Education
Category archives for Education
Where the Wild Things Are read by a guy named “Bill”
Posted by Greg Laden on June 5, 2013 
William Shatner reads Where the Wild Things Are to some kids. Get More: MTV Shows
Using ScreenFlow and the Reverse Classroom
Posted by Greg Laden on November 29, 2012 
Next Fall, I will probably try something new in teaching an intro Biological Anthropology course: The Reverse Classroom. This is an idea that is being increasingly applied in High School settings. The simplest version of this idea is that classroom lectures are converted to an on line resource that the students access on their own…
Are Children “Natural Scientists” or not?
Posted by Greg Laden on November 20, 2012 Neil deGrasse Tyson if famous for telling us that children are natural scientists, and cautioning us to be careful not to ruin that thing about them. He makes a good case. No one ever thought, I think, that he meant that children were born resistant to the sorts of biases that scientists actively eschew, or…
What should be your college major?
Posted by Greg Laden on September 26, 2012 I very strongly agree with the basic conclusion offered by a post at teenskepchick by Ali Marie, advice for those now looking at college: “…what’s the undecided student to do? My advice: community college.”. Ali discussed the problem of getting all the required courses in within a four year time span. The key problem she…
Teaching After The Test: An argument for a national school schedule
Posted by Greg Laden on May 16, 2012 First, a word about Nazis and Free Speech, and other matters: Catch up on the latest news about Repression of Nazis, and join the conversation about Free Speech and how sometimes it is better to shut up, over at the X Blog. Today I am preparing a presentation and discussion for a course in AP…
Settling Conflicts: Guns and Homeschooling
Posted by Greg Laden on May 13, 2012 There was a time when I blogged regularly about homeschooling, though I have not done so in a long time. A while back I started to blog about gun ownership. I engaged in each of these topics for similar reasons. I have a political and professional interest in homeschooling (as a science educator) and a…
Vote for Something Good for Kids to Do
Posted by Greg Laden on February 26, 2012 Budget Travel is running one of those ill-fated Internet Polls to help make a list of the top 15 places to go for kids before they are 15. Sort of like bucket list but instead of dying you turn 15. One small problem is that the Creation Museum of Kentucky has been intruding in the…
Ten States Will Get No Child Left Behind Waivers
Posted by Greg Laden on February 9, 2012 My State is better than your state! (Or Province or District.) The No Child Left Behind Law, for better or worse, is a Federal program to make states to a better job in education. It is a fairly specific plan. But many states came up with their own plans which are different, yet in some…
The State of State Science Standards
Posted by Greg Laden on January 31, 2012 The vast majority of American public school students are not proficient in the level of science learning expected for their age group. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute has issued “The State of Science Standards 2012” as part of an effort to assess the causes of this dismal state of affairs. Here’s a map summarizing their…
Crazy Anti-Evolution Bills in New Hampshire
Posted by Greg Laden on December 29, 2011 I mention the New Hampshire anti-evolution bills at The X Blog. Here’s an update from the NCSE:
The Manga Guide to Relativity
Posted by Greg Laden on December 3, 2011 The The Manga Guide to Relativity might come in especially handy these days, what with faster than light neutrinos, Republican candidates and other science-defying entities zooming around. And, it is one of those Japanese anime things, which makes it cool. This is a story set in Tagai Academy summer’s school session, where the “plucky” Miss…
The problem with our system of science education is …
Posted by Greg Laden on November 17, 2011 Teachers teach facts instead of concepts. Teachers teach from the textbooks and barely understand what is in the book anyway. There is not enough hands-on learning. All teachers really do anyway is to show videos most of the time. What should really happen is that a teacher should learn how to do science, intensively, with…
Evolution Surrounded By Creationism? Arm Yourself with Books!
