College Advising

CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: High School Career and Technical Education

How will those who do not attend college... make a connection to jobs...? The most popular answer is that public policy should encourage... college, but I'm skeptical about that answer.
From the student point of view, imagine someone who has struggled to make it through K-12 schooling, perhaps consistently ranking in, say, the 30th percentile of academic performance. That person has for years received a consistent message that academic studies are not their strong point. Telling such a person that the route to adult success involves yet more years of study, this time in a more academically intense environment where they are likely to be closer to the bottom and to struggle even harder, doesn't seem like a positive message to send.
This point is an uncomfortable one to make. It's emotionally much easier to remember true stories about a student who didn't seem to be doing well, but then soared. ... We need alternative pathways to job and career success that don't assume a college degree is the right path for everyone.

It's not obvious what a high school can or should do, but it's worth thinking about.

Feb 4: Global School Play Day

I've mentioned educational psychologist Peter Gray many times, e.g. here and here and here. Right now he's promoting an event. Spread the Word: Feb 4 is Global School Play Day | Psychology Today

Global School Play Day is more than just a day of play. It's a day of acknowledgement that play matters, that kids need play, that our society has gone amok with testing and drilling and making kids sit in seats and has forgotten what childhood is all about. This is for affirming the child’s right and need to play. It is a day for parents, educators, playground directors, city planners—for everyone—to think about what they can do to make free play once again a major part of childhood.

Take a look at the website. Listen to the official Play Day Song (at the website). Announce it on your Facebook pages. Tweet it. Do everything you can to spread the word. Wouldn’t it be great if every school everywhere signed on?

Maybe so.

Teaching Tolerance?

It would be nice to think that niceness is improved by education; ignorant people are less nice, e.g. less tolerant, than the educated. But maybe that's not what matters. Does economic freedom lead to greater tolerance?

...the data shows that when a society has impressive scores on property rights security and low inflation ... these characteristics are strongly and positively correlated with tolerance of gays. It’s possible that low inflation, and the behavior of a central bank, are stand-ins for the general trustworthiness of a nation’s government and broader institutions, and such trustworthiness helps foster tolerance....

We are often told that education is an important remedy, yet it does not register as a meaningful factor in the cross-country data in this paper. Higher levels of education simply have not correlated significantly with higher levels of tolerance across countries.

I suppose that "I have a post-secondary degree" ... "I have a PhuD" might translate as "I have learned to absorb, echo and elaborate on whatever my culture/government wanted." That might be it. Sigh.

Google Classroom, mobile version

Google Classroom is a big deal, just as a set of utilities to make instruction work a bit better. Now it's an app: Google rolling out Classroom mobile app for students, teachers | ZDNet

The mobile version of Classroom, Lugo explained, is designed to further facilitate communications between teachers and students, namely through the addition of a teacher assignments page and the ability to archive classes.

Students will also be able to attach files (i.e. PDFs) and use the mobile device's built-in camera to attach photos to their assignments, whether they be drawings for an art class, a family tree for social studies, or diagrams and results for science experiments.

"And if they've forgotten their homework, they can ask someone at home to snap a photo, text it and then turn it in with the app," Lugo remarked. "Of course, if the dog has actually eaten it, Classroom can't help you."

My main reaction to this is a memory of correspondence-school courses in elementary school, just over half a century ago while living in Veracruz. Writing under Mom's supervision had advantages, even with the actual teachers being weeks away by snail mail. Google Classroom utilities can't replace teachers -- but they can expand the set of available frameworks for teaching.

Or then again, maybe not.

Timing the Vegetables

The Journal of Preventive Medicine (via TreeHugger) says that in elementary school, Kids will eat more veggies if you let them play first : TreeHugger

Moving recess to before lunch increased consumption of fruits and vegetables by "0.16 servings per child", which might sound small, but it represents a 54% increase, which is huge. Pre-lunch recess also increased the number of children eating at least one serving of fruits or vegetables by 10% points.
Another beneficial effect of this simple change was the dramatic reduction in wasted food, by about 40%.

It's the sort of thing that I would class as "worth a try", both for schools and households. Wouldn't you?