The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
German Universities Ditch Fees
Even international students can now study anywhere in Germany for free, as Britain’s youth continues to be angered over the issue.
Lower Saxony has become the last of Germany’s states to abolish fees for university students.
Announcing the decision, science and culture minister Gabrielle Heinen-Kjajic was quoted by germanpulse.com as saying in a statement the decision was taken “because we do not want higher education which depends on the wealth of the parents”.
In the process of gathering this information two beliefs that most Americans hold in common became clear:
1) If a child can read, write and compute at a reasonably proficient level, he will be able to do just about anything he wishes, enabling him to control his destiny to the extent that God allows (remain free);
2) Providing such basic educational proficiencies is not and should not be an expensive proposition.
Since most Americans believe the second premise—that providing basic educational proficiencies is not and should not be an expensive proposition—it becomes obvious that it is only a radical agenda, the purpose of which is to change values and attitudes (brainwash), that is the costly agenda. [Emphasis added.]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 THE SOWING OF THE SEEDS: 1 late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
2 THE TURNING OF THE TIDES: 7 early twentieth century
3 THE TROUBLING THIRTIES 17
4 THE FOMENTATION 27 of the forties and fifties
5 THE SICK SIXTIES: 55 psychology and skills
6 THE SERIOUS SEVENTIES 93 7 THE “EFFECTIVE” EIGHTIES 159
8 THE NOXIOUS NINETIES 265
Free Book in PDF Form, and More, Below the Fold
Continue reading “JZ Liszkiewicz: Free Book The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America”
Venture Capitalists Are Poised to “Disrupt” Everything About the Education Market
EXTRACT
Next year, the market size of K-12 education is projected to be $788.7 billion. And currently, much of that money is spent in the public sector. “It’s really the last honeypot for Wall Street,” says Donald Cohen, the executive director of In the Public Interest, a think tank that tracks the privatization of roads, prisons, schools and other parts of the economy.
That might be changing soon as barriers to investment are rapidly fading. As Eric Hippeau, a partner with Lerer Ventures, the venture capital firm behind viral entertainment company BuzzFeed and several education start-ups, has argued, despite the opposition of “unions, public school bureaucracies, and parents,” the “education market is ripe for disruption.”
Hippeau’s vision is the growing sentiment among investors. Education technology firms secured a record $1.25 billion in investments across 378 deals in 2013, while analysts predict that number will continue to surge this year. Since 2010, Moe has led what has been billed as the premiere education investment conference, which takes place annually in Scottsdale, Arizona. The first year attracted around 370 people and 55 presenting companies. This year, that number soared to over 2,000 with over 290 presenting companies and speeches by luminaries including former Governor Jeb Bush, Magic Johnson and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. One of the largest start-ups, a Herndon, Virginia–based company called K12 Inc., a for-profit largely online charter chain, posted nearly $1 billion in annual revenue for its last fiscal year in August.
This is a great blog post by Clark Quinn, e-learning guru whom I think highly of. His post talks about whether there is a science to learning (spoiler: there is) and how e-learning professionals should frame it as learning engineers. It got me wondering how content engineers and other technical communicators beyond those in the e-learning field approach this.
In other fields of endeavors, there is a science behind the approaches. In civil engineering, it’s the properties of materials. In aviation, it’s aeronautical engineering. In medicine, it’s medical science. If you’re going to be a professional in your field, you have to know the science. So, two questions: is there a science of learning, and is it used. The answers appear to be yes and no. And yet, if you’re going to be a learning designer or engineer, you should know the science and be using it.
There is a science of learning, and it’s increasingly easy to find. That’s the premise behind the Serious eLearning Manifesto, for instance (read it, sign it, use it!). You could read Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learn as a very good interpretation of the science. The Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center is compiling research to provide guidance about learning if you want a fuller scientific treatment. Or read Bransford, et al’s summary of the science of How People Learn, a very rich overview. And Hess & Saxberg’s recent Breakthrough Leadership in the Digital Age: Using Learning Science to Reboot Schooling is both a call for why and some guidance on how.
Among the things we know are that rote and abstract information isn’t retained, knowledge test doesn’t mean ability to do, getting it right once doesn’t mean it’s known, the list goes on. Yet, somehow, we see elearning tools like ‘click to learn more’ (er, less), tarted up quiz show templates to drill knowledge, easy ways to take content and add quizzes to them, and more. We see elearning that’s arbitrary info dump and simplistic knowledge test. Which will have a negligible impact on anything meaningful.
We’re focused on speed and cost efficiencies, not on learning outcomes, and that’s not professional. Look, if you’re going to do design, do it right. Anything less is really malpractice!
This is the latest on the Willful Ignorance Trend. American schools are under attack from the Theocratic Right, who literally want to rewrite history, and get it taught the way they want. This is some very good news about that trend. Real pushback. But how many schools do you think will do this? Still it's my favorite story of the week.
Colorado Students Walk Out to Protest Conservative ‘Censorship’ of AP History
DAVID FERGUSON – The Raw Story
In Tuesday, hundreds of high school students in Jefferson County, Colorado walked out of classes this week to protest conservative censorship of the national Advanced Placement U.S. history class curriculum.
According to the Denver Post, students and teachers are protesting the removal of all mentions of civil disobedience from texts and classroom materials intended for the teaching of AP U.S. history.
. . . . . . . .
Tensions have run high in Jefferson County schools since three conservative candidates were elected to the school board. These new board members have suggested an extensive rewrite of the way history is taught to the area’s students to a model they believe is more patriotic.
The right-leaning board-members said they believe history teachers should teach nationalism, respect for authority and reverence for free markets. They should avoid teaching any historical events or acts that promote ‘civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”
What is one to think about a country and a time in which 64 per cent of the population cannot identify the three major branches of government? Not the individuals, just the basic system. Nearly two out of three. This may be the most depressing statistic I have ever published.
Only 36 Percent of Americans Can Name the Three Branches of Government
REID WILSON – The Washington Post
Wednesday marked national Constitution Day, the 227th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. But only 36 percent of Americans can actually name the three branches of government the Constitution created.
Marina Warner
London Review of Books, 11 September 2014
EXTRACT
What is happening at Essex reflects on the one hand the general distortions required to turn a university into a for-profit business – one advantageous to administrators and punitive to teachers and scholars – and on the other reveals a particular, local interpretation of the national policy. The Senate and councils of a university like Essex, and most of the academics who are elected by colleagues to govern, have been caught unawares by their new masters, their methods and their assertion of power. Perhaps they/we are culpable of doziness. But there is a central contradiction in the government’s business model for higher education: you can’t inspire the citizenry, open their eyes and ears, achieve international standing, fill the intellectual granary of the country and replenish it, attract students from this country and beyond, keep up the reputation of the universities, expect your educators and scholars to be public citizens and serve on all kinds of bodies, if you pin them down to one-size-fits-all contracts, inflexible timetables, overflowing workloads, overcrowded classes.
Among the scores of novels I am reading for the Man Booker International are many Chinese novels, and the world of Chinese communist corporatism, as ferociously depicted by their authors, keeps reminding me of higher education here, where enforcers rush to carry out the latest orders from their chiefs in an ecstasy of obedience to ideological principles which they do not seem to have examined, let alone discussed with the people they order to follow them, whom they cashier when they won’t knuckle under.
