Rethinking College Admissions
Over recent years there’s been a steady escalation of concern about the admissions process at the most revered, selective American colleges. And little by little, those colleges have made tweaks.
But I get the thrilling sense that something bigger is about to give.
The best evidence is a report to be released on Wednesday. I received an advance copy. Titled “Turning the Tide,” it’s the work primarily of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, though scores of educators — including the presidents and deans of admission at many of the country’s elite institutions of higher education — contributed to or endorsed it. Top administrators from Yale, M.I.T. and the University of Michigan are scheduled to participate in a news conference at which it’s unveiled.
“Turning the Tide” sagely reflects on what’s wrong with admissions and rightly calls for a revolution, including specific suggestions. It could make a real difference not just because it has widespread backing but also because it nails the way in which society in general — and children in particular — are badly served by the status quo.
Focused on certain markers and metrics, the admissions process warps the values of students drawn into a competitive frenzy. It jeopardizes their mental health. And it fails to include — and identify the potential in — enough kids from less privileged backgrounds.
“It’s really time to say ‘enough,’ stop wringing our hands and figure out some collective action,” Richard Weissbourd, a senior lecturer at Harvard’s education school, told me. “It’s a pivot point.”
Weissbourd is one of the directors of the school’s Making Caring Common project, which produced the report. He’s also the author of research that was one motivation for it — specifically, a survey of more than 10,000 middle- and high-school students that asked them what mattered most: high individual achievement, happiness or caring for others. Only 22 percent said caring for others.
The new report contemplates how the admissions process contributes to that psychology and how it might be changed. Some of those alterations would simultaneously level the playing field for kids applying to college from less advantaged backgrounds.
“Colleges spend a huge sum each year sending signals that influence the behavior of millions of students,” the report notes. Why not rethink those signals to reshape that behavior?
The report recommends less emphasis on standardized test scores, which largely correlate with family income.
It asks colleges to send a clear message that admissions officers won’t be impressed by more than a few Advanced Placement courses. Poorer high schools aren’t as likely to offer A.P. courses, and a heavy load of them is often cited as a culprit in sleep deprivation, anxiety and depression among students at richer schools.
The report also suggests that colleges discourage manic résumé padding by accepting information on a sharply limited number of extracurricular activities; that they better use essays and references to figure out which students’ community-service projects are heartfelt and which are merely window dressing; and that they give full due to the family obligations and part-time work that some underprivileged kids take on.
Stephen Farmer, the vice provost for enrollment and undergraduate admissions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, praised the report as consistent with his school’s desire “to be humbler and more alert to the many ways in which people can stake a claim on a place here.”
He said that the school had already, for example, downgraded the importance of “A.P. everything,” which doesn’t necessarily measure true ability or intellectual hunger.
“Just making people jump through hoops because we can — we don’t want to do that,” he told me, especially when some hoops are so arbitrary that “we might as well be admitting these people on the basis of their height or the size of their neck.”
“Turning the Tide” follows other reexaminations of the admissions process. A growing number of colleges have made the SAT or ACT optional. And late last year, more than 80 colleges, including all eight in the Ivy League, announced the formation of the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, which is developing a website and application process intended in part to diversify student bodies.
Colleges are becoming more conscious of their roles — too frequently neglected — in social mobility. They’re recognizing how many admissions measures favor students from affluent families.
They’re realizing that many kids admitted into top schools are emotional wrecks or slavish adherents to soulless scripts that forbid the exploration of genuine passions. And they’re acknowledging the extent to which the admissions process has contributed to this.
But they still need to stop filling so much of each freshman class with specially tagged legacy cases and athletes and to quit worrying about rankings like those of U.S. News and World Report. Only then will the tide fully turn.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/opini ... 05309&_r=0
THE YOUTH
We are not corrupt — Kenyan University students
University students in Kenya are unhappy with a recent report that seems to paint young men (and women) as corrupt and money-hungry.
The Kenyan Youth Survey Report conducted by Aga Khan University showed that 50 per cent of the youth believe it does not matter how one makes money as long as one does not end up in jail.
“There is no doubt. We have a huge reservoir of corrupt or corruptible youth in this country,” said Alex Awiti, Director of the East African Institute, a part of Aga Khan University, who commissioned the survey.
A bulk of the youth are in some institutions of higher learning or just walking out of one. And in campuses, where you would expect learned and refined minds, is it any different? Campus Vibe spoke to a few students. At Moi University, Jim India, a political science student, feels the survey failed to capture the real picture.
“The survey does not tell us about the few who are doing things right. Some of us have made a resolve to lead our lives with integrity,” said India.
More at the source: Standard Media
https://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2016/ ... -students/
University students in Kenya are unhappy with a recent report that seems to paint young men (and women) as corrupt and money-hungry.
The Kenyan Youth Survey Report conducted by Aga Khan University showed that 50 per cent of the youth believe it does not matter how one makes money as long as one does not end up in jail.
“There is no doubt. We have a huge reservoir of corrupt or corruptible youth in this country,” said Alex Awiti, Director of the East African Institute, a part of Aga Khan University, who commissioned the survey.
A bulk of the youth are in some institutions of higher learning or just walking out of one. And in campuses, where you would expect learned and refined minds, is it any different? Campus Vibe spoke to a few students. At Moi University, Jim India, a political science student, feels the survey failed to capture the real picture.
“The survey does not tell us about the few who are doing things right. Some of us have made a resolve to lead our lives with integrity,” said India.
More at the source: Standard Media
https://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2016/ ... -students/
The Shame Culture
In 1987, Allan Bloom wrote a book called “The Closing of the American Mind.” The core argument was that American campuses were awash in moral relativism. Subjective personal values had replaced universal moral principles. Nothing was either right or wrong. Amid a wave of rampant nonjudgmentalism, life was flatter and emptier.
Bloom’s thesis was accurate at the time, but it’s not accurate anymore. College campuses are today awash in moral judgment.
Many people carefully guard their words, afraid they might transgress one of the norms that have come into existence. Those accused of incorrect thought face ruinous consequences. When a moral crusade spreads across campus, many students feel compelled to post in support of it on Facebook within minutes. If they do not post, they will be noticed and condemned.
Some sort of moral system is coming into place. Some new criteria now exist, which people use to define correct and incorrect action. The big question is: What is the nature of this new moral system?
Last year, Andy Crouch published an essay in Christianity Today that takes us toward an answer.
Crouch starts with the distinction the anthropologist Ruth Benedict popularized, between a guilt culture and a shame culture. In a guilt culture you know you are good or bad by what your conscience feels. In a shame culture you know you are good or bad by what your community says about you, by whether it honors or excludes you. In a guilt culture people sometimes feel they do bad things; in a shame culture social exclusion makes people feel they are bad.
Crouch argues that the omnipresence of social media has created a new sort of shame culture. The world of Facebook, Instagram and the rest is a world of constant display and observation. The desire to be embraced and praised by the community is intense. People dread being exiled and condemned. Moral life is not built on the continuum of right and wrong; it’s built on the continuum of inclusion and exclusion.
This creates a set of common behavior patterns. First, members of a group lavish one another with praise so that they themselves might be accepted and praised in turn.
Second, there are nonetheless enforcers within the group who build their personal power and reputation by policing the group and condemning those who break the group code. Social media can be vicious to those who don’t fit in. Twitter can erupt in instant ridicule for anyone who stumbles.
Third, people are extremely anxious that their group might be condemned or denigrated. They demand instant respect and recognition for their group. They feel some moral wrong has been perpetrated when their group has been disrespected, and react with the most violent intensity.
Crouch describes how video gamers viciously went after journalists, mostly women, who had criticized the misogyny of their games. Campus controversies get so hot so fast because even a minor slight to a group is perceived as a basic identity threat.
The ultimate sin today, Crouch argues, is to criticize a group, especially on moral grounds. Talk of good and bad has to defer to talk about respect and recognition. Crouch writes, “Talk of right and wrong is troubling when it is accompanied by seeming indifference to the experience of shame that accompanies judgments of ‘immorality.’”
He notes that this shame culture is different from the traditional shame cultures, the ones in Asia, for example. In traditional shame cultures the opposite of shame was honor or “face” — being known as a dignified and upstanding citizen. In the new shame culture, the opposite of shame is celebrity — to be attention-grabbing and aggressively unique on some media platform.
On the positive side, this new shame culture might rebind the social and communal fabric. It might reverse, a bit, the individualistic, atomizing thrust of the past 50 years.
On the other hand, everybody is perpetually insecure in a moral system based on inclusion and exclusion. There are no permanent standards, just the shifting judgment of the crowd. It is a culture of oversensitivity, overreaction and frequent moral panics, during which everybody feels compelled to go along.
If we’re going to avoid a constant state of anxiety, people’s identities have to be based on standards of justice and virtue that are deeper and more permanent than the shifting fancy of the crowd. In an era of omnipresent social media, it’s probably doubly important to discover and name your own personal True North, vision of an ultimate good, which is worth defending even at the cost of unpopularity and exclusion.
The guilt culture could be harsh, but at least you could hate the sin and still love the sinner. The modern shame culture allegedly values inclusion and tolerance, but it can be strangely unmerciful to those who disagree and to those who don’t fit in.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/opini ... ef=opinion
In 1987, Allan Bloom wrote a book called “The Closing of the American Mind.” The core argument was that American campuses were awash in moral relativism. Subjective personal values had replaced universal moral principles. Nothing was either right or wrong. Amid a wave of rampant nonjudgmentalism, life was flatter and emptier.
Bloom’s thesis was accurate at the time, but it’s not accurate anymore. College campuses are today awash in moral judgment.
Many people carefully guard their words, afraid they might transgress one of the norms that have come into existence. Those accused of incorrect thought face ruinous consequences. When a moral crusade spreads across campus, many students feel compelled to post in support of it on Facebook within minutes. If they do not post, they will be noticed and condemned.
Some sort of moral system is coming into place. Some new criteria now exist, which people use to define correct and incorrect action. The big question is: What is the nature of this new moral system?
Last year, Andy Crouch published an essay in Christianity Today that takes us toward an answer.
Crouch starts with the distinction the anthropologist Ruth Benedict popularized, between a guilt culture and a shame culture. In a guilt culture you know you are good or bad by what your conscience feels. In a shame culture you know you are good or bad by what your community says about you, by whether it honors or excludes you. In a guilt culture people sometimes feel they do bad things; in a shame culture social exclusion makes people feel they are bad.
Crouch argues that the omnipresence of social media has created a new sort of shame culture. The world of Facebook, Instagram and the rest is a world of constant display and observation. The desire to be embraced and praised by the community is intense. People dread being exiled and condemned. Moral life is not built on the continuum of right and wrong; it’s built on the continuum of inclusion and exclusion.
This creates a set of common behavior patterns. First, members of a group lavish one another with praise so that they themselves might be accepted and praised in turn.
Second, there are nonetheless enforcers within the group who build their personal power and reputation by policing the group and condemning those who break the group code. Social media can be vicious to those who don’t fit in. Twitter can erupt in instant ridicule for anyone who stumbles.
