Let Them Eat MOOCs

One dissenter on mooc's son. I've just recently started on these and am on my 3rd one. 

I can see the benefits of a mooc but for the life of me, I cannot understand this argument that it's destroying education and it's culturally challenging and and and. And colonialism? Lol. I'm not sure this fellow really understands what it means. The difference is of distance, channel and cost. I teach at universities where students access my lecture via video conference. No difference. Channel same thing. And same with cost. I don't ask to be paid to teach. 

Luddites son. Life is changing. I think your generation is perhaps the last one to have formal education with degrees. By the time your son comes along, technology will have made education in large lecture halls lasting years will be defunct :) fun times

In the meantime, kannu, be a devotee of constant learning. May Saraswati bless you. And I'm proud of what you are son, not because you got into Oxford but because of the fact that you are now a good man. Truly a good man. 

Love

Baba

Let Them Eat MOOCs
http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/let-them-eat-moocs/

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One late afternoon last spring I received a visit from a former student and budding entrepreneur. I usually schedule these meetings at the end of the workday. It feels like a treat, witnessing aspiration and insight blend into leadership to create something new.

Luis (not his real name), however, had not come to see me for leadership advice. He had come to pitch his tech startup and ask for my involvement.

The venture, he explained, would contribute to the ongoing disruption and reinvention of business education and allow anyone anywhere — not just those as fortunate as himself — to have access to my teaching and insights online,for free.

Lessons learnt for teaching

Well, these were beautiful lessons to learn, and yes, I have ordered the book. Now that I am also teaching school children as part of the STEM Ambassadorship, its vital for me to make sure that every minute I have with them is lighting the fire. This was really really interesting. I started to apply this to my junior talent pool members who I run a training course every 2 weeks.

So few lessons learnt for this teacher.

• Bring everybody with you, not just the first person to raise their hands. wait till everybody else has had a think about it.
• move around the room. This is what I hate, when I am lecturing or teaching, and i have to be stuck out there in the front. Moving around is fun and allows you to engage everybody.
• Teaching can be taught, and you can learn even now when you're my advanced age…
• and yes, teaching isn't just imparting lessons, its a performance art.
• explain to the students what you are trying to do and how you are trying to help them.
• road to mastery leads through hard work, you have to push myself.

the article talks about TeachFirst, something that I am involved with heavily, its a great initiative..Also look at this letter we got, isn't that nice?

Letter from the Rt Hon Greg Clark MP The Minister for Universities, Science and Cities, Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, recently joined STEM Ambassadors to launch British Science Week at a school in Kent. The Minister participated in the activities and commended the STEM Ambassadors attending. Following the event the Minister expressed his desire to thank all STEM Ambassadors for volunteering their time. The Minister’s letter follows below. Kind regards, Kirsten Bodley, CEO STEMNET

Dear STEM Ambassador, I want to thank you for volunteering your time and energy to support the STEM Ambassadors programme and inspiring young people to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I was fortunate enough, on the first day of British Science Week, to see some of you in action at a school in my constituency. I met more of you on my recent visit to the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham. I was pleased to see the diverse range of sectors and professions that the STEM Ambassadors represent and highly impressed by the enthusiasm and commitment of those of you I met. During my recent visits I joined STEM Ambassadors and a group of Year 8s on several activities involving glow sticks and a 3D printer, and could see the enthusiasm these hands-on activities inspired. I know that all year round STEM Ambassadors plan and present exciting activities like these, which are an important part of the educational and inspirational process.  You’ll know how important the STEM workforce is to the country’s current and future economic growth. And to remain a world leader in research and technology we need a future generation that is passionate about, and skilled in, STEM. That is why the Government funds activities like the STEM Ambassadors Programme and British Science Week.  I am delighted that the STEM Ambassadors Programme is approaching an important milestone of almost 30,000 volunteers. I’m encouraged that 40% of these are women, inspiring both girls and boys to consider STEM careers.  I have been extremely impressed with what I’ve seen and heard during my recent visits and want to extend my thanks to all of you for your continued support for the STEM Ambassadors Programme, and your commitment to inspiring future generations. We couldn’t do it without you, thank you.

