In "Excellent Sheep," William Deresiewicz describes 'elite' higher education as one in which students perform excellently, but only in a spirit of compliance with assigned tasks. The depth of this problem -- which has a long pedigree in philosophy -- is such that an advantage might be found in non-'elite' and even manifestly lame…

Mike Rose, author of "The Mind at Work," extols both the wholesome, pragmatic qualities of handcraft and the implicit intellectual skills required of its practitioners. His recent article, "Rethinking Remedial Education and the Academic-Vocational Divide," is titled with a call to action; in these few words alone, Rose problematizes the polar…

A report entitled "What we can learn from the English, mathematics and science curricula of high-performing jurisdictions" seems taken to suggest... "that imitating the content, pace and pedagogy of Singapore and Hong Kong in particular, would enable us to improve the mathematical performance of English children". This is…

NCLB has created a climate where teachers feel increasingly pressured to ensure their students pass the test, with the result that they allocate less time for purposeful and authentic learning experiences (Kohn, 2004). Thus, rote memorization is favored over inquiry. Teachers must aim to create a classroom environment that recognizes and values…

In this article, the authors present their opposing views on whether students need to memorize facts in the digital age. One author contends that it is foolhardy to expect students to develop procedural knowledge (processes) without the underlying declarative knowledge (facts). The other says that analyzing always takes precedence over memorizing…

This article discusses a case for teaching a kind of knowledge that is not in textbooks. The author calls on education leaders to take a crucial step toward getting students to use higher-order thinking skills by drawing a sharp line between firsthand and secondhand knowledge. The best way to do this is to focus attention directly on some part of…

The "elephant in the room" when we talk about preparing critical thinkers for the 21st century, Gallagher believes, is U.S. students' lack of reading proficiency and their general disinclination to read. Gallagher's provocative argument is that a significant factor behind the decline of reading in young people is a set of practices…

The best research studies are more noteworthy for the issues they raise than for the questions they answer. Being informative is good; being heuristic is better. The two papers under consideration are heuristic as well as informative. Thus, Wong, Kasari, Freeman, and Paparella (2007) provide an answer to the question of what might influence the…

Tells the author's own story of surviving the 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles, and how the practice of memorizing poetry helped her to recover from that trauma. (SR)

Activist who believed in demonstration and example, Ralph W. Tyler harnessed his theorems to social engineering and participated in astonishing number of watershed events: pursuing monumental Eight-Year Study, founding National Academy of Education, creating and directing Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University,…

Advises school leaders to consolidate people's names in their memory, thus avoiding acute embarrassment. School Executives can use the L-I-S-T-E-N approach: listen carefully, initiate questions about the person's name, say it often, translate the name into pictures, etch key facial features onto their minds, and note salient information on…

Commends the practice of learning poetry by heart. (HOD)

A college English professor turned children's poet discusses his approach to teaching poetry to children, which begins by recognizing the child as a person with an intellect. (AEA)

Asserts that getting students to apply their knowledge in new situations is important, noting that reaching this goal generally requires that students have a large share of knowledge of the relevant topic. Describes rote versus inflexible knowledge, explaining that inflexible knowledge is the normal foundation for expertise and discussing how…

Briefly discusses three different approaches to instruction and differences between education and training, and proposes a system for categorizing different types of instructional software currently available: memorization software for education (drill and practice) and for training (simulations), and performance aid software (intelligent computer…