Third, people are extremely anxious that their group might be condemned or denigrated. They demand instant respect and recognition for their group. They feel some moral wrong has been perpetrated when their group has been disrespected, and react with the most violent intensity.
Crouch describes how video gamers viciously went after journalists, mostly women, who had criticized the misogyny of their games. Campus controversies get so hot so fast because even a minor slight to a group is perceived as a basic identity threat.
The ultimate sin today, Crouch argues, is to criticize a group, especially on moral grounds. Talk of good and bad has to defer to talk about respect and recognition. Crouch writes, “Talk of right and wrong is troubling when it is accompanied by seeming indifference to the experience of shame that accompanies judgments of ‘immorality.’”
He notes that this shame culture is different from the traditional shame cultures, the ones in Asia, for example. In traditional shame cultures the opposite of shame was honor or “face” — being known as a dignified and upstanding citizen. In the new shame culture, the opposite of shame is celebrity — to be attention-grabbing and aggressively unique on some media platform.
On the positive side, this new shame culture might rebind the social and communal fabric. It might reverse, a bit, the individualistic, atomizing thrust of the past 50 years.
On the other hand, everybody is perpetually insecure in a moral system based on inclusion and exclusion. There are no permanent standards, just the shifting judgment of the crowd. It is a culture of oversensitivity, overreaction and frequent moral panics, during which everybody feels compelled to go along.
If we’re going to avoid a constant state of anxiety, people’s identities have to be based on standards of justice and virtue that are deeper and more permanent than the shifting fancy of the crowd. In an era of omnipresent social media, it’s probably doubly important to discover and name your own personal True North, vision of an ultimate good, which is worth defending even at the cost of unpopularity and exclusion.
The guilt culture could be harsh, but at least you could hate the sin and still love the sinner. The modern shame culture allegedly values inclusion and tolerance, but it can be strangely unmerciful to those who disagree and to those who don’t fit in.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/opini ... ef=opinion
Putting Grit in Its Place
We all know why it exists, but the grade-point average is one of the more destructive elements in American education.
Success is about being passionately good at one or two things, but students who want to get close to that 4.0 have to be prudentially balanced about every subject. In life we want independent thinking and risk-taking, but the G.P.A. system encourages students to be deferential and risk averse, giving their teachers what they want.
Creative people are good at asking new questions, but the G.P.A. rewards those who can answer other people’s questions. The modern economy rewards those who can think in ways computers can’t, but the G.P.A. rewards people who can grind away at mental tasks they find boring. People are happiest when motivated intrinsically, but the G.P.A. is the mother of all extrinsic motivations.
The G.P.A. ethos takes spirited children and pushes them to be hard working but complaisant. The G.P.A. mentality means tremendous emphasis has now been placed on grit, the ability to trudge through long stretches of difficulty. Influenced by this culture, schools across America are busy teaching their students to be gritty and to have “character” — by which they mean skills like self-discipline and resilience that contribute to career success.
Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania is the researcher most associated with the study and popularization of grit. And yet what I like about her new book, “Grit,” is the way she is pulling us away from the narrow, joyless intonations of that word, and pointing us beyond the way many schools are now teaching it.
Sure, she starts the book by describing grit as persevering through unpleasantness. She describes Beast Barracks, the physical ordeal that first-year West Point cadets have to endure.
She writes about high school students who grind away at homework for hours and athletes capable of practicing in the most arduous way possible.
And yet Duckworth notes that moral purpose also contributes to grit. People who are motivated more by altruism than personal pleasure score higher on grit scales. She also notes that having a hopeful temperament contributes to perseverance.
Most important, she notes that the quality of our longing matters. Gritty people are resilient and hard working, sure. But they also, she writes, know in a very, very deep way what it is they want.
This is a crucial leap. It leads to a very different set of questions and approaches. How do we help students decide what they want? How do we improve the quality and ardor of their longing?
The G.P.A. mentality is based on the supposition that we are thinking creatures. Young minds have to be taught self-discipline so they can acquire knowledge. That’s partly true, but as James K. A. Smith notes in his own book “You Are What You Love,” human beings are primarily defined by what we desire, not what we know. Our wants are at the core of our identity, the wellspring whence our actions flow.
At the highest level, our lives are directed toward some telos, or vision of the good life. Whether we are aware of it or not, we’re all oriented around some set of goals. As David Foster Wallace put it in his Kenyon commencement address, “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships.” Some worship money, or power or popularity or nursing or art, but everybody’s life is organized around some longing. The heart is both a driving engine and a compass.
I don’t know about you, but I’m really bad at being self-disciplined about things I don’t care about. For me, and I suspect for many, hard work and resilience can only happen when there is a strong desire. Grit is thus downstream from longing. People need a powerful why if they are going to be able to endure any how.
Duckworth herself has a very clear telos. As she defines it, “Use psychological science to help kids thrive.” Throughout her book, you can feel her passion for her field and see how gritty she has been in pursuing her end.
Suppose you were designing a school to help students find their own clear end — as clear as that one. Say you were designing a school to elevate and intensify longings. Wouldn’t you want to provide examples of people who have intense longings? Wouldn’t you want to encourage students to be obsessive about worthy things? Wouldn’t you discuss which loves are higher than others and practices that habituate them toward those desires? Wouldn’t you be all about providing students with new subjects to love?
In such a school you might even de-emphasize the G.P.A. mentality, which puts a tether on passionate interests and substitutes other people’s longings for the student’s own.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/opini ... ef=opinion
We all know why it exists, but the grade-point average is one of the more destructive elements in American education.
Success is about being passionately good at one or two things, but students who want to get close to that 4.0 have to be prudentially balanced about every subject. In life we want independent thinking and risk-taking, but the G.P.A. system encourages students to be deferential and risk averse, giving their teachers what they want.
Creative people are good at asking new questions, but the G.P.A. rewards those who can answer other people’s questions. The modern economy rewards those who can think in ways computers can’t, but the G.P.A. rewards people who can grind away at mental tasks they find boring. People are happiest when motivated intrinsically, but the G.P.A. is the mother of all extrinsic motivations.
The G.P.A. ethos takes spirited children and pushes them to be hard working but complaisant. The G.P.A. mentality means tremendous emphasis has now been placed on grit, the ability to trudge through long stretches of difficulty. Influenced by this culture, schools across America are busy teaching their students to be gritty and to have “character” — by which they mean skills like self-discipline and resilience that contribute to career success.
Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania is the researcher most associated with the study and popularization of grit. And yet what I like about her new book, “Grit,” is the way she is pulling us away from the narrow, joyless intonations of that word, and pointing us beyond the way many schools are now teaching it.
Sure, she starts the book by describing grit as persevering through unpleasantness. She describes Beast Barracks, the physical ordeal that first-year West Point cadets have to endure.
She writes about high school students who grind away at homework for hours and athletes capable of practicing in the most arduous way possible.
And yet Duckworth notes that moral purpose also contributes to grit. People who are motivated more by altruism than personal pleasure score higher on grit scales. She also notes that having a hopeful temperament contributes to perseverance.
Most important, she notes that the quality of our longing matters. Gritty people are resilient and hard working, sure. But they also, she writes, know in a very, very deep way what it is they want.
This is a crucial leap. It leads to a very different set of questions and approaches. How do we help students decide what they want? How do we improve the quality and ardor of their longing?
The G.P.A. mentality is based on the supposition that we are thinking creatures. Young minds have to be taught self-discipline so they can acquire knowledge. That’s partly true, but as James K. A. Smith notes in his own book “You Are What You Love,” human beings are primarily defined by what we desire, not what we know. Our wants are at the core of our identity, the wellspring whence our actions flow.
At the highest level, our lives are directed toward some telos, or vision of the good life. Whether we are aware of it or not, we’re all oriented around some set of goals. As David Foster Wallace put it in his Kenyon commencement address, “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships.” Some worship money, or power or popularity or nursing or art, but everybody’s life is organized around some longing. The heart is both a driving engine and a compass.
I don’t know about you, but I’m really bad at being self-disciplined about things I don’t care about. For me, and I suspect for many, hard work and resilience can only happen when there is a strong desire. Grit is thus downstream from longing. People need a powerful why if they are going to be able to endure any how.
Duckworth herself has a very clear telos. As she defines it, “Use psychological science to help kids thrive.” Throughout her book, you can feel her passion for her field and see how gritty she has been in pursuing her end.
Suppose you were designing a school to help students find their own clear end — as clear as that one. Say you were designing a school to elevate and intensify longings. Wouldn’t you want to provide examples of people who have intense longings? Wouldn’t you want to encourage students to be obsessive about worthy things? Wouldn’t you discuss which loves are higher than others and practices that habituate them toward those desires? Wouldn’t you be all about providing students with new subjects to love?
In such a school you might even de-emphasize the G.P.A. mentality, which puts a tether on passionate interests and substitutes other people’s longings for the student’s own.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/opini ... ef=opinion
How and Why You Diversify Colleges
THERE’S a whole lot wrong with the conversation about including more low-income students at elite colleges, but let’s start here: The effort is too often framed as some do-gooder favor to those kids.
Hardly. It’s a favor to us all. It’s a plus for richer students, who are then exposed to a breadth of perspectives that lies at the heart of the truest, best education. With the right coaxing and mixing on campus, they become more fluent in diversity, which has professional benefits as well as the obvious civic and moral ones.
It’s a win for America and its imperiled promise of social mobility.
“Opportunity for people from every conceivable background is essential to a functioning democracy, and in this country we’re not providing enough of it,” Biddy Martin, the president of Amherst College, told me last week. “I also think it’s a waste not to develop talent in young people wherever it exists, and it exists everywhere.”
So what’s Amherst doing?
Over recent years, it has devoted significantly more energy and resources than it once did into identifying and recruiting promising students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. It works with community-based organizations. It develops relationships with, and sends emissaries to, schools in poorer areas.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opini ... d=71987722
THERE’S a whole lot wrong with the conversation about including more low-income students at elite colleges, but let’s start here: The effort is too often framed as some do-gooder favor to those kids.
Hardly. It’s a favor to us all. It’s a plus for richer students, who are then exposed to a breadth of perspectives that lies at the heart of the truest, best education. With the right coaxing and mixing on campus, they become more fluent in diversity, which has professional benefits as well as the obvious civic and moral ones.
It’s a win for America and its imperiled promise of social mobility.
“Opportunity for people from every conceivable background is essential to a functioning democracy, and in this country we’re not providing enough of it,” Biddy Martin, the president of Amherst College, told me last week. “I also think it’s a waste not to develop talent in young people wherever it exists, and it exists everywhere.”
So what’s Amherst doing?
Over recent years, it has devoted significantly more energy and resources than it once did into identifying and recruiting promising students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. It works with community-based organizations. It develops relationships with, and sends emissaries to, schools in poorer areas.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opini ... d=71987722
Inside Student Radicalism
Today’s elite college students face a unique set of pressures. On the professional side life is competitive, pressured, time-consuming, capitalistic and stressful. On the political side many elite universities are home to an ethos of middle-aged leftism. The general atmosphere embraces feminism, civil rights, egalitarianism and environmentalism, but it is expressed as academic discourse, not as action on the streets.