Does giving a laptop to a child help?

Well, unfortunately to the aficionados of giving laptops and ipads to kids, it doesn't seem to make a whit of difference as all the kids did was to use it to search for information on the internet. No change to the mathematics skills or on the reading levels. Go figure. When will people go back to basics, hire the best teachers possible, remunerate them on performance, support them well, bring in parents into the education process and make it fun to teach. All this poking around with technology detracts from the basics. Read and weep, think about the sheer amount of resources wasted on this boondongle.

We present evidence on the impact on students´ math and reading scores of one of the largest deployments of an OLPC program and the only one implemented at a national scale: Plan Ceibal in Uruguay. We have unique data that allow us to know the exact date of laptop delivery for every student in the sample. This gives us the ability to use days of exposure as a treatment intensity measure. Given that there is some variation in the date of laptop delivery across individuals within the same school, we can identify the effect of the program net of potential heterogeneity in the rate schools gain improvements on students´ achievement over time independently of the OLPC program. Our results suggest that in the first two years of its implementation the program had no effects on math and reading scores. The absence of effect could be explained by the fact that the program did not involve compulsory teacher training and that laptops in class were mainly used to search for information on the internet.

Should Education Ministers have education experience? You betcha

as per this paper, they should. The authors look at the relationship between higher education ministers and the performance of the sector that they govern and use the European sector as an example. They find that if the minister has prior experience in the sector, the performance of the sector is higher as measured by ranking data.

Now you can quibble about whether or not ranking data is a good enough measure, but it goes without saying that it makes sense for somebody with expertise to drive this ministry.

As a small test, I looked up the central ministers in India who were responsible for Education since Independence. Here is the list. It started with Maulana Azad who was the Minister for Education from 1947 to 1958. Great man. And because of his amazing contributions, the National Education Day is celebrated every 11th November on his birth anniversary. The successors to his post were all brilliant, educated men frequently with direct experience in this sector. But not always.

Karan Singh was the minister till 1980 and then the rot started…Take for example, SB Chavan, who was in office for 18 months 1988-1989, he had his degree from Osmania University…good heavens. Shela Kaul had a degree in teaching so that’s good. KC Pant also was good in terms of education, but no experience. Narsimha Rao, good education and well intelligent, but no experience. P Shiv Shankar, educated but no experience. VP Singh, educated but no experience. Arjun Singh, no information on education or experience, but guess none. Scindia has had a good reputation but no experience. ABV, educated but no experience. Bommai, educated but not experienced. MM Joshi, well educated and experienced. Kapil Sabil, educated but no experience. MMP Raju, educated but no experience. And then we have the current minister, Smriti Irani, who is not educated nor experienced.

Tragic. Weep for Indian Students you lot, weep. Such is the future of the country – in the hands of these career politicians who are, by and large, educated but not experienced. And now we have literally hit the bottom with a minister who is not educated nor experienced. 

Do not increase the school day, reduce absences instead

this was a very interesting paper.

While instructional time is viewed as crucial to learning, little is known about the effectiveness of reducing absences relative to increasing the number of school days. In this regard, this paper jointly estimates the effect of absences and length of the school calendar on test score performance. Using administrative data from North Carolina public schools, we exploit a state policy that provides variation in the number of days prior to standardized testing and find substantial differences between these effects. Extending the school calendar by ten days increases math and reading test scores by only 0.8% and 0.2% of a standard deviation, respectively; a similar reduction in absences would lead to gains of 5.8% and 3% in math and reading. We perform a number of robustness checks including utilizing u data to instrument for absences, family-year fixed effects, separating excused and unexcused absences, and controlling for a contemporaneous measure of student disengagement. Our results are robust to these alternative specifications. In addition, our findings indicate considerable heterogeneity across student ability, suggesting that targeting absenteeism among low performing students could aid in narrowing current gaps in performance.

so its not a question of increasing the school year, its a question of using the existing school year properly. if you are encouraging or condoning absenteeism, then the pupils dont take the lessons on board and do not have the discipline to handle the concepts. Quite an important finding, specially given the propensity of politicians to push for longer school years. See here for a UK example.