Posted by Greg Laden on October 26, 2011 Suppose you are an intelligent, thoughtful person with a thirst for information, a desire to be challenged, and a tendency to not accept received knowledge at face value. You are embedded in a traditional Christian culture where most of your family, your child’s teachers and friends and those friends’ families, the people where you and…
Ooops… we left all the children behind
Posted by Greg Laden on October 25, 2011 “No Child Left Behind” was doomed to be a failure, because it was ill concieved, politically cynical, and underfunded. But like the War in Iraq, the Patriot Act and Tax Breaks for the Rich, and all the other initiatives of the Bush Administration that never should have happened, we have been saddled with this melt…
Good news from the evolution-creationism front
Posted by Greg Laden on May 9, 2011 Florida Senate Bill 1854 would have required a so-called “thorough presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution” which is code word in US state legislatures these days for “taught along side Intelligent Design Creationism as an alternative to established scientific reckoning of the nature and history of life on earth.” Whe the…
The Nation’s Science Report Card is out. Everything is going fine.
Posted by Greg Laden on February 24, 2011 The Science component of “The Nation’s Report Card” was released today and clearly indicates that we have moved one step closer as a nation in two of our most important goals: Building a large and complacent poorly educated low-pay labor class, and increasing the size of our science-illiterate populace in order to allow the advance…
Louisiana Does The Right Thing, But Will Still Probably Screw It Up
Posted by Greg Laden on November 13, 2010 Louisiana is one of those states where really stupid stuff tends to happen, especially when it comes to evolution in the school curriculum. Recently, a state panel was in a position to chose either creationist textbooks with which to abuse the children for whom they are responsible, or good biology textbooks to educate the children…
Linux in Schools
Posted by Greg Laden on September 29, 2010 This is an excellent guest post by Scott Rowed on the use of Linux in K-12 schools, including strong evidence that school districts that do not have students using the Linux operating system are placing their students at a disadvantage, as well as a description of one outstanding success story in British Columbia.
Please read the CFI Parental Rights & Bill 44 commentary
Posted by Greg Laden on September 22, 2010 You can get it here. This is a nefarious Canadian version of a plot to guarantee that whack-job religious nut parents get to jam their beliefs down the throats of ALL the children, not just their own. Or something along those lines, perhaps I am understating it a tad.
The Vigil After Dover: Part 2
Posted by Greg Laden on September 20, 2010 Child-Driven Education
Posted by Greg Laden on September 8, 2010 Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education — the best teachers and schools don’t exist where they’re needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think…
Parents: Is your child’s teacher a creationist?
Posted by Greg Laden on September 8, 2010 It happens. A very large percentage of life science teachers are creationists. In Minnesota, and Minnesota is not that unusual, about half the population or more are creationists, but among life science teachers, that number is reduced by almost one half. In other words, one in three life science teachers are creationists, although most, one…
The Devil in Dover
Posted by Greg Laden on September 1, 2010 When I go to meet the teachers or administrators at my daughter’s school, I whisper these words to each of them: “I just want you to know that I’m involved in a number of organizations that seek to protect the quality of science education in our public schools. If you ever need any support, if…
Half of Americans think evolution did not happen
Posted by Greg Laden on August 16, 2010 Therefore, we should teach that as fact in schools, right?
A good example of appeasement
Posted by Greg Laden on August 12, 2010 … can be found here, in this talk by William Phillips speaking at the AAAS:
Teabagger Ron Micheli and the Wyoming Governor’s Race
Posted by Greg Laden on August 11, 2010 Wyoming, which is a pretty stupid state sometimes, although you don’t hear about it too often because almost no one lives there, has a candidate for governor who … wants teachers to be required to teach creationism. “I think it is as valuable a theory as any other theory.” … is opposed to abortion even…
Louisiana Parish will Legally Require Creationism in Public Schools, May Ban Evolution
Posted by Greg Laden on July 26, 2010 Unless they are stopped which, frankly, does not seem very likely.
Minnesota Citizens for Science Education has a New Home!!!
Posted by Greg Laden on July 14, 2010 And we need your help to move it. Please click here so the global network of DNS servers knows that you want to visit the MnCSE. You should really visit the site anyway, it’s very cool, even if you are not a Minnesota. I love the graphic thingie on the top of the right sidebar…
Dumb Canadians Get to Maintain Dumb Standards for their Dumb Kids
Posted by Greg Laden on July 9, 2010 And we’re talking about bigots and creationists in Alberta, which I figure is more or less the Canadian equivalent of Texas …. the dumbest province in the Great White North.
, which is now available for the 