This creates a tension in the minds of some students. On the professional side they are stressed and exhausted. On the political, spiritual and moral side they are unfulfilled.
On the professional side some students are haunted by the anxiety that they are failing in some comprehensive but undefinable way. On the spiritual side they hunger for a vehement crusade that will fulfill their moral yearnings and produce social justice.
This situation — a patina of genteel progressivism atop a churning engine of amoral meritocracy — is inherently unstable and was bound to produce a counterreaction. In his essay “The Big Uneasy,” in the current issue of The New Yorker, Nathan Heller describes life at Oberlin College in Ohio. In his penetrating interviews with the activist students you can see how the current passion for identity politics grows, in part, as a reaction against both sides of campus life.
The students Heller interviewed express a comprehensive dissatisfaction with their lives. “I’m actually still trying to reconcile how unhappy I’ve been here with how happy people were insisting I must be,” one student says. “Whatever you do at Oberlin as a person of color or a low-income person, it just doesn’t work,” says another.
Many of these students have rejected the meritocratic achievement culture whole cloth — the idea that life is about moving up the ladder. “I don’t want to assimilate into middle-class values,” one student tells Heller. “I’m going home, back to the ‘hood’ of Chicago, to be exactly who I was before I came to Oberlin.”
“Working my piece of land somewhere and living autonomously — that’s the dream,” another says. “Just getting … out of America. It’s a sinking ship.”
On the other hand they want a moral life that is more vehement, more strenuous than anything being offered by their elders. Oberlin College is as progressive as the day is long. But in mid-December, a group of students gave the Oberlin administration a list of 50 nonnegotiable demands, asserting that “this institution functions on the premises of imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and a cissexist heteropatriarchy.”
The identity politics the students have produced inverts the values of the meritocracy. The meritocracy is striving toward excellence; identity politics is deeply egalitarian. The meritocracy measures you by how much you’ve accomplished; identity politics measures you by how much you’ve been oppressed. In the meritocracy your right to be heard is earned through long learning and quality insight; in identity politics your right to be heard is earned by your experience of discrimination. The meritocracy places tremendous emphasis on individual agency; identity politics argues that agency is limited within a system of oppression.
The meritocracy sees the university as a gem tumbler, a bouncing place where people crash off one another and thereby hone their thoughts and skills. The students Heller describes sense the moral emptiness of the current meritocracy and are groping for lives of purpose. At the same time they feel fragile and want protection — protection from rejection, failure or opposing or disturbing ideas.
What one sees in the essay are the various strains of American liberalism crashing into one another: the admiration for achievement clashing against the moral superiority of the victim; the desire to let students run free, clashing against the desire to protect the oppressed from psychologically unsafe experiences.
The current identity politics movement, like all previous forms of campus radicalism, is sparked by genuine social injustices. Agree or disagree with these students, it’s hard not to admire the impulse to serve a social good and commit to some lofty purpose.
On the other hand, this movement does not emerge from a place of confidence and strength. It emerges from a place of anxiety, lostness and fragility. It is distorted by that soil. Movements that grant themselves the status of victim lack both the confidence to lead change and the humility to converse with others. People who try to use politics to fill emotional and personal voids get more and more extreme and end up as fanatics.
There is a vacuum at the heart of things here. The meritocracy has become amoral. We ask students to work harder and harder while providing them with less and less of an idea of how they might find a purpose in all that work.
If we slowed down the frenetic pace of competition, and helped students think about vocation — the meaning and purpose of work — then life would have a firmer base. Political life — whether left or right, radical or moderate — wouldn’t be distorted so much by inner pain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Today’s elite college students face a unique set of pressures. On the professional side life is competitive, pressured, time-consuming, capitalistic and stressful. On the political side many elite universities are home to an ethos of middle-aged leftism. The general atmosphere embraces feminism, civil rights, egalitarianism and environmentalism, but it is expressed as academic discourse, not as action on the streets.
This creates a tension in the minds of some students. On the professional side they are stressed and exhausted. On the political, spiritual and moral side they are unfulfilled.
On the professional side some students are haunted by the anxiety that they are failing in some comprehensive but undefinable way. On the spiritual side they hunger for a vehement crusade that will fulfill their moral yearnings and produce social justice.
This situation — a patina of genteel progressivism atop a churning engine of amoral meritocracy — is inherently unstable and was bound to produce a counterreaction. In his essay “The Big Uneasy,” in the current issue of The New Yorker, Nathan Heller describes life at Oberlin College in Ohio. In his penetrating interviews with the activist students you can see how the current passion for identity politics grows, in part, as a reaction against both sides of campus life.
The students Heller interviewed express a comprehensive dissatisfaction with their lives. “I’m actually still trying to reconcile how unhappy I’ve been here with how happy people were insisting I must be,” one student says. “Whatever you do at Oberlin as a person of color or a low-income person, it just doesn’t work,” says another.
Many of these students have rejected the meritocratic achievement culture whole cloth — the idea that life is about moving up the ladder. “I don’t want to assimilate into middle-class values,” one student tells Heller. “I’m going home, back to the ‘hood’ of Chicago, to be exactly who I was before I came to Oberlin.”
“Working my piece of land somewhere and living autonomously — that’s the dream,” another says. “Just getting … out of America. It’s a sinking ship.”
On the other hand they want a moral life that is more vehement, more strenuous than anything being offered by their elders. Oberlin College is as progressive as the day is long. But in mid-December, a group of students gave the Oberlin administration a list of 50 nonnegotiable demands, asserting that “this institution functions on the premises of imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and a cissexist heteropatriarchy.”
The identity politics the students have produced inverts the values of the meritocracy. The meritocracy is striving toward excellence; identity politics is deeply egalitarian. The meritocracy measures you by how much you’ve accomplished; identity politics measures you by how much you’ve been oppressed. In the meritocracy your right to be heard is earned through long learning and quality insight; in identity politics your right to be heard is earned by your experience of discrimination. The meritocracy places tremendous emphasis on individual agency; identity politics argues that agency is limited within a system of oppression.
The meritocracy sees the university as a gem tumbler, a bouncing place where people crash off one another and thereby hone their thoughts and skills. The students Heller describes sense the moral emptiness of the current meritocracy and are groping for lives of purpose. At the same time they feel fragile and want protection — protection from rejection, failure or opposing or disturbing ideas.
What one sees in the essay are the various strains of American liberalism crashing into one another: the admiration for achievement clashing against the moral superiority of the victim; the desire to let students run free, clashing against the desire to protect the oppressed from psychologically unsafe experiences.
The current identity politics movement, like all previous forms of campus radicalism, is sparked by genuine social injustices. Agree or disagree with these students, it’s hard not to admire the impulse to serve a social good and commit to some lofty purpose.
On the other hand, this movement does not emerge from a place of confidence and strength. It emerges from a place of anxiety, lostness and fragility. It is distorted by that soil. Movements that grant themselves the status of victim lack both the confidence to lead change and the humility to converse with others. People who try to use politics to fill emotional and personal voids get more and more extreme and end up as fanatics.
There is a vacuum at the heart of things here. The meritocracy has become amoral. We ask students to work harder and harder while providing them with less and less of an idea of how they might find a purpose in all that work.
If we slowed down the frenetic pace of competition, and helped students think about vocation — the meaning and purpose of work — then life would have a firmer base. Political life — whether left or right, radical or moderate — wouldn’t be distorted so much by inner pain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/opini ... 87722&_r=0
No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
Anton Oberländer is a persuasive speaker. Last year, when he and a group of friends were short of cash for a camping trip to Cornwall, he managed to talk Germany’s national rail operator into handing them some free tickets. So impressed was the management with his chutzpah that they invited him back to give a motivational speech to 200 of their employees.
Anton, it should be pointed out, is 14 years old.
The Berlin teenager’s self-confidence is largely the product of a unique educational institution that has turned the conventions of traditional teaching radically upside down. At Oberländer’s school, there are no grades until students turn 15, no timetables and no lecture-style instructions. The pupils decide which subjects they want to study for each lesson and when they want to take an exam.
The school’s syllabus reads like any helicopter parent’s nightmare. Set subjects are limited to maths, German, English and social studies, supplemented by more abstract courses such as “responsibility” and “challenge”. For challenge, students aged 12 to 14 are given €150 (£115) and sent on an adventure that they have to plan entirely by themselves. Some go kayaking; others work on a farm. Anton went trekking along England’s south coast.
The philosophy behind these innovations is simple: as the requirements of the labour market are changing, and smartphones and the internet are transforming the ways in which young people process information, the school’s headteacher, Margret Rasfeld, argues, the most important skill a school can pass down to its students is the ability to motivate themselves.
“Look at three or four year olds – they are all full of self-confidence,” Rasfeld says. “Often, children can’t wait to start school. But frustratingly, most schools then somehow manage to untrain that confidence.”
The Evangelical School Berlin Centre (ESBC) is trying to do nothing less than “reinvent what a school is”, she says. “The mission of a progressive school should be to prepare young people to cope with change, or better still, to make them look forward to change. In the 21st century, schools should see it as their job to develop strong personalities.”
Making students listen to a teacher for 45 minutes and punishing them for collaborating on an exercise, Rasfeld says, was not only out of sync with the requirements of the modern world of work, but counterproductive. “Nothing motivates students more than when they discover the meaning behind a subject of their own accord.”
Students at her school are encouraged to think up other ways to prove their acquired skills, such as coding a computer game instead of sitting a maths exam. Oberländer, who had never been away from home for three weeks until he embarked on his challenge in Cornwall, said he learned more English on his trip than he had in several years of learning the language at school.
Germany’s federalised education structure, in which each of the 16 states plans its own education system, has traditionally allowed “free learning” models to flourish. Yet unlike Sudbury,Montessori or Steiner schools, Rasfeld’s institution tries to embed student self-determination within a relatively strict system of rules. Students who dawdle during lessons have to come into school on Saturday morning to catch up, a punishment known as “silentium”. “The more freedom you have, the more structure you need,” says Rasfeld.
The main reason why the ESBC is gaining a reputation as Germany’s most exciting school is that its experimental philosophy has managed to deliver impressive results. Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among Berlin’s gesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, which combine all three school forms of Germany’s tertiary system. Last year’s school leavers achieved an average grade of 2.0, the equivalent of a straight B – even though 40% of the year had been advised not to continue to abitur, the German equivalent of A-levels, before they joined the school. Having opened in 2007 with just 16 students, the school now operates at full capacity, with 500 pupils and long waiting lists for new applicants.
Given its word-of-mouth success, it is little wonder that there have been calls for Rasfeld’s approach to go nationwide. Yet some educational experts question whether the school’s methods can easily be exported: in Berlin, they say, the school can draw the most promising applicants from well-off and progressive families. Rasfeld rejects such criticisms, insisting that the school aims for a heterogenous mix of students from different backgrounds. While a cross adorns the assembly hall and each school day starts with worship, only one-third of current pupils are baptised. Thirty per cent of students have a migrant background and 7% are from households where no German is spoken.
Even though the ESBC is one of Germany’s 5,000 private schools, fees are means tested and relatively low compared with those common in Britain, at between €720 and €6,636 a year. About 5% of students are exempt from fees.