Joel Klein vs. New York City teachers

Dear kannu

You belong to a family of teachers. At least on my side. Long family tree of teachers. Both dadu and didu are professors. So am i. I also give huge credit to my teachers for what I've done and become. So reverence for teachers is seriously built into me. An old quote always impresses me. The influence of a teacher stops at eternity and that's true. 

Think of the teachers you had up till now. You will remember 1-2 very good ones. Most are average and then you have some who are dire. The challenge one has is what do you do with these teachers at the bottom end of the scale. Our society, our culture, our economy depends on great teachers. Without them, we are playing with the future of our kids. To keep on having bad teachers on is a crime against our students. I feel strongly about it just like I feel strongly about lifelong learning. And investments in education. We sponsored a scheme called as teach first where we took the best students and then helped them become teachers for some time at least. 

See here for an example of what New York State is facing with bad teachers. I read somewhere that in the past decade or more only 17 teachers in England have been fired for incompetence. And that's spectacularly stupid. Why not measure by results? We measure the students by results no? 

Something to think about. 

Love

Baba

Joel Klein vs. New York City teachers : The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill

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In a windowless room in a shabby office building at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, in Manhattan, a poster is taped to a wall, whose message could easily be the mission statement for a day-care center: “Children are fragile. Handle with care.” It’s a June morning, and there are fifteen people in the room, four of them fast asleep, their heads lying on a card table. Three are playing a board game. Most of the others stand around chatting. Two are arguing over one of the folding chairs. But there are no children here. The inhabitants are all New York City schoolteachers who have been sent to what is officially called a Temporary Reassignment Center but which everyone calls the Rubber Room.

These fifteen teachers, along with about six hundred others, in six larger Rubber Rooms in the city’s five boroughs, have been accused of misconduct, such as hitting or molesting a student, or, in some cases, of incompetence, in a system that rarely calls anyone incompetent.

The teachers have been in the Rubber Room for an average of about three years, doing the same thing every day—which is pretty much nothing at all. Watched over by two private security guards and two city Department of Education supervisors, they punch a time clock for the same hours that they would have kept at school—typically, eight-fifteen to three-fifteen. Like all teachers, they have the summer off. The city’s contract with their union, the United Federation of Teachers, requires that charges against them be heard by an arbitrator, and until the charges are resolved—the process is often endless—they will continue to draw their salaries and accrue pensions and other benefits.

“You can never appreciate how irrational the system is until you’ve lived with it,” says Joel Klein, the city’s schools chancellor, who was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg seven years ago.

How Our Education System Turns Away Thousands Of Brilliant People Every Da

The Big Bang Theory increasing interest in Physics

Me and my son follow the Big Bang Theory TV series religiously. Its quite interesting, given that both of us are a bit of nerds and geeks. Well, there are quite a lot of similarities, the number of phd’s, the strange behaviour’s, the lack of anything closely resembling romance, the indian angle, etc. etc. As it so happens, I am also interested in Physics and also Karn. His 4th subject for A Levels in the 6th form is Physics. So it was with interest that I read this. I quote:

Interest in A-level and university courses rises as US comedy makes the subject "cool"

A cult US sitcom has emerged as the latest factor behind a remarkable resurgence of physics among A-level and university students.

The Big Bang Theory, a California-based comedy that follows two young physicists, is being credited with consolidating the growing appetite among teenagers for the once unfashionable subject of physics. Documentaries by Brian Cox have previously been mentioned as galvanising interest in the subject.

One pupil, Tom Whitmore, 15, from Brighton, acknowledged that Big Bang Theory had contributed to his decision, with a number of classmates, to consider physics at A-level, and in causing the subject to be regarded as "cool". "The Big Bang Theory is a great show and it's definitely made physics more popular. And disputes between classmates now have a new way of being settled: with a game of rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock," he said.

