan Sastera) Cina dari negeri asalnya juga tidak diiktiraf, maka ijazah dari negeri manakah yang berkelayakan untuk diiktiraf?”

Tambah Cao lagi: “Saya tidak pernah dengar ada mana-mana negeri dalam dunia yang keberatan untuk mengiktiraf ijazah dari Universiti Peking dan Universiti Tsinghua, khasnya Jurusan Bahasa (dan Sastera) Cinanya.”

Belajar di luar negeri

Hingga sekarang, katanya, China telah menandatangani Persetujuan Saling Pengiktirafan Ijazah Pendidikan dengan 28 negara, termasuk negara-negara besar dari Eropah seperti Perancis, Jerman dan United Kingdom (UK), dan akan menandatangani persetujuan yang sama dengan negara-negara Asia dalam masa terdekat, dan draf persetujuan terbabit telahpun diserahkan kepada pihak Malaysia.

Menurut beliau, perkembangan institusi pengajian tinggi di China amat pesat – daripada jumlah enrolmen 1.08 juta pelajar pada tahun 1998, meningkat sehingga 5.40 juta pada tahun 2006 – dan permintaan tempat kosong mencecah angka 10 juta. Oleh itu, ramai daripada mereka yang mampu, akan melanjutkan pengajian ke luar negeri.

Pada tahun lalu, seramai 160,000 pelajar dari China telah melanjutkan pengajian di luar negeri, termasuk 12,000 yang datang ke Malaysia. Dan mengikut statistik negara kita, 1,700 pelajar kita telah melanjutkan pengajian ke China pada tahun yang sama.

Jika menjadikan Malaysia sebagai pusat pengajian tinggi di rantau ini merupakan dasar tegas negara kita, dan Persetujuan Saling Pengiktirafan Ijazah Pendidikan Malaysia-China sedang diproseskan, maka sikap teragak-agak dalam mengiktiraf ijazah Jurusan Bahasa (dan Sastera) Cina dari Universiti Peking dan Universiti Tsinghua, mungkin memberi persepsi atau gambaran negatif seolah-olah negara kita tidak berminat untuk menandatangani persetujuan terbabit.

Dasar pengiktirafan ijazah yang bukan berasaskan penilaian pencapaian akademi ijazah terbabit, tetapi berasaskan dasar diskriminasi bahasa, juga berlaku terhadap Sijil Peperiksaan Bersama Sekolah Menengah Cina Swasta yang diselenggarakan oleh Dong Jiao Zong di negara kita.

Sijil tersebut telahpun diiktiraf oleh ratusan universiti di China, Taiwan, Singapura, Jepun, India, Indonesia dan universiti di Amerika Syarikat, Kanada, Australia, British, Perancis, Jerman, Rusia, sebagai kelayakan kemasukan ke universiti mereka, dan beribu-ribu pemegang sijil tersebut telahpun lulus dalam pengajian mereka dan dianugerahkan ijazah sarjana muda, sarjana dan PhD.

Namun hingga sekarang, tiada mana-mana Institusi Pengajian Tinggi Awam (IPTA) di negara kita yang bersedia untuk menilai dan mengiktiraf Sijil Peperiksaan Bersama Sekolah Menengah Cina Swasta yang telah teruji pencapaian akademinya serta kecemerlangan prestasi pemegang sijil terbabit yang melanjutkan pengajian ke universisti di seluruh dunia.

Dasar-dasar diskriminasi

Di samping itu, banyak lagi dasar-dasar bahasa yang bersifat diskriminasi masih terus diamalkan dalam IPTA negara kita, antara lain:

- Tanpa kelulusan subjek Bahasa Melayu dalam SPM, pemegang ijazah PhD sekalipun, tidak dibenarkan berkhidmat di IPTA negeri kita.

- Persatuan Bahasa Cina tidak dibenarkan berdaftar di setengah IPTA kita dengan alasan kononnya ianya merupakan badan bersifat satu kaum, sungguhpun bahasa Cina sekarang telah merupakan lingua franca antarabangsa seperti yang diakui Menteri Pelajaran Hishammuddin baru-baru ini.

- Tulisan Bahasa Cina, Bahasa Tamil dan bahasa kaum minoriti yang lain, tidak dibenarkan dalam kampus IPTA, hospital, Parlimen, dan institusi-institusi kerajaan yang lain yang berfungsi “rasmi” , kerana selain daripada bahasa Melayu, bahasa-bahasa lain bukan bahasa rasmi negara kita.

Dalam Jurusan Bahasa Cina di Universiti Malaya umpamanya, tesis bagi ijazah sarjana dan PhD tidak dibenarkan ditulis dalam bahasa Cina. Contohnya, seorang calon PhD yang membuat kajian tentang pemikiran konfusianisme melalui bahasa Cina (moden dan klasik), hanya dibenarkan menulis tesisnya dalam bahasa Melayu atau bahasa Inggeris, tetapi dilarang menulis dalam bahasa Cina! Kepelikannya umpama seseorang yang membuat kajian Melayu tidak dibenarkan menulis tesisnya dalam bahasa Melayu!

Kepelikan dan ketidak-munasabahan kesemua perkara tersebut berpunca daripada dasar bahasa kita yang hanya mengakui bahasa Melayu/kebangsaan sebagai bahasa rasmi yang tunggal.

Kita memang memerlukan bahasa kebangsaan sebagai lingua fanca antara kaum, namun ini tidak bermakna kaum-kaum minoriti yang lain, tidak berhak untuk menggunakan bahasa masing-masing secara bebas mengikut keperluan, secara rasmi atau tidak rasmi, di samping penggunaan bahasa kebangsaan.

Can any of our readers who are in the know clarify if what Lee Ban Chen wrote is indeed accurate? Have the relevant authorities - probably the MOHE, in this case - failed to act to recognize these degrees from Beijing and Tsinghua or is it just a case of the bureaucracy being inefficient?

One last point - in his column, Lee Ban Chen stated that it was not possible to for a Malaysian to teach in an IPTA if he or she does not have a pass in BM at the SPM level. Is this a fact? If this is the case, it means that if I wanted to, I can't teach in a public uni in Malaysia because I didn't take SPM. My guess is that even if this is official policy, its implementation is probably not strictly enforced given the large number of foreign lecturers.