However, even Rasfeld admits that finding teachers able to adjust to the school’s learning methods can be harder than getting students to do the same.
Aged 65 and due to retire in July, Rasfeld still has ambitious plans. A four-person “education innovation lab” based at the school has been developing teaching materials for schools that want to follow the ESBC’s lead. About 40 schools in Germany are in the process of adopting some or all of Rasfeld’s methods. One in Berlin’s Weissensee district recently let a student trek across the Alps for a challenge project. “Things are only getting started,” says Rasfeld.
“In education, you can only create change from the bottom – if the orders come from the top, schools will resist. Ministries are like giant oil tankers: it takes a long time to turn them around. What we need is lots of little speedboats to show you can do things differently.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... pside-down
Anton Oberländer is a persuasive speaker. Last year, when he and a group of friends were short of cash for a camping trip to Cornwall, he managed to talk Germany’s national rail operator into handing them some free tickets. So impressed was the management with his chutzpah that they invited him back to give a motivational speech to 200 of their employees.
Anton, it should be pointed out, is 14 years old.
The Berlin teenager’s self-confidence is largely the product of a unique educational institution that has turned the conventions of traditional teaching radically upside down. At Oberländer’s school, there are no grades until students turn 15, no timetables and no lecture-style instructions. The pupils decide which subjects they want to study for each lesson and when they want to take an exam.
The school’s syllabus reads like any helicopter parent’s nightmare. Set subjects are limited to maths, German, English and social studies, supplemented by more abstract courses such as “responsibility” and “challenge”. For challenge, students aged 12 to 14 are given €150 (£115) and sent on an adventure that they have to plan entirely by themselves. Some go kayaking; others work on a farm. Anton went trekking along England’s south coast.
The philosophy behind these innovations is simple: as the requirements of the labour market are changing, and smartphones and the internet are transforming the ways in which young people process information, the school’s headteacher, Margret Rasfeld, argues, the most important skill a school can pass down to its students is the ability to motivate themselves.
“Look at three or four year olds – they are all full of self-confidence,” Rasfeld says. “Often, children can’t wait to start school. But frustratingly, most schools then somehow manage to untrain that confidence.”
The Evangelical School Berlin Centre (ESBC) is trying to do nothing less than “reinvent what a school is”, she says. “The mission of a progressive school should be to prepare young people to cope with change, or better still, to make them look forward to change. In the 21st century, schools should see it as their job to develop strong personalities.”
Making students listen to a teacher for 45 minutes and punishing them for collaborating on an exercise, Rasfeld says, was not only out of sync with the requirements of the modern world of work, but counterproductive. “Nothing motivates students more than when they discover the meaning behind a subject of their own accord.”
Students at her school are encouraged to think up other ways to prove their acquired skills, such as coding a computer game instead of sitting a maths exam. Oberländer, who had never been away from home for three weeks until he embarked on his challenge in Cornwall, said he learned more English on his trip than he had in several years of learning the language at school.
Germany’s federalised education structure, in which each of the 16 states plans its own education system, has traditionally allowed “free learning” models to flourish. Yet unlike Sudbury,Montessori or Steiner schools, Rasfeld’s institution tries to embed student self-determination within a relatively strict system of rules. Students who dawdle during lessons have to come into school on Saturday morning to catch up, a punishment known as “silentium”. “The more freedom you have, the more structure you need,” says Rasfeld.
The main reason why the ESBC is gaining a reputation as Germany’s most exciting school is that its experimental philosophy has managed to deliver impressive results. Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among Berlin’s gesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, which combine all three school forms of Germany’s tertiary system. Last year’s school leavers achieved an average grade of 2.0, the equivalent of a straight B – even though 40% of the year had been advised not to continue to abitur, the German equivalent of A-levels, before they joined the school. Having opened in 2007 with just 16 students, the school now operates at full capacity, with 500 pupils and long waiting lists for new applicants.
Given its word-of-mouth success, it is little wonder that there have been calls for Rasfeld’s approach to go nationwide. Yet some educational experts question whether the school’s methods can easily be exported: in Berlin, they say, the school can draw the most promising applicants from well-off and progressive families. Rasfeld rejects such criticisms, insisting that the school aims for a heterogenous mix of students from different backgrounds. While a cross adorns the assembly hall and each school day starts with worship, only one-third of current pupils are baptised. Thirty per cent of students have a migrant background and 7% are from households where no German is spoken.
Even though the ESBC is one of Germany’s 5,000 private schools, fees are means tested and relatively low compared with those common in Britain, at between €720 and €6,636 a year. About 5% of students are exempt from fees.
However, even Rasfeld admits that finding teachers able to adjust to the school’s learning methods can be harder than getting students to do the same.
Aged 65 and due to retire in July, Rasfeld still has ambitious plans. A four-person “education innovation lab” based at the school has been developing teaching materials for schools that want to follow the ESBC’s lead. About 40 schools in Germany are in the process of adopting some or all of Rasfeld’s methods. One in Berlin’s Weissensee district recently let a student trek across the Alps for a challenge project. “Things are only getting started,” says Rasfeld.
“In education, you can only create change from the bottom – if the orders come from the top, schools will resist. Ministries are like giant oil tankers: it takes a long time to turn them around. What we need is lots of little speedboats to show you can do things differently.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... pside-down
Elections undermine democratic processes
Youth appear to honour and respect elections but despise the people they elect
A survey conducted by the East African Institute of the Aga Khan University showed that between 68 and 90 per cent of East Africa’s youth held positive views about democracy and would participate in elections. However, trust in politicians was as low as 40 per cent.
One could be persuaded to suggest that East African youth fancy the idea of elections or democracy but disdain their outcomes — politicians and government. However, confidence and trust in government in “strong leader” models like Rwanda was as high as 80 per cent. Waning trust in politicians and government is not unique to East African youth. There is an emerging and worrying trend of mistrust between citizens and government.
According to the Pew Research Center, fewer than 30 per cent of Americans have expressed trust in the federal government in every major national poll conducted between 2007 and 2015. Similarly, a recent World Values Survey, which polled 73,000 people in 57 countries, revealed that trust in government and institutions of democracy such as political parties has reached an historical low.
The perceptions of East Africa’s youth underscore a deep and concerning contradiction — passion and apathy for politics. Essentially, youth are enthusiastic about the political process but deeply distrusting of the outcomes of political participation. Clearly the youth appear to honour and respect elections but despise the people they elect, the politicians and the governments they form.
There is a crippling decline in the belief that government can even deliver on services or aspirations of the youth. It is not surprising that while up to 90 per cent of youth have a positive view of elections, less than 30 per cent of East African youth reported that they had benefited from government initiatives. Moreover, youth trust family and religious institutions more than they trust government or politicians.
The youth are a consequential majority in every sense — political and socio-economic. About 80 per cent of the estimated 146 million East Africans (excluding South Sudanese), are below the age of 35. How youth engage in the electoral process, and their perception and confidence in the political process have strong political and socio-economic implications for the future of East Africa.
But the magnitude of mistrust in politics and government by citizens must lead us to question or wonder if elections are the best mechanism for transforming the collective will of the people into tangible social or economic outcomes. Elections are even less believable as expressions of the collective will of citizens especially when fear mongering, misinformation and manipulation in the electioneering period inundate voters.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is flawed to the extent that it conceives of elections as the embodiment of democracy.
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/07/ ... page=0%2C0
Youth appear to honour and respect elections but despise the people they elect
A survey conducted by the East African Institute of the Aga Khan University showed that between 68 and 90 per cent of East Africa’s youth held positive views about democracy and would participate in elections. However, trust in politicians was as low as 40 per cent.
One could be persuaded to suggest that East African youth fancy the idea of elections or democracy but disdain their outcomes — politicians and government. However, confidence and trust in government in “strong leader” models like Rwanda was as high as 80 per cent. Waning trust in politicians and government is not unique to East African youth. There is an emerging and worrying trend of mistrust between citizens and government.
According to the Pew Research Center, fewer than 30 per cent of Americans have expressed trust in the federal government in every major national poll conducted between 2007 and 2015. Similarly, a recent World Values Survey, which polled 73,000 people in 57 countries, revealed that trust in government and institutions of democracy such as political parties has reached an historical low.
The perceptions of East Africa’s youth underscore a deep and concerning contradiction — passion and apathy for politics. Essentially, youth are enthusiastic about the political process but deeply distrusting of the outcomes of political participation. Clearly the youth appear to honour and respect elections but despise the people they elect, the politicians and the governments they form.
There is a crippling decline in the belief that government can even deliver on services or aspirations of the youth. It is not surprising that while up to 90 per cent of youth have a positive view of elections, less than 30 per cent of East African youth reported that they had benefited from government initiatives. Moreover, youth trust family and religious institutions more than they trust government or politicians.
The youth are a consequential majority in every sense — political and socio-economic. About 80 per cent of the estimated 146 million East Africans (excluding South Sudanese), are below the age of 35. How youth engage in the electoral process, and their perception and confidence in the political process have strong political and socio-economic implications for the future of East Africa.
But the magnitude of mistrust in politics and government by citizens must lead us to question or wonder if elections are the best mechanism for transforming the collective will of the people into tangible social or economic outcomes. Elections are even less believable as expressions of the collective will of citizens especially when fear mongering, misinformation and manipulation in the electioneering period inundate voters.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is flawed to the extent that it conceives of elections as the embodiment of democracy.
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/07/ ... page=0%2C0
Raising American Muslim Kids in the Age of Trump
Extracts:
"In recent conversations with about a dozen other American Muslim friends and parents, I found a lot of agreement on the challenge we’re facing: Our kids will know a kind of anti-Muslim bigotry that we never did. At the same time, there’s also a healthy debate on how to raise practicing Muslim children here.
Hina Khan-Mukhtar, a mother of three in the Bay Area, said the only way is for us to transform into “Super-Muslims,” minus the cape. “In America, you can’t be a mediocre Muslim,” she said. “You have to be the best of the best, and you have to show your kids that you have a ‘superior product’ that you are offering them. There are so many ‘-isms’ calling for their attention and for their loyalty — individualism, atheism, materialism, extremism. Islam needs to trump them all.”
........
"At home, my wife and I now deliberately pray in front of the kids. I prostrate toward Mecca and recite the Arabic verses out loud.
Two weeks ago, during my night prayers, my son came up next to me, bowed and turned his head and smiled. There is no compulsion in religion, nor should there be. It’s up to him and Nusayba to embrace or reject the faith and our traditions. My job is only to plant the seeds with care."
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opini ... d=45305309
Extracts:
"In recent conversations with about a dozen other American Muslim friends and parents, I found a lot of agreement on the challenge we’re facing: Our kids will know a kind of anti-Muslim bigotry that we never did. At the same time, there’s also a healthy debate on how to raise practicing Muslim children here.
Hina Khan-Mukhtar, a mother of three in the Bay Area, said the only way is for us to transform into “Super-Muslims,” minus the cape. “In America, you can’t be a mediocre Muslim,” she said. “You have to be the best of the best, and you have to show your kids that you have a ‘superior product’ that you are offering them. There are so many ‘-isms’ calling for their attention and for their loyalty — individualism, atheism, materialism, extremism. Islam needs to trump them all.”