Experts at the Institute of Physics (IoP) also believe the series is playing a role in increasing the number of physics students. Its spokesman, Joe Winters, said: "The rise in popularity of physics appears to be due to a range of factors, including Brian's public success, the might of the Large Hadron Collider and, we're sure, the popularity of shows like The Big Bang Theory."

Alex Cheung, editor of physics.org, said: "There's no doubt that TV has also played a role. The Big Bang Theory seems to have had a positive effect and the viewing figures for Brian Cox's series suggest that millions of people in the UK are happy to welcome a physics professor, with a tutorial plan in hand, into their sitting room on a Sunday evening."

According to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), there was a 10% increase in the number of students accepted to read physics by the university admissons services between 2008-09, when The Big Bang Theory was first broadcast in the UK, and 2010-11. Numbers currently stand at 3,672. Applications for physics courses at university are also up more than 17% on last year. Philip Walker, an HEFCE spokesman, said the recent spate of popular televisions services had been influential but was hard to quantify.

The number studying A-level physics has been on the rise for five years, up 20% in that time to around 32,860. Physics is among the top 10 most popular A-level topics for the first time since 2002 – and the government's target of 35,000 students entering physics A-level by 2014 seems likely to be hit ahead of schedule. It is a far cry from 2005 when physics was officially classified as a "vulnerable" subject.

The number of those entered for AS level has also increased, by 27.8% compared with 2009, up from 41,955 to 58,190. The number of girls studying physics AS-level has risen a quarter to 13,540 and of boys by 28.6% to 44,650.

A Twitter debate on whether Big Bang Theory had played a role in encouraging more potential physicists provoked mixed reactions. PhD student Tim Green wrote: "I'd say it's more to do with economics and good science docs than sitcoms with only the vaguest relation to physics." Markela Zeneli said: "I think the show is hilarious, and it may make physicists seem nerdy and geeky, but what's so bad about that? "

Winters identified another more prosaic reason for the rising popularity of physics. He said: "TV shows and news coverage of exciting research both have the power to inspire their audiences but we firmly believe, and all the evidence suggests, that only good physics teaching has the power to convert student's latent interest into action."

I guess its different than the interest in singing from the X factor, cooking from the cooking shows, dancing from Britain got talent, Forensic Science from the various pathologist / forensic science TV shows and wave/beach studies from Baywatch, lol.

Serious dating and your college education is shot

What an interesting research study. I quote:

 

This document reviews the controversy over the true high school graduation rate in the United States, provides a comprehensive review of the debate, discusses shortcomings of current methods, and proposes new methods that address those shortcomings. The author concludes that current methods that are widely used are flawed: High school graduation rates in the United States are well above 80 percent, with high racial disparity; the graduation rates for white and Asian students are around 85 percent, and the rates for Hispanic and African American students are around 70-80 percent. Moderate dating has a positive impact on college readiness and college enrollment; serious dating and early sex has a significant negative impact on graduation and college enrollment.

Main thing is, keep your dating to moderate and don't shag too soon. Otherwise your school graduation efforts and college enrolment is threatened. You tend to get distracted. Hmmm, I think i can agree with this research.

Performance based pay for teachers is unfair as they dont control student performance

Here’s an interesting letter. I quote:

 

Ms. Clara B. Floyd, President
Maryland State Teachers’ Association

Dear Ms. Floyd:

One of your organization’s spokeswomen (speaking today on WTOP radio) explained that performance-based pay for teachers is “unfair” to teachers.  The proffered reason is that so much of a child’s intellectual development is affected by home environment, neighborhood influences, and other factors outside of teachers’ control that it is impossible to determine each teacher’s success or failure simply by measuring changes over time in the academic abilities of that teachers’ students.

