One of the most wonderful educational resources I have found on the internet is the archive of the journal American Educator. This is the journal of the American Federation of Teachers, America’s second largest teaching union. Although the AFT is very similar to unions in England in its stance on employment rights, pension and pay,… Read more »
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Shirley Valentine is one of my favourite films. I watched it a lot with my parents when I was younger; I think they liked it because it made relationships between English women and Greek men temporarily fashionable. A scene from Shirley Valentine occurred to me when I was writing this post about 21st century skills.… Read more »
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Whenever I hear anyone talk about preparing students for the 21st century, I am always sceptical. Partly this is because it is never made clear exactly what is so different about the 21st century that requires such different preparation. For the American organisation Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), which is sponsored by a number… Read more »
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In my post here, I talked about the pervasive modern idea that Google renders memory irrelevant, and explained why this idea is false. I want to return to this point here with some further explanations. The best explanation of why you can’t ‘Just Google It’ is by E.D. Hirsch here. Essentially, his point is that:… Read more »
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A very similar post to this was originally published on the Policy First website here. In modern education, traditional knowledge often gets a bit of a hard time. Critics of knowledge-based curriculums argue that modern technology has eliminated the need for pupils to remember and memorise vast quantities of knowledge. Not only that, but the… Read more »
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