........
"At home, my wife and I now deliberately pray in front of the kids. I prostrate toward Mecca and recite the Arabic verses out loud.
Two weeks ago, during my night prayers, my son came up next to me, bowed and turned his head and smiled. There is no compulsion in religion, nor should there be. It’s up to him and Nusayba to embrace or reject the faith and our traditions. My job is only to plant the seeds with care."
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opini ... d=45305309
The Virtues of Reality
SINCE the 1990s, we’ve seen two broad social changes that few observers would have expected to happen together.
First, youth culture has become less violent, less promiscuous and more responsible. American childhood is safer than ever before. Teenagers drink and smoke less than previous generations. The millennial generation has fewer sexual partners than its parents, and the teen birthrate has traced a two-decade decline. Violent crime — a young person’s temptation — fell for 25 years before the recent post-Ferguson homicide spike. Young people are half as likely to have been in a fight than a generation ago. Teen suicides, binge drinking, hard drug use — all are down.
But over the same period, adulthood has become less responsible, less obviously adult. For the first time in over a century, more 20-somethings live with their parents than in any other arrangement. The marriage rate is way down, and despite a high out-of-wedlock birthrate American fertility just hit an all-time low. More and more prime-age workers are dropping out of the work force — men especially, and younger men more so than older men, though female work force participation has dipped as well.
You can tell different stories that synthesize these trends: strictly economic ones about the impact of the Great Recession, critical ones about the infantilizing effects of helicopter parenting, upbeat ones about how young people are forging new life paths.
But I want to advance a technology-driven hypothesis: This mix of youthful safety and adult immaturity may be a feature of life in a society increasingly shaped by the internet’s virtual realities.
It is easy to see how online culture would make adolescent life less dangerous. Pornography to take the edge off teenage sexual appetite. Video games instead of fisticuffs or contact sports as an outlet for hormonal aggression. (Once it was feared that porn and violent media would encourage real-world aggression; instead they seem to be replacing it.) Sexting and selfie-enabled masturbation as a safer alternative to hooking up. Online hangouts instead of keggers in the field. More texting and driving, but less driving — one of the most dangerous teen activities — overall.
The question is whether this substitution is habit-forming and soul-shaping, and whether it extends beyond dangerous teen behavior to include things essential to long-term human flourishing — marriage, work, family, all that old-fashioned “meatspace” stuff.
That’s certainly the impression left whenever journalists try to figure out why young people aren’t marrying, or dating, or in some cases even seeking sex. (From The Washington Post, earlier this month: “Noah Paterson, 18, likes to sit in front of several screens simultaneously … to shut it all down for a date or even a one-night stand seems like a waste.”) The same impression is left by research on younger men dropping out of the work force: Their leisure time is being filled to a large extent by gaming, and happiness studies suggest that they are pretty content with the trade-off.
The men in that research lack college degrees, which is particularly telling. It wasn’t so long ago that people worried about a digital divide, in which online access would be a luxury good that left the bottom half behind. But if anything, the virtual world looks more like an opiate for the masses. The poor spent more time online than the rich, and it’s the elite — the Silicon Valley elite, in some striking cases — that’s more likely to limit the uses of devices in their homes and schools, to draw distinctions between screen time and real time.
The keenest critics of how the internet shapes culture, writers like Sherry Turkle, are often hopeful that with time and experience we will learn better management strategies, which keep the virtual in its place before too many real goods are lost.
Such strategies may work for individuals and families. But the trends in the marketplace — ever-more-customized pornography, virtual realities that feel more and more immersive, devices and apps customized for addictive behavior — seem likely to overwhelm most attempts to enjoy the virtual only within limits.
My mother, Patricia Snow (yes, even columnists have mothers), in an essay for First Things earlier this year, suggested that any effective resistance to virtual reality’s encroachments would need to be moral and religious, not just pragmatic and managerial. I never could induce her to read Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” but her argument made me think of the science-fiction novel’s “Butlerian jihad” — the religious rebellion against artificial intelligence that birthed Herbert’s imagined far-future society, which has advanced spacefaring technology but not a HAL or C-3PO in sight.
“Jihad” is a more fraught term these days than when Herbert’s novel first came out. But we have a pacifist community within our own society that’s organized around religious resistance to advanced technology — the Old Order Amish.
The future probably doesn’t belong to the Pennsylvania Dutch. But the Amish impulse is one to watch, as we reckon with virtual reality’s strange gift — a cup that tastes of progress, but might have poison waiting in the dregs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/opini ... d=45305309
SINCE the 1990s, we’ve seen two broad social changes that few observers would have expected to happen together.
First, youth culture has become less violent, less promiscuous and more responsible. American childhood is safer than ever before. Teenagers drink and smoke less than previous generations. The millennial generation has fewer sexual partners than its parents, and the teen birthrate has traced a two-decade decline. Violent crime — a young person’s temptation — fell for 25 years before the recent post-Ferguson homicide spike. Young people are half as likely to have been in a fight than a generation ago. Teen suicides, binge drinking, hard drug use — all are down.
But over the same period, adulthood has become less responsible, less obviously adult. For the first time in over a century, more 20-somethings live with their parents than in any other arrangement. The marriage rate is way down, and despite a high out-of-wedlock birthrate American fertility just hit an all-time low. More and more prime-age workers are dropping out of the work force — men especially, and younger men more so than older men, though female work force participation has dipped as well.
You can tell different stories that synthesize these trends: strictly economic ones about the impact of the Great Recession, critical ones about the infantilizing effects of helicopter parenting, upbeat ones about how young people are forging new life paths.
But I want to advance a technology-driven hypothesis: This mix of youthful safety and adult immaturity may be a feature of life in a society increasingly shaped by the internet’s virtual realities.
It is easy to see how online culture would make adolescent life less dangerous. Pornography to take the edge off teenage sexual appetite. Video games instead of fisticuffs or contact sports as an outlet for hormonal aggression. (Once it was feared that porn and violent media would encourage real-world aggression; instead they seem to be replacing it.) Sexting and selfie-enabled masturbation as a safer alternative to hooking up. Online hangouts instead of keggers in the field. More texting and driving, but less driving — one of the most dangerous teen activities — overall.
The question is whether this substitution is habit-forming and soul-shaping, and whether it extends beyond dangerous teen behavior to include things essential to long-term human flourishing — marriage, work, family, all that old-fashioned “meatspace” stuff.
That’s certainly the impression left whenever journalists try to figure out why young people aren’t marrying, or dating, or in some cases even seeking sex. (From The Washington Post, earlier this month: “Noah Paterson, 18, likes to sit in front of several screens simultaneously … to shut it all down for a date or even a one-night stand seems like a waste.”) The same impression is left by research on younger men dropping out of the work force: Their leisure time is being filled to a large extent by gaming, and happiness studies suggest that they are pretty content with the trade-off.
The men in that research lack college degrees, which is particularly telling. It wasn’t so long ago that people worried about a digital divide, in which online access would be a luxury good that left the bottom half behind. But if anything, the virtual world looks more like an opiate for the masses. The poor spent more time online than the rich, and it’s the elite — the Silicon Valley elite, in some striking cases — that’s more likely to limit the uses of devices in their homes and schools, to draw distinctions between screen time and real time.
The keenest critics of how the internet shapes culture, writers like Sherry Turkle, are often hopeful that with time and experience we will learn better management strategies, which keep the virtual in its place before too many real goods are lost.
Such strategies may work for individuals and families. But the trends in the marketplace — ever-more-customized pornography, virtual realities that feel more and more immersive, devices and apps customized for addictive behavior — seem likely to overwhelm most attempts to enjoy the virtual only within limits.
My mother, Patricia Snow (yes, even columnists have mothers), in an essay for First Things earlier this year, suggested that any effective resistance to virtual reality’s encroachments would need to be moral and religious, not just pragmatic and managerial. I never could induce her to read Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” but her argument made me think of the science-fiction novel’s “Butlerian jihad” — the religious rebellion against artificial intelligence that birthed Herbert’s imagined far-future society, which has advanced spacefaring technology but not a HAL or C-3PO in sight.
“Jihad” is a more fraught term these days than when Herbert’s novel first came out. But we have a pacifist community within our own society that’s organized around religious resistance to advanced technology — the Old Order Amish.
The future probably doesn’t belong to the Pennsylvania Dutch. But the Amish impulse is one to watch, as we reckon with virtual reality’s strange gift — a cup that tastes of progress, but might have poison waiting in the dregs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/opini ... d=45305309
Making Modern Toughness
When I ask veteran college teachers and administrators to describe how college students have changed over the years, I often get an answer like this: “Today’s students are more accomplished than past generations, but they are also more emotionally fragile.”
That rings true to me. Today’s students are amazing, but they bathe one another in oceans of affirmation and praise, as if buttressing one another against some insecurity. Whatever one thinks of the campus protests, the desire for trigger warnings and safe spaces does seem to emanate from a place of emotional fragility.
And if you hang around the middle aged, you hear a common story line to explain the rise of the orchid generation. Once upon a time, the story line goes, kids were raised in a tough environment. They had to do hard manual chores around the house and they got in fights on the playground. Then they went off to do grueling work in the factory or they learned toughness and grit in the military.
But today, helicopter parents protect their children from setbacks and hardship. They supervise every playground conflict, so kids never learn to handle disputes or deal with pain.
......
Emotional fragility seems like a psychological problem, but it has only a philosophical answer. People are really tough only after they have taken a leap of faith for some truth or mission or love. Once they’ve done that they can withstand a lot.
We live in an age when it’s considered sophisticated to be disenchanted. But people who are enchanted are the real tough cookies.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/opini ... eft-region
When I ask veteran college teachers and administrators to describe how college students have changed over the years, I often get an answer like this: “Today’s students are more accomplished than past generations, but they are also more emotionally fragile.”
That rings true to me. Today’s students are amazing, but they bathe one another in oceans of affirmation and praise, as if buttressing one another against some insecurity. Whatever one thinks of the campus protests, the desire for trigger warnings and safe spaces does seem to emanate from a place of emotional fragility.
And if you hang around the middle aged, you hear a common story line to explain the rise of the orchid generation. Once upon a time, the story line goes, kids were raised in a tough environment. They had to do hard manual chores around the house and they got in fights on the playground. Then they went off to do grueling work in the factory or they learned toughness and grit in the military.
But today, helicopter parents protect their children from setbacks and hardship. They supervise every playground conflict, so kids never learn to handle disputes or deal with pain.
......
Emotional fragility seems like a psychological problem, but it has only a philosophical answer. People are really tough only after they have taken a leap of faith for some truth or mission or love. Once they’ve done that they can withstand a lot.
We live in an age when it’s considered sophisticated to be disenchanted. But people who are enchanted are the real tough cookies.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/opini ... eft-region
Campuses Cautiously Train Freshmen Against Subtle Insults
Extract:
Once devoted to ice cream socials, tutorials on campus technology systems and advice on choosing classes, orientation for new students is changing significantly, with the issue taking on renewed urgency this year as universities increasingly try to address recent racial and ethnic tensions on campuses as well as an onslaught of sexual assault complaints.