Fair point.  But if it’s true that teachers have so little influence over their students’ learning that it’s “unfair” to tie teacher pay to the measured academic performance of their students, then what’s the use of public schooling?  If what students learn or don’t learn is largely outside of the influence of their schoolteachers, why spend all of these resources, year after year, on government schools?  Why continue to fund schools if children are so impervious to the fruits of formal education that any amount of knowledge that might actually take hold in their minds as a result of their schooling is too small to be measured?

In short, if your spokeswoman is correct, not only should pleas for performance-based pay for teachers be tossed into history’s dustbin, so, too, should government schooling itself be abandoned – for we can have no reliable evidence that it is serving its stated purpose of educating children.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Simplistic but thought provoking.

Difference between Madrassah and Secular School Students

So its pretty well established that generally the madrassah is considered to be not really very good in raising modern students and citizens. The common argument is that they teach medieval stuff at best and obscurantist stuff at worst. So what’s the real truth? Well, here’s one answer from Bangladesh. So what did the researchers do? But before we go there, some points.

In the early 1980’s, the Bangladeshi government made sure that the madrassah’s teach English, Bengali, Science and Mathematics along with the religious subjects in return for government funding for teachers and official registration. This is, of course, in stark contrast with the majority of madrassah’s elsewhere in the Muslim countries where teaching of modern subjects is a tad lacking. God (rather Allah) only knows what their output is but that’s not the point.

So the researchers went and asked questions on attitudes toward working mothers, desired fertility, higher education for boys vis-à-vis girls, and a number of political regimes such as military rule, democracy, and Islamic rule. Interviewing 1280 teachers over 94 madrassahs and 231 public secular schools with each school providing a rough 20 students sample size.

Teacher Responses:

On the question of desired fertility, teacher responses differ significantly: madrasa teachers either favor larger families or are more likely to rely on ‘destiny’ to decide on the desired number of children. Compared to their secular school colleagues, they significantly favor boys over girls for higher education and men over women for political leadership. They are also significantly sympathetic to religious leadership in political affairs. For instance, relative to secular school teachers, they significantly prefer Islamic rule, are at greater ease should religious leaders influence people’s voting choice, like to see more religious people in public offices, and are more likely to support religious leader’s interference in government affairs.

Graduate Responses:

Even after controlling for earlier religious education (maktab schooling), madrasa graduates are 31% more likely to prefer an unspecified number of children.

Female graduates in our sample were interviewed on whether they agreed with the following questions:

1. “Compared to housewives, working mothers are more cordial with children”

2. “A married working woman and a married housewife are equal”

3. “Both, the husband and the wife should contribute towards family income”

On the question of whether housewives, instead of working women, are better mothers, there is no madrasa effect. A negative association with religious school attendance prevails in the other two outcomes. Madrasa graduates do not agree that both husband and wife should contribute to family income

Even after controlling for educational histories (maktab attendance, class rank in grade 6 and grade completed), parental background, and socio-economic conditions, madrasa graduates are 21% more likely to conclude that higher education is a preserve for boys.

Lastly, females in our sample were asked three questions related to the desirability of various regimes for governing the country:

1. Military rule as a political regime for ruling the country is good

2. Democratic rule as a political regime for ruling the country is good

3. Islamic rule as a political regime for ruling the country is good

A large and significant madrasa effect prevails in all three cases: madrasa students are significantly opposed to military rule, support democracy and favor Islamic rule

In sum, the analysis of graduate responses reveals that madrasa attendance is not associated with perverse attitudes toward working women and military rule. They are more likely to support democracy although they have a preference for religious political representation. At the same time, these female madrasa students have a perverse attitude toward higher education for girls and larger family size. Also, our female madrasa respondents are more likely to delegate the choice of desired number of children to destiny.

Well, as you can see, a much more complex and richer set of results are emerging. For one, they are against the military rule which is a great step but then they desire islamic rule which is frankly like jumping from the frying pan into a fire. Surprising coming from females where an islamic state actively drops them in the order of priority on almost every aspect.

