Cumulative Knowledge

I think a case could be made that the emergence of digital communication and online social media has made religious hypocrisy a more dangerous temptation today than we often recognize. Lee Siegel in his book Against the Machine, discusses how we hide behind false, "phantom" identities on the internet. It's a medium we think fosters immediacy and authenticity, but in truth it breeds shallowness. It allows us to easily build and present a facade to the world; an image of who we wish to be rather than who we really are. And in the case of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, intimate relationships that peer behind our facades are nearly impossible to foster (despite what so many 16-year-old girls wish to believe). In other words, on the web hypocrisy is not only easy, it is mandatory.

While this article is looking at internet "transparency" from a religious point of view, I think it has much broader implications, especial when it comes to teaching students about ethical behavior on the Internet.

How often have you been told that writing the lesson's objectives on the board is best practice? Can you think of even one reason why doing this might be a bad idea? Because the prevailing wind of conventional wisdom consistently blows in favor of content-bloated, prefabricated externally mandated standardized standards, it takes courage to pause and reflect.

The reason for doing it? Because then the principal can walk in the room and know the teacher knows what they are doing. SIck? Of course it is. It is another means, whereby, teachers can be "held accountable" at the expense of student learning.

Rather than trust their teachers to be profession and skilled at the art of teaching, administration (especially those far removed from the classroom at the district, board, and state levels) has to make it possible to walk in a classroom, look at the board, and feel they have done their jobs.

Little thought is given to the fact that in order to construct meaning, students need to be presented with ambiguity. Learners need to wrestle with information and processes in order to cognitively make sense out of them. By telling them ahead of time, "this is what you'll learn," we automatically shut off their brains as the filter out anything that doesn't tie narrowly to the "objective" written on the board.

90 points of this test was basically a Jeopardy game, asking isolated, disconnected (and therefore fairly useless) facts that the student could have answered in about 15 minutes using her computer or phone for that matter. Facts that, no doubt, that student spent much longer trying to memorize. Facts that, in all likelihood, that student will have little or no recollection of a year from now. Facts that, without some contextual understanding, are irrelevant.

Limbic resonance suggest that the meaning of an object is not just made up of our own interpretation of that object but in part what other people think of it. We look at other people’s reactions to that object to help form our meaning.

What, if any, importance should this have in the classroom? What does this say about the responsibility a teacher has as a learning architect and facilitator?

Two competing pressures—decreased finances and rising policy interest—have left the future of performance-based teacher compensation uncertain.

A dicey fiscal climate and research that has shown limited impact have led some states and districts to scale back, abandon, or change their fledgling merit-pay programs, causing observers to wonder what the next few years will hold for compensation systems that link teacher pay to student achievement.

Just this summer, Texas officials squelched funding for the country’s largest merit-pay program, from $392 million to $40 million, blaming the state’s deficit. And New York City wiped out its $56 million schoolwide program, citing disappointing research results.

Really? You don't say. I thought this was suppose to be the sure-fire way to fix all of educations ills.

Policy workarounds like "seat-time waivers" won't be enough to replace traditional age-based grade level advancement in K-12 with a competency-based system. Rather, according to a new report released by iNacol, it will take a "comprehensive policy redesign" combined with sound technology practices, professional development, and a broadly accepted, student-centered definition of competency-based learning to make that change a reality.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid." (That was President Eisenhower, writing to his brother Edgar in 1954.)

Politicized religion is also the sheet anchor of the culture wars.