In addition to diversity sessions, many campuses train students on exactly what constitutes sexual consent as well as how to intervene when they see fellow students drinking excessively or poised to engage in nonconsensual sexual behavior.
A bystander intervention presentation for arriving freshmen at Wesleyan University last Thursday — “We Speak We Stand” — featured students acting out fictional episodes of campus sexual violence, harassment and problematic drinking, with examples of how to intervene. “Each of you has the power to bring to light sexual violence in our community,” one student told the group.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/us/ca ... d=71987722
Extract:
Once devoted to ice cream socials, tutorials on campus technology systems and advice on choosing classes, orientation for new students is changing significantly, with the issue taking on renewed urgency this year as universities increasingly try to address recent racial and ethnic tensions on campuses as well as an onslaught of sexual assault complaints.
In addition to diversity sessions, many campuses train students on exactly what constitutes sexual consent as well as how to intervene when they see fellow students drinking excessively or poised to engage in nonconsensual sexual behavior.
A bystander intervention presentation for arriving freshmen at Wesleyan University last Thursday — “We Speak We Stand” — featured students acting out fictional episodes of campus sexual violence, harassment and problematic drinking, with examples of how to intervene. “Each of you has the power to bring to light sexual violence in our community,” one student told the group.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/us/ca ... d=71987722
Why We Should Stop Grading Students on a Curve
Extract:
After analyzing grading systems, the economists Pradeep Dubey and John Geanakoplos concluded that a forced grade curve is a disincentive to study. “Absolute grading is better than grading on a curve,” they wrote.
The more important argument against grade curves is that they create an atmosphere that’s toxic by pitting students against one another. At best, it creates a hypercompetitive culture, and at worst, it sends students the message that the world is a zero-sum game: Your success means my failure.
A few years into my teaching career, I set out to change that attitude among my students. I started experimenting with grading schemes that would encourage community and collaboration — while still maintaining standards and assessing students individually.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/opini ... inion&_r=1
Extract:
After analyzing grading systems, the economists Pradeep Dubey and John Geanakoplos concluded that a forced grade curve is a disincentive to study. “Absolute grading is better than grading on a curve,” they wrote.
The more important argument against grade curves is that they create an atmosphere that’s toxic by pitting students against one another. At best, it creates a hypercompetitive culture, and at worst, it sends students the message that the world is a zero-sum game: Your success means my failure.
A few years into my teaching career, I set out to change that attitude among my students. I started experimenting with grading schemes that would encourage community and collaboration — while still maintaining standards and assessing students individually.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/opini ... inion&_r=1
An Assisted Journey of Self Discovery
By Emily Esfahani Smith
October 24, 2016
When I was a freshman at Dartmouth College, I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a doctor. So I dutifully signed up for pre-med classes, volunteered in a neuroscience lab, and studied hard for my exams. But then something unexpected happened: I met a professor named Jeffrey Hart and he helped me discover where my path really lay.
Hart had been an English professor at Dartmouth but was retired by the time I met him. He still lived in the area and was committed to mentoring students, so he reached out to me one day after reading an article I had written for The Dartmouth Review.
The lunch we had turned into the first of many. We always met at the same restaurant—a cozy Irish pub called Murphy’s. There was no small talk at our lunches, but serious conversations about T. S. Eliot and Edmund Burke, the ethics of stem-cell research or the war in Iraq. An accomplished literary critic, Hart had also dabbled in politics, and he told me stories from his time working for Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and William F. Buckley Jr. When he wasn’t talking politics or literature, he loved cracking jokes. He knew how to have fun, but he also took his job as an educator seriously. At the end of every lunch, he gave me a folder full of readings—and sometimes entire books—to complete in time for our next meeting.
I received quite an education at those meetings. But Hart also gave me another gift. Sensing my particular enthusiasms, he steered our discussions—and my readings—toward the humanities. And because he thought I had some ability as a writer, he told me that I should pursue writing as a career path if I wanted to—which was huge. I had secretly toyed with the idea of being a writer but knew it was a risky path. But Hart’s support gave me the courage I needed. I eventually decided to drop pre-med and pursue a career as a journalist. Hart had helped me find my true vocation.
Emily Esfahani Smith is the author of The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters, to be published in January. She is also a columnist for The New Criterion, as well as an editor at the Hoover Institution, where she manages the Ben Franklin Circles project, an initiative to build purpose and community throughout the nation.
https://theamericanscholar.org/an-assis ... discovery/
By Emily Esfahani Smith
October 24, 2016
When I was a freshman at Dartmouth College, I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a doctor. So I dutifully signed up for pre-med classes, volunteered in a neuroscience lab, and studied hard for my exams. But then something unexpected happened: I met a professor named Jeffrey Hart and he helped me discover where my path really lay.
Hart had been an English professor at Dartmouth but was retired by the time I met him. He still lived in the area and was committed to mentoring students, so he reached out to me one day after reading an article I had written for The Dartmouth Review.
The lunch we had turned into the first of many. We always met at the same restaurant—a cozy Irish pub called Murphy’s. There was no small talk at our lunches, but serious conversations about T. S. Eliot and Edmund Burke, the ethics of stem-cell research or the war in Iraq. An accomplished literary critic, Hart had also dabbled in politics, and he told me stories from his time working for Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and William F. Buckley Jr. When he wasn’t talking politics or literature, he loved cracking jokes. He knew how to have fun, but he also took his job as an educator seriously. At the end of every lunch, he gave me a folder full of readings—and sometimes entire books—to complete in time for our next meeting.
I received quite an education at those meetings. But Hart also gave me another gift. Sensing my particular enthusiasms, he steered our discussions—and my readings—toward the humanities. And because he thought I had some ability as a writer, he told me that I should pursue writing as a career path if I wanted to—which was huge. I had secretly toyed with the idea of being a writer but knew it was a risky path. But Hart’s support gave me the courage I needed. I eventually decided to drop pre-med and pursue a career as a journalist. Hart had helped me find my true vocation.
Emily Esfahani Smith is the author of The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters, to be published in January. She is also a columnist for The New Criterion, as well as an editor at the Hoover Institution, where she manages the Ben Franklin Circles project, an initiative to build purpose and community throughout the nation.
https://theamericanscholar.org/an-assis ... discovery/
Preparing Young Americans for a Complex World
Extract:
Why is it so important to understand the world and the United States’ role in it today?
To begin with, the American economy is inextricably linked to the global economy. It’s estimated that one-fifth of jobs here are now tied to international trade. Moreover, many of the world’s major challenges — climate change, instability in financial markets, food and water insecurity, infectious diseases, migration, war and terrorism — are complex, interdependent and borderless. And with 40 million foreign-born residents, the United States is itself a global society with deep emotional ties to many nations and cultures. To survive and thrive, Americans have to learn how to manage greater complexity and collaborate across lines of difference.
During the Obama administration, the federal Department of Education recognized this imperative. Since 2012, its strategy has emphasized “global and cultural competency” as a core educational priority. In 2018, the Program for International Student Assessment, an international testing system that sets benchmarks for student performance in which the Department of Education participates, will add global competence as a new domain.
Nevertheless, many American schools have remained poorly prepared to deliver education in “global competence” (defined by American education leaders as “the capacity and disposition to understand and act on issues of global significance.”) The focus on traditional achievement and test scores has narrowed the delivery of instruction at a time when students need to learn to think more broadly. In the wake of “Brexit” and the election of Donald Trump (both far more popular among older voters than among the young) — and amid the global rise of nationalist movements — schools need to help students navigate the forces shaping the world they will inherit.
“What are the values, attitudes, skills and behaviors that must be cultivated if we’re going to live in a peaceful world?” asked Dana Mortenson, one of the -founders of World Savvy, an organization that has worked with thousands of teachers to integrate global competence into their lessons.
What’s needed is not just scoring well on standardized tests. “It’s an openness to new opportunities and ideas,” she added. “It’s a desire to engage. It’s self-awareness about culture and respect for different perspectives. It’s comfort with ambiguity. It’s the skill to investigate the world through questions. Empathy and humility are big pieces of all of it.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/opin ... dline&te=1
Extract:
Why is it so important to understand the world and the United States’ role in it today?
To begin with, the American economy is inextricably linked to the global economy. It’s estimated that one-fifth of jobs here are now tied to international trade. Moreover, many of the world’s major challenges — climate change, instability in financial markets, food and water insecurity, infectious diseases, migration, war and terrorism — are complex, interdependent and borderless. And with 40 million foreign-born residents, the United States is itself a global society with deep emotional ties to many nations and cultures. To survive and thrive, Americans have to learn how to manage greater complexity and collaborate across lines of difference.
During the Obama administration, the federal Department of Education recognized this imperative. Since 2012, its strategy has emphasized “global and cultural competency” as a core educational priority. In 2018, the Program for International Student Assessment, an international testing system that sets benchmarks for student performance in which the Department of Education participates, will add global competence as a new domain.
Nevertheless, many American schools have remained poorly prepared to deliver education in “global competence” (defined by American education leaders as “the capacity and disposition to understand and act on issues of global significance.”) The focus on traditional achievement and test scores has narrowed the delivery of instruction at a time when students need to learn to think more broadly. In the wake of “Brexit” and the election of Donald Trump (both far more popular among older voters than among the young) — and amid the global rise of nationalist movements — schools need to help students navigate the forces shaping the world they will inherit.
“What are the values, attitudes, skills and behaviors that must be cultivated if we’re going to live in a peaceful world?” asked Dana Mortenson, one of the -founders of World Savvy, an organization that has worked with thousands of teachers to integrate global competence into their lessons.
What’s needed is not just scoring well on standardized tests. “It’s an openness to new opportunities and ideas,” she added. “It’s a desire to engage. It’s self-awareness about culture and respect for different perspectives. It’s comfort with ambiguity. It’s the skill to investigate the world through questions. Empathy and humility are big pieces of all of it.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/opin ... dline&te=1
Alex O. Awiti: Platform for Engaged Global Citizens
http://www.envidevpolicy.org/2017/02/yo ... ns-in.html
Youth are our future, not pawns in political competition
Edmund Burke, 18th century political theorist and philosopher wrote; “Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young men,[and women] and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation”.
The future is not some indistinct unknowable property. We are all involved in the active construction of the future. Through policies or actions we enable or obstruct the thriving of our children and shape our destiny. What our children eat and how the learn determines our place in the global productivity league table.
Over 80 percent of Kenya’s population is aged below 35 years and the median age is just 19 years. If you doubt these statistics, take a close look at the faces of Kenyans who swarm political rallies. If you are still not convinced take a walk on the streets of the cities and towns of this great land.
Alvin Toffler, American futurist and author of Future Shock, argued persuasively about why youth must participate in the present moment. Toffler wrote; “The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they — at some distant point in the future — will take over the reigns. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely… because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties”.
Politicians have exhorted the youth to register and vote in the 2017 elections. The imperative to register has been unanimous across the ethnic political divide – Kenya’s future is in the hands of the youth. The electoral power of the youth is consequential. For instance, about 55 percent of Nairobi’s population is between 18 and 35 years. But not to think of youth beyond voting would be tragic.