Then you have the other problem of fertility. Bangladesh and other Muslim countries are facing a massive problem in feeding, educating and raising their young. As it turns out, the problem is not going to get better but going to become worse if they all leave it up to God. God unfortunately doesnt have anything to do with contraception. All these kids will ruin the women’s lives. And they want this to continue. Bloody strange. But one very positive thing comes out, more female teachers the lower is the madrassah influence. Unfortunately, it conflicts with the other finding that its boys who deserve education more.

Sighs, more complexity….

Netherlands and its minorities

Came across two articles on how Netherlands are dealing with their minority issue. If you recall, this is the land where Theo van Gogh was killed by a rather lunatic idiot and since then, minorities, specially Muslim, have had issues.

First article related to how Dutch Egyptians have problems with their children’s education. This made me seriously wonder how on earth are we going to improve if male patriarchies are going to be simultaneously try to control their daughters, give them crap education and then at the same time, steal from the benefits system. What on earth is going on with these chaps? For them to say that an Egyptian State school education is better than a Dutch state school education is frankly ludicrous. They are suffering from delusion. I quote:

The ministry's investigation revealed several reasons why parents in Amsterdam are sending their children to Egypt. "It appears that the parents feel the quality of education in Egypt is higher than in the Netherlands," Dijkstra wrote to parliament in April. "A number of them feel the culture and the education package in Egypt is more appropriate." Other parents cited conflicts between ethnic groups at school, or personal reasons like divorce or illness.

A more varied picture emerges from a dozen interviews with the parents of Egyptian-Dutch children conducted by NRC Handelsblad in Egypt. None of the parents wanted to see their full name in print, mostly because they were afraid to lose child support or other benefits.

Adel may say his main motive was economic, but he complained most about the freedom and rights granted to children in the Netherlands. He is afraid to lose custody if he spanks his children. His brother's conviction for child kidnapping scared him. After divorcing his Dutch wife, Adel's brother had taken their two children to Egypt in violation of the custody agreement. When he returned to the Netherlands for work he was arrested and sent to prison for three years.

This is seriously stupid, the reason why these immigrants went to the Netherlands was to participate and earn from Dutch culture. Do they think that the economy, culture and earnings in Netherlands came from a culture, educational system which was akin to Egypt? if so, why leave in the first place? Its again these men being stupid. And nobody seems to think of the children’s rights either.

Second article related to rates of intermarriage. Now intermarriage is usually taken as a very good indicator of improving race relations. According to this note, and I quote:

Over 90 percent of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands who got married in 2008 did so with someone out of their own ethnic group. Less than 10 percent married a white Dutch person, according to the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS).

Last year, 28,000 people of non-Dutch origin got married. Over half were non-Western immigrants (the rest being Western immigrants), of whom about half were Turkish and Moroccan, most of them born in the Netherlands or having come there shortly after they were born abroad.

Seven in 10 Western brides and bridegrooms married a white Dutch partner. Among the non-Western immigrants, this was less than 25 percent. Among Turks alone, the figure was just 8 percent, and among Moroccans, only 7 percent. Surinamese and Antilleans (about 30 percent) boosted the figure for the whole non-Western group.

Around 15 percent of the non-Western immigrants and almost none of their Western counterparts that got married did so with a partner coming over from the country of origin. Among Turks and Moroccans, this figure was 20 and 14 percent respectively.

Sixty-three percent of the Dutch Turks who married, married another Turk already living in the Netherlands. For Moroccans, this domestic 'own group' figure was as much as 70 percent.

For years, over 80 percent of non-Westerners have got married to a partner of the same origin. Since 2004, when the rules for migration marriages were tightened up, 'import' marriages have become less frequent but not domestic 'own group' marriages.

Looks like there is a fair way to go still.

What defines your religion?

What indeed? But first the story. I quote:

Is being a Jew a matter of bloodline or religious practice? The UK's new Supreme Court is debating the subject this week, in a case that could have a wider impact on faith schools

As it so happens, the public government run schooling system is frankly at the bottom of the pile, the top of the pile belong to the independent fee paid private schools, followed by the faith schools. It is a damning indictment of the same. But then, because going for better education for your children is a peculiarly middle class sentiment, parents do all kinds of strange things to get their kids into a good school.

