Tagged: policy

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The 3 Cs Of Education

The more, the longer I’m involved in education, the more clearly I’m able to see the forest for the trees. Truly. It’s something about just being there, mucking about, taking in loads of information daily that builds a soul inside oneself, the teacher. Not tooting...

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Imagine…. (a poem about school)

Imagine a classroom where there is no teaching                                                      only learning. Imagine a classroom where there is no leader only...

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Linguistic Chauvinism

I just finished watching my daily hour of PBS news and I’m irate. Sometimes American insularity and small mindedness is cute and amusing (as De Tocqueville imagined) but sometimes it isn’t. Listening to a Republican senator ramble on about how “English First” is what true...

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The new “way” forward

Sometimes one is surprised by how life conspires to throw things into your path. In doing so, you just have to trip over them, notice them and come upon a clearer view and vision of “the way” and what is there. I’ve been training teachers...

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Assembly Line Education

As this video suggests, we have to get out of the “assembly line” approach to education. It isn’t easy, we are addicted to quantifying “learning”. We are addicted to “cosmetic tinkering”. We are addicted to the “herding” of children into rooms. We are infact scared...

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Public Education Interventions

Public health intervention more than any other “science” has done more for humankind than anything else over the last 200 years. Forget industrialization, forget inventions – how we live in abundance and health is most definitely related to the things put into place by public...

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Hype that’s not my type

I read a lot about the “new paradigm” that is occuring in education. There is a lot for us teachers and particularly those in leadership positions to think about. I really do hear some things repeated over and over again – that I just won’t...

3

More about “getting out of the way”

The objective of education is learning. Or not even that, I’ll interject. More exactly, the true objective is “contentment”, a well adjusted individual. And the only way to reach this objective is to tap into the “feeling good about oneself” that is always there in...

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Make 3 wishes….

I really believe in the power of faith. Long ago, I remember reading C.S. Lewis’ poignant, “The Problem with Pain” and noting his wonderful philosophy of simply acting as if something were true. That if we pretend the world is so, it might just become...

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Self Directed Learning – Part 1

If I could meet just one guy who I’d like to chat about the future and place of education in the world – it would be a toss up between Ivan Illich and John Taylor Gatto. Illich the intellectual, the piercing and challenging mind –...

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Age and ELTing

Let me start by asking this – do you love your teaching job? Let me now ask, can you imagine teaching until you die? I can. I really can. I don’t know what the future holds but right here, right now, I can imagine being...

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Using Technology the “Right” way

Around the education/technology twitterverse, there has been a lot of hand-wringing and “I told you so s” about THIS article  on TES, “Byte the Dust”. Basically, it outlines how tens of millions of dollars/pounds of educational technology are laying around gathering dust. This follows another study...

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Education by Lottery – right or wrong?

Last week I watched this 60 minutes episode about “lucky” kids winning paid boarding school education. Education by lottery. I don’t know why but I found it deeply disturbing. So disturbing, I just couldn’t even write about it. So I let it fester and digest...

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The “subversive” teacher

Are you a subversive teacher? A teacher is that rare individual who coaxes the existing knowledge systems of his students out of hiding, drags every last tentacle of the monster from the depths into broad daylight, hoses off the slime, wrestles it to the ground...