The problems that face Kenyan youth are complex and urgent. Our schools fail too many young people. Labor participation among youth is less than 40 percent. Majority of youth are unskilled, unemployed, underemployed and underpaid. The ranks of working poor youths are swelling rapidly.
Policy makers and donors, without shame or remorse, continue to promote wrongheaded interventions in the name of youth empowerment. For example, there is little evidence that youth funds are working. There is also a growing fantasy that somehow agriculture and entrepreneurship are the panacea for youth unemployment. Moreover, the current wave of TVET proliferation plans is not informed by skills gap or labor market needs.
According to Burke, “the arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.” Alvin Toffler’s warns that to imagine that we can run our society without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile.
The youth have exemplary passion and creativity, and are enthusiastic about being part of the solution to the myriad problems we face as society. They are crying out for a chance to get involved, beyond voting.
Alex O. Awiti – Founding Director of the East African Institute (EAI) of Aga Khan University
http://www.envidevpolicy.org/2017/02/yo ... ns-in.html
Youth are our future, not pawns in political competition
Edmund Burke, 18th century political theorist and philosopher wrote; “Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young men,[and women] and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation”.
The future is not some indistinct unknowable property. We are all involved in the active construction of the future. Through policies or actions we enable or obstruct the thriving of our children and shape our destiny. What our children eat and how the learn determines our place in the global productivity league table.
Over 80 percent of Kenya’s population is aged below 35 years and the median age is just 19 years. If you doubt these statistics, take a close look at the faces of Kenyans who swarm political rallies. If you are still not convinced take a walk on the streets of the cities and towns of this great land.
Alvin Toffler, American futurist and author of Future Shock, argued persuasively about why youth must participate in the present moment. Toffler wrote; “The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they — at some distant point in the future — will take over the reigns. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely… because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties”.
Politicians have exhorted the youth to register and vote in the 2017 elections. The imperative to register has been unanimous across the ethnic political divide – Kenya’s future is in the hands of the youth. The electoral power of the youth is consequential. For instance, about 55 percent of Nairobi’s population is between 18 and 35 years. But not to think of youth beyond voting would be tragic.
The problems that face Kenyan youth are complex and urgent. Our schools fail too many young people. Labor participation among youth is less than 40 percent. Majority of youth are unskilled, unemployed, underemployed and underpaid. The ranks of working poor youths are swelling rapidly.
Policy makers and donors, without shame or remorse, continue to promote wrongheaded interventions in the name of youth empowerment. For example, there is little evidence that youth funds are working. There is also a growing fantasy that somehow agriculture and entrepreneurship are the panacea for youth unemployment. Moreover, the current wave of TVET proliferation plans is not informed by skills gap or labor market needs.
According to Burke, “the arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.” Alvin Toffler’s warns that to imagine that we can run our society without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile.
The youth have exemplary passion and creativity, and are enthusiastic about being part of the solution to the myriad problems we face as society. They are crying out for a chance to get involved, beyond voting.
Alex O. Awiti – Founding Director of the East African Institute (EAI) of Aga Khan University
Finland Will Become The First Country In The World To Get Rid of All School Subjects
In an era of technology and easily accessible information, our schools still expect from us to know everything from the books, without considering whether this is going to be what we will actually need in our professional development.
By 2020, instead of classes in physics, math, literature, history or geography, Finland is going to introduce a different approach to life through education. Welcome to the phenomenon based learning!
As Phenomenal Education states on their website, “In Phenomenon Based Learning (PhenoBL) and teaching, holistic real-world phenomena provide the starting point for learning. The phenomena are studied as complete entities, in their real context, and the information and skills related to them are studied by crossing the boundaries between subjects.”
This means that instead of learning physics (or any other subject) for the sake of learning it, the students will be given the opportunity to choose from phenomena from their real surroundings and the world, such as Media and Technology, or the European Union.
These phenomena will be studied through an interdisciplinary approach, which means subjects will be included, but only those (and only parts of them) that contribute to excelling in the topic.
For example, a student who wants to study a vocational course can take “cafeteria services” and the phenomenon will be studied through elements of maths, languages, writing and communication skills. Another example is the European Union, which would include economics, languages, geography and the history of the countries involved.
Now take your profession as an example and think of all the information you need to know connected to it – you are now thinking the PhenoBL way!
This kind of learning will include both face-to-face and online sessions, with a strong emphasis on the beneficial use of technology and the Internet through the process of eLearning. You can read more about it here.
In the learning process, the students will be able to collaborate with their peers and teachers through sharing information and collectively exploring and implementing new information as a building tool.
The teaching style is going to change too!
Instead of the traditional style of teacher-centered learning, with students sitting behind their desks and recording every instruction given by the teacher, the approach is going to change to a holistic level. This means that every phenomenon will be approached in the most suitable and natural way possible.
However, as Phenomenal Learning states, “The starting point of phenomenal-based teaching is constructivism, in which learners are seen as active knowledge builders and information is seen as being constructed as a result of problem-solving, constructed out of ‘little pieces’ into a whole that suits the situation in which it is used at the time.”
This educational system tends to include leaning in a collaborative setting (e.g. teamwork), where they would like to see information being formed in a social context, instead of it being seen only as an internal element of an individual.
This approach is going to support inquiry-based learning, problem-solution and project and portfolio learning. The last step is going to be practical implementation, being seen as the outcome of the whole process.
This reform is going to require a lot of cooperation between teachers of different subjects and this is why the teachers are already undergoing an intense training.
In fact, 70% of the teachers in Helsinki are already involved in the preparatory work in line with the new system.
Co-teaching is at the base of the curriculum creation, with input from more than one subject specialist and teachers who embrace this new teaching style will receive a small increase in their salary as a sign of recognition.
From a teaching perspective, this style is very rewarding and worthwhile for the teachers too. Some teachers, who have already implemented this style in their work, say that they cannot go back to the old style.
This is indeed not surprising at all, as the interaction in this teaching style is something every teacher has always dreamed of.
Currently, schools are obliged to introduce a period of phenomenal-based learning at least once a year. The plan is to completely implement the PhenoBL approach by 2020.
A similar approach called the Playful Learning Centre is being used in the pre-school sector and it is going to serve as a starting point for the phenomenal-based learning.
Please Share
.
Source: Curious Mind Magazine
http://spasique.com/finland-will-become ... ry-in-the/
In an era of technology and easily accessible information, our schools still expect from us to know everything from the books, without considering whether this is going to be what we will actually need in our professional development.
By 2020, instead of classes in physics, math, literature, history or geography, Finland is going to introduce a different approach to life through education. Welcome to the phenomenon based learning!
As Phenomenal Education states on their website, “In Phenomenon Based Learning (PhenoBL) and teaching, holistic real-world phenomena provide the starting point for learning. The phenomena are studied as complete entities, in their real context, and the information and skills related to them are studied by crossing the boundaries between subjects.”
This means that instead of learning physics (or any other subject) for the sake of learning it, the students will be given the opportunity to choose from phenomena from their real surroundings and the world, such as Media and Technology, or the European Union.
These phenomena will be studied through an interdisciplinary approach, which means subjects will be included, but only those (and only parts of them) that contribute to excelling in the topic.
For example, a student who wants to study a vocational course can take “cafeteria services” and the phenomenon will be studied through elements of maths, languages, writing and communication skills. Another example is the European Union, which would include economics, languages, geography and the history of the countries involved.
Now take your profession as an example and think of all the information you need to know connected to it – you are now thinking the PhenoBL way!
This kind of learning will include both face-to-face and online sessions, with a strong emphasis on the beneficial use of technology and the Internet through the process of eLearning. You can read more about it here.
In the learning process, the students will be able to collaborate with their peers and teachers through sharing information and collectively exploring and implementing new information as a building tool.
The teaching style is going to change too!
Instead of the traditional style of teacher-centered learning, with students sitting behind their desks and recording every instruction given by the teacher, the approach is going to change to a holistic level. This means that every phenomenon will be approached in the most suitable and natural way possible.
However, as Phenomenal Learning states, “The starting point of phenomenal-based teaching is constructivism, in which learners are seen as active knowledge builders and information is seen as being constructed as a result of problem-solving, constructed out of ‘little pieces’ into a whole that suits the situation in which it is used at the time.”
This educational system tends to include leaning in a collaborative setting (e.g. teamwork), where they would like to see information being formed in a social context, instead of it being seen only as an internal element of an individual.
This approach is going to support inquiry-based learning, problem-solution and project and portfolio learning. The last step is going to be practical implementation, being seen as the outcome of the whole process.
This reform is going to require a lot of cooperation between teachers of different subjects and this is why the teachers are already undergoing an intense training.
In fact, 70% of the teachers in Helsinki are already involved in the preparatory work in line with the new system.
Co-teaching is at the base of the curriculum creation, with input from more than one subject specialist and teachers who embrace this new teaching style will receive a small increase in their salary as a sign of recognition.
From a teaching perspective, this style is very rewarding and worthwhile for the teachers too. Some teachers, who have already implemented this style in their work, say that they cannot go back to the old style.
This is indeed not surprising at all, as the interaction in this teaching style is something every teacher has always dreamed of.
Currently, schools are obliged to introduce a period of phenomenal-based learning at least once a year. The plan is to completely implement the PhenoBL approach by 2020.
A similar approach called the Playful Learning Centre is being used in the pre-school sector and it is going to serve as a starting point for the phenomenal-based learning.
Please Share
.
Source: Curious Mind Magazine
http://spasique.com/finland-will-become ... ry-in-the/
Mis-Educating the Young
A few months ago I had lunch with a former student named Lucy Fleming, one of the best writers I’ve taught. I asked her what she had learned in her first year out of college. She said she had been forced to think differently.
While in school, her thinking was station to station: take that test, apply to that college, aim for a degree. But in young adulthood, there are no more stations. Everything is open seas. Your main problems are not about the assignment right in front of you; they are about the horizon far away. What should you be steering toward? It requires an entirely different set of navigational skills.
This gets at one of the oddest phenomena of modern life. Childhood is more structured than it has ever been. But then the great engine of the meritocracy spits people out into a young adulthood that is less structured than it has ever been.
There used to be certain milestones that young adults were directed toward by age 27: leaving home, becoming financially independent, getting married, buying a house, having a child. But the information economy has scrambled those timetables. Current 20-somethings are much less likely to do any of those things by 30. They are less likely to be anchored in a political party, church or some other creedal community.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/opin ... dline&te=1
A few months ago I had lunch with a former student named Lucy Fleming, one of the best writers I’ve taught. I asked her what she had learned in her first year out of college. She said she had been forced to think differently.
While in school, her thinking was station to station: take that test, apply to that college, aim for a degree. But in young adulthood, there are no more stations. Everything is open seas. Your main problems are not about the assignment right in front of you; they are about the horizon far away. What should you be steering toward? It requires an entirely different set of navigational skills.
This gets at one of the oddest phenomena of modern life. Childhood is more structured than it has ever been. But then the great engine of the meritocracy spits people out into a young adulthood that is less structured than it has ever been.