The middle school where my kids go to was in the news recently when the local council decided to prosecute a parent for effectively lying to get her son into that school. See this story about how the local council trying to check (as usual, when you have a constrained supply then all these kinds of shenanigans will happen) parental fraud.

Anyway, lets get back to the religious schools. That’s where you had an issue with parents suddenly becoming religious and trying to enter into religious grant maintained schools. This particular case hinges on an interesting situation and raises questions like:

how do you define faith? Is religion a matter of who you are? What you believe? Or what you do?

Pretty tough questions, eh? Previously the Jewish school would give admission to any child born to Jewish mothers. So far so good, but what about if the father is Jewish and the mother is not but the child practises Jewish rituals and stuff? According to the Race Relations Act, the child is Jewish, but not according to the rules of the school which uses traditional Jewish Law.

Go to the BBC site, they have some very interesting comments, but if these religious schools are being funded out of my tax money, then by heck, they better be consistent. If I had my way, i would shut them down and open them as charter schools. Then there is no problem. You cannot resolve this problem when you have the other problem of a state run horrible schooling system.

What factors drive Mathematics Achievement of students?

Quite an interesting paper, this one. The chaps analysed more than 100000 15 year old students and what did they find? Well, quite interestingly, they found that your scores in mathematics are better when:

• richer or more egalitarian countries;
• when living with two parents,
• without grandparents,
• with fewer siblings (especially fewer older siblings);
• with higher family SES,
• more books,
• cultural possessions,
• or cultural communication;
• or when they had greater interest in mathematics,
• more effort and perseverance,
• and higher self-efficacy or self-concept

Quite an interesting medley of factors, eh? Some surprises were there obviously. What on earth is the connection with grandparents? And nothing direct on teachers?

Media Studies or Chemistry, which is easier?

Very interesting question and loads of data here. This graphic surprised me:

Saving money in the education system

Two political parties in the UK have pronounced on ways to save money in the education system. The Labour Party says that it can save up to £2bn by cutting thousands of senior staff and restraining pay. Here’s his proposal:

Mr Balls spoke of comprehensives merging to form federations, so a head teacher and a team of deputies would work across the different schools.

He estimated this option could save the department about £500m a year.

Another £250m could be saved by losing about 3,000 senior school jobs, mainly through "natural wastage", he said.

It was also likely more than 300 jobs in Whitehall which involve advising schools about the curriculum could go, he said.

Quite interesting and something that could actually work out. A federation of schools with good IT technology to work across the schools can work out. And yes, losing senior school jobs without replacement is a relatively good idea to save money and finally yes, definitely cut the damn bureaucrats.

The LibDems now are thinking about changing their promise to drop the tuition fees. I have made my views quite clear, primary and secondary education must be free, the state has a responsibility to have educated students. But tertiary education, in college and university, has to be made fee paying.

There is nothing in any form of logic which says that the taxpayers should pay for something that you personally as an individual will gain. And its a very highly regressive step. In effect, as a proportion of tax take, you are taking money from the lower strata to pay for somebody in the middle or upper strata to get educated. The middle and upper strata of the society can very well pay for their education, so in effect, the lower and poor people in this country are getting a double whammy.

Watch the left moan, but then, the left makes fleecing the poor into a master class while dressing it up as social justice. BAH!

But where are the ideas for improving the education system from the political parties? Where is the additional investment which we will actually require to improve the mathematics, the innovation, the science and technology, the pools of intelligent students? sighs, long way to go…

Limit of 30% foreigners in a classroom?

The Italian Government is proposing to have a limit of 30% immigrant students in a school class. The argument seems to be that any more than this % of students in a classroom has an adverse impact on integration. Not this is an interesting argument.

On the anti side, i dislike this purely on the basis that its against individual choice and I hate the government buggering around with school life.

