An educational innovator who worked at Sesame Workshop and The George Lucas Educational Foundation offers a new vision for learning As a result of constant innovation, learning is no longer limited by traditional confines and we're moving beyond students tied to their chairs, desks, and textbooks-and teachers locked away in classrooms. In Education Nation author Milton Chen draws from extensive experience in media-from his work on Sesame Street in its nascent years to his role as executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation-to support a vision for a new world of learning. This book, in six chapters, explores the "edges" in education—the places where K-12 learning has already seen revolutionary changes through innovative reform and the use of technology. Examines ways in which learning can be revolutionized through innovative reform and the use of technology Explores the ever-expanding world of technology for breakthroughs in teaching and learning Includes many wonderful resources to support innovation in schools across the nation This important book offers a clear vision for tomorrow's classrooms that will enhance learning opportunities for all children.
In an increasingly diverse United States, minority and low-income students of all ages struggle to fit into mainstream colleges and universities that cater predominantly to middle-income and affluent white students fresh out of high school. Anchored in a study conducted at twelve minority-serving institutions (MSIs), Educating a Diverse Nation turns a spotlight on the challenges facing nontraditional college students and highlights innovative programs and practices that are advancing students’ persistence and learning. Clifton Conrad and Marybeth Gasman offer an on-the-ground perspective of life at MSIs. Speaking for themselves, some students describe the stress of balancing tuition with the need to support families. Others express their concerns about not being adequately prepared for college-level work. And more than a few reveal doubts about the relevance of college for their future. The authors visited the four main types of MSIs—historically black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–serving institutions—to identify strategies for empowering nontraditional students to succeed in college despite these obstacles. Educating a Diverse Nation illuminates such initiatives as collaborative learning, culturally relevant educational programs, blurring the roles of faculty, staff, and students, peer-led team learning, and real-world problem solving. It shows how these innovations engage students and foster the knowledge, skills, and habits they need to become self-sustaining in college and beyond, as well as valuable contributors to society.
Why a dumbed-down curriculum is bad for our democracy: “A persuasive, scientifically sound case for an education revolution.” — Shelf Awareness In How to Educate a Citizen, E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began thirty years ago with his classic bestseller Cultural Literacy, urging America’s public schools, particularly at the elementary level, to educate our children more effectively to help heal and preserve the nation. Since the 1960s, our schools have been relying on “child-centered learning.” History, geography, science, civics, and other essential knowledge have been dumbed down by vacuous learning “techniques” and “values-based” curricula; indoctrinated by graduate schools of education, administrators and educators have believed they are teaching reading and critical thinking skills. Yet these cannot be taught in the absence of strong content, Hirsch argues. The consequence is a loss of shared knowledge that would enable us to work together, understand one another, and make coherent, informed decisions. A broken approach to school not only leaves our children underprepared and erodes the American dream but also loosens the bonds that hold the nation together. Drawing on early schoolmasters and educational reformers such as Noah Webster and Horace Mann, Hirsch charts the rise and fall of the American early education system and provides a blueprint for closing the national gap in knowledge, communications, and allegiance. Critical and compelling, How to Educate a Citizen galvanizes our schools to equip children with the power of shared knowledge. “Concerned citizens , teachers, and parents take note! We ignore this book at our peril.” —Joel Klein, former Chancellor of New York City Public Schools
The UN is often questioned about its ongoing relevance and overall effectiveness in the 21st century, particularly in its involvement with educational policy and co-operation around the globe. This ground-breaking book examines the four key agencies within the UN system that share the vital role of addressing educational futures: UNESCO, the World Bank, UNICEF and UNDP. As the core of educational multilateralism, these agencies powerfully reflect the UN's historic grounding in peace, human rights and economic development. The history of each agency's commitment to education is explored with critical detachment, with particular attention paid to the post-Cold War period, during which each agency has needed to re-think the impact of globalisation on both its modes of operation as well as the content of its education policies. Just as education policy itself has been subject to the impact of globalisation, so to has each agency had to adapt at a time when not only education but also their own mandates have been thrown open to question. This timely book will be essential reading for all those working with and for UN agencies, foreign aid workers and the development co-operation industry. At a time when education policies, budgets and strategies appear wide open to profound changes, this book will provide a much-needed roadmap to the future.
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.
This volume presents the history of the modern era in story form, giving proper emphasis to dates, central characters, and key concepts in each era. End of chapter reviews and other material highlight dates and events, characters in history, and definitions of key terms. The central consideration of this volume is how modern ideas, institutions, and culture have developed from the high centuries of Christian culture. Drawing on the guidance of Catholic thinkers and the popes (particularly Leo XIII, Pius XI, Pius XII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI), this history presents the hope that Christian thought and work hold for the future.
A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country's prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population. In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country's development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity. Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.
'Globalization' and 'the Nation' provide significant contexts for examining past educational thinking and practice and to identify how education has been influenced today. This book, written collaboratively, explores country case studies - Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the UK and USA as well as discussing the transnational European Union.