 

Then you have the flip side. Remember the forces busing of black students to white schools to make sure diversity is achieved? Its called as Desegregation policies where black students are sent to white schools to make sure that racial diversity is maintained. We have affirmative action to make sure that minorities are benefited. And so on and so forth. If the objective is to have well balanced school, just like elsewhere in the world, we positively discriminate, surely this 30% limit also makes sense?

Needs more thought…

Interethnic marriages – how are the children impacted?

Quite an interesting question, no? And a partial answer is given here. I quote some interesting bits:

As interethnic marriages are becoming more common in immigrant countries research  on how these marriages affect the development of human capital of their children is growing. The findings are mixed. Chiswick and DebBurman (2004) and Ramakrishnan (2004) find that children from couples with one US born parent attain more years of education than children from couples with two foreign born parents.

The two studies differ in the importance of the gender of the US born parent. Chiswick and DebBurman (2004) find that having a US born father (+0.19 years) is more important than having a US born mother (+0.13 years), but according to Ramakrishnan (2004) having a US born mother (+0.26 years) is more important than having a US born father (+0.14 years). Furtado (2005) finds that having a US born mother even has a negative effect on the educational attainment of children. Children with a foreign born father and a US born mother have a higher high-school dropout rate than children from a foreign born mother and a US born father or two foreign born parents.

Besides this, the authors find that:

We find that children from marriages with native mothers have a higher educational attainment than children from ethnic homogeneous Moluccan couples or couples with a native father. In raising Moluccan children, mothers traditionally play a dominant role, and for native Dutch mothers it is easier to support their children in their educational career because they have more experience with and knowledge about the Dutch educational system and possibly also better language skills than Moluccan mothers from the first and second generation.

This was quite interesting. I never thought about it in this way at all. Always thought that there was a difference between the native born kids and foreign born kids, but as it seems, the impact of the parents is important. I have seen that in my own case as well. We missed out on many opportunities for our own kids because we did not know the in’s and out’s of the British educational system. For example, in hindsight, we should have worked much harder on getting our son into the grammar school stream and for that, we should have bought a house near the damn school. But we will learn from this for our little princess.

Secretary forced out of Muslim school by parents who thought she was a man

Sometimes I wonder whether the parents need to be educated as well, because as in this story, this bunch of hoo haa’s are clearly shown up as being stupid, moronic, idiotic, lacking in basic decency, obscurantist, medieval, stupid, horrible, mean, pathetic, disgusting, and and and. This is being taught at a British School? Crikey, what a sad sad state of affairs:

Shifa Patel, who dressed for work in a traditional hijab (head covering) and full-length robe, was targeted after photographs of her with short hair and wearing a shirt and trousers were copied from social networking site Facebook.

But when an angry mob of parents gathered at the school gates attempting to force their way in and demanding she be sacked, the secretary decided to hand in her resignation and the head also decided to quit in protest.

The school seems to be setup by parents who are seriously stupid.

It was established in 1995 by parents who were concerned about the state school environment and the effect it might have on their children. Music is viewed as un-Islamic and GCSE students are taught Islamic studies, rather than religious education, and Arabic and Urdu instead of modern European languages.

What’s good is that these people will soon get extinct as only idiots like them will want to teach in their school and only more idiots will come out of the school. PATHETIC!.

British kids believe Auschwitz is a type of beer

Good heavens!!! I knew things were bad in the school but THIS?

A new study shows that around 10 percent British schoolchildren could not identify Auschwitz as a Nazi death camp, and 2 percent believe it is a kind of beer. The poll of 1,000 pupils between the ages of 11 to 16 was conducted by the London Jewish Cultural Center and Miramax film company, to mark the launch of the DVD edition of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
According to the survey, 60 percent of pupils did not know what the Final Solution was, and 20 percent defined the phrase as the talks that brought an end to World War II. Just 37 percent of the children polled knew that six million Jews perished in the Holocaust. "We are not surprised by the results, although we are disappointed," said Stephanie Rose of the London Jewish Cultural Center.

While I know 10% sounds a bit tolerable, but still…