There used to be certain milestones that young adults were directed toward by age 27: leaving home, becoming financially independent, getting married, buying a house, having a child. But the information economy has scrambled those timetables. Current 20-somethings are much less likely to do any of those things by 30. They are less likely to be anchored in a political party, church or some other creedal community.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/opin ... dline&te=1
The youth of today
Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic nowadays
But they are also lonelier and more isolated
AT THE gates of Santa Monica College, in Los Angeles, a young man with a skateboard is hanging out near a group of people who are smoking marijuana in view of the campus police. His head is clouded, too—but with worry, not weed. He frets about his student loans and the difficulty of finding a job, even fearing that he might end up homeless. “Not to sound intense,” he adds, but robots are taking work from humans. He neither smokes nor drinks much. The stigma against such things is stronger than it was for his parents’ generation, he explains.
Young people are indeed behaving and thinking differently from previous cohorts at the same age. These shifts can be seen in almost every rich country, from America to the Netherlands to South Korea. Some have been under way for many years, but they have accelerated in the past few. Not all of them are benign.
Perhaps the most obvious change is that teenagers are getting drunk less often (see chart). They start drinking later: the average age at which young Australians first try alcohol has risen from 14.4 to 16.1 since 1998. And even when they start, they sip rather than chug. In Britain, where a fifth of 16- to 24-year-olds do not drink at all, the number of pubs is falling by about 1,000 a year, and nightclubs are faring even worse. In the past young people went out for a drink and perhaps had something to eat at the same time, says Kate Nicholls, head of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, a trade group. Now it is the other way round.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/internat ... lydispatch
Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic nowadays
But they are also lonelier and more isolated
AT THE gates of Santa Monica College, in Los Angeles, a young man with a skateboard is hanging out near a group of people who are smoking marijuana in view of the campus police. His head is clouded, too—but with worry, not weed. He frets about his student loans and the difficulty of finding a job, even fearing that he might end up homeless. “Not to sound intense,” he adds, but robots are taking work from humans. He neither smokes nor drinks much. The stigma against such things is stronger than it was for his parents’ generation, he explains.
Young people are indeed behaving and thinking differently from previous cohorts at the same age. These shifts can be seen in almost every rich country, from America to the Netherlands to South Korea. Some have been under way for many years, but they have accelerated in the past few. Not all of them are benign.
Perhaps the most obvious change is that teenagers are getting drunk less often (see chart). They start drinking later: the average age at which young Australians first try alcohol has risen from 14.4 to 16.1 since 1998. And even when they start, they sip rather than chug. In Britain, where a fifth of 16- to 24-year-olds do not drink at all, the number of pubs is falling by about 1,000 a year, and nightclubs are faring even worse. In the past young people went out for a drink and perhaps had something to eat at the same time, says Kate Nicholls, head of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, a trade group. Now it is the other way round.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/internat ... lydispatch
Comedians, students stand up for refugees with charity event
The Student Activity Center auditorium was filled with laughs Thursday night, but the reason behind the event was much more serious.
The second annual Stand Up for Refugees night brought together 150 people to watch dance performances and four comedians, and donated all proceeds towards Refugee Services of Texas, an organization which offers resettlement and legal services to refugees in the state. The event was hosted by members of the Ismaili Muslim Students Association, Management Information Systems Association and OneWay South Asian Intervarsity.
Inaara Jamal, the vice president of external affairs for IMSA, said she personally knows a few refugees in her hometown of Dallas and wants to raise awareness for ways to help people on a similar journey.
“There are a lot of ways we can support them and unfortunately not everyone knows how to support them,” said Jamal, a management information systems junior. “So partnering with Refugee Services of Texas is really cool because we know that wherever we put our funds, our money is going to good use.”
More...
http://dailytexanonline.com/2018/03/29/ ... rity-event
The Student Activity Center auditorium was filled with laughs Thursday night, but the reason behind the event was much more serious.
The second annual Stand Up for Refugees night brought together 150 people to watch dance performances and four comedians, and donated all proceeds towards Refugee Services of Texas, an organization which offers resettlement and legal services to refugees in the state. The event was hosted by members of the Ismaili Muslim Students Association, Management Information Systems Association and OneWay South Asian Intervarsity.
Inaara Jamal, the vice president of external affairs for IMSA, said she personally knows a few refugees in her hometown of Dallas and wants to raise awareness for ways to help people on a similar journey.
“There are a lot of ways we can support them and unfortunately not everyone knows how to support them,” said Jamal, a management information systems junior. “So partnering with Refugee Services of Texas is really cool because we know that wherever we put our funds, our money is going to good use.”
More...
http://dailytexanonline.com/2018/03/29/ ... rity-event
Ismaili Muslim Student Association fundraises by selling handmade Pakistani bags
Intricately woven designs of gold, red, green and blue caught the eyes of many students on Monday as they passed the booth filled with handmade bags, pencil holders and key chains sewn by women from Hunza Valley, Pakistan.
The colorful products serve as a monthly fundraiser for the Ismaili Muslim Students Association, a faith-based but all-inclusive organization that promotes community service, health and fitness and connections with other organizations.
Shama Tajani, vice president of external affairs of IMSA, said the family of a current IMSA member purchased the merchandise 20 years ago directly from the artists in Pakistan while working with the initiative, Thread Net Hunza. The family then donated it to IMSA three years ago. The women in Hunza Valley often do not have disposable income and live in a rural area without many resources.
More...
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2018/09 ... stani-bags
******
Club Corner: Muslim Students and Allies
Excerpt:
The meetings are always different, but the main concept is the same. The club gathers to learn more about what it means to be Muslim and what Islam is truly like.
“We aim to raise awareness and break the stigmas that surround issues like Islamophobia,” Jordan Golden-Arabaty said. “We want to reach more than just the student perspective. This is where partnering with the CAIS on events can allow for community dialogue as well.”
For example, MSA and CAIS host Tea and Sweets on a weekly basis. Additionally, trips to the Cleveland Art Museum in 2016 and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City in 2017 were sponsored events. The upcoming fall trips to the Aga Khan Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto will be sponsored by the club as well.
More...
http://www.thebvnewspaper.com/2018/09/2 ... nd-allies/
Intricately woven designs of gold, red, green and blue caught the eyes of many students on Monday as they passed the booth filled with handmade bags, pencil holders and key chains sewn by women from Hunza Valley, Pakistan.
The colorful products serve as a monthly fundraiser for the Ismaili Muslim Students Association, a faith-based but all-inclusive organization that promotes community service, health and fitness and connections with other organizations.
Shama Tajani, vice president of external affairs of IMSA, said the family of a current IMSA member purchased the merchandise 20 years ago directly from the artists in Pakistan while working with the initiative, Thread Net Hunza. The family then donated it to IMSA three years ago. The women in Hunza Valley often do not have disposable income and live in a rural area without many resources.
More...
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2018/09 ... stani-bags
******
Club Corner: Muslim Students and Allies
Excerpt:
The meetings are always different, but the main concept is the same. The club gathers to learn more about what it means to be Muslim and what Islam is truly like.
“We aim to raise awareness and break the stigmas that surround issues like Islamophobia,” Jordan Golden-Arabaty said. “We want to reach more than just the student perspective. This is where partnering with the CAIS on events can allow for community dialogue as well.”
For example, MSA and CAIS host Tea and Sweets on a weekly basis. Additionally, trips to the Cleveland Art Museum in 2016 and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City in 2017 were sponsored events. The upcoming fall trips to the Aga Khan Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto will be sponsored by the club as well.
More...
http://www.thebvnewspaper.com/2018/09/2 ... nd-allies/
Ismaili students gather to witness His Highness the Aga Khan on campus
Students reflect on the community impact of His Highness’s honorary degree from UCalgary
https://ucalgary.ca/utoday/issue/2018-1 ... han-campus
While His Highness the Aga Khan received his honorary degree from the University of Calgary on Wednesday, more than 150 Ismaili students gathered to watch the livestream of the event — some pretending they were there with him in the auditorium, while others expressed a spiritual connection so strong it was like the Aga Khan was in the room with them.
“It feels like a spiritual linking,” says Karishma Akbari, a psychology student at UCalgary and member of the Calgary Ismaili Students' Association.
“I am getting emotional with the anticipation, the buildup and with how the whole city is dropping everything to watch this and cherish this moment as best they can.”
More...
https://ucalgary.ca/utoday/issue/2018-1 ... han-campus
Students reflect on the community impact of His Highness’s honorary degree from UCalgary
https://ucalgary.ca/utoday/issue/2018-1 ... han-campus
While His Highness the Aga Khan received his honorary degree from the University of Calgary on Wednesday, more than 150 Ismaili students gathered to watch the livestream of the event — some pretending they were there with him in the auditorium, while others expressed a spiritual connection so strong it was like the Aga Khan was in the room with them.
“It feels like a spiritual linking,” says Karishma Akbari, a psychology student at UCalgary and member of the Calgary Ismaili Students' Association.
“I am getting emotional with the anticipation, the buildup and with how the whole city is dropping everything to watch this and cherish this moment as best they can.”
More...
https://ucalgary.ca/utoday/issue/2018-1 ... han-campus
An Ismaili Teen on the Quest to Spread Knowledge
In keeping with Mawlana Hazar Imam’s emphasis on the importance of sharing knowledge globally, ninth-grader Qayl Maherali is reaching through reporting. He enjoys “learning, connecting, and educating people about different places around the world, as well as traveling and using technology.”
Since the age of five, Qayl has experimented with various forms of reporting, including interviews, photo essays, and mini-documentaries. Some of these videos are posted on YouTube, and he is a contributor to Simerg.com.
Qayl’s early videos include interviews of interesting individuals, including astronaut John Blaha, singers Salim and Sulaiman Merchant, and members of Teams USA, India and Canada, at the 2016 Jubilee Games in Dubai.
Qayl recalls a photo essay where he interviewed eight NASA astronauts: Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, Joseph Kerwin, John Blaha, Bob Springer, Mark Lee, Kathryn Thornton, Marcos Pontes, and Nasa Launch Director Robert Sieck. “When I think about it, this was a big accomplishment for me because I was only 6 years old and my photo essay was viewed in more than 35 countries, receiving over 150 comments in 25+ languages,” says Qayl.
“My parents have always been very big on learning,” says Qayl, adding “whether it is sports, movies, talks, seminars, or anything else, they have always asked me what I have learned. When I was younger, my parents would take our family on different vacations and would ask me what I have learned on these trips. But it didn't stop there, my parents would also ask me to record and share my newly gained knowledge.”
Qayl acknowledges how privileged he was to go to events such as the Jubilee Games, saying, “I want to be able to share these experiences with people who aren’t able to go, and help them feel the joy that I am feeling.”
Most recently, Qayl was in Lisbon, Portugal, for the International Jubilee Arts Festival, and he volunteered at a 3-D art station. He remarks that “going to the Jubilee Arts Festival served a very important purpose for me and my peers. It allowed me to meet my brothers and sisters from around the world, and it showed me what we are capable of as a Jamat, as a community, and as individuals.”
Qayl enjoys learning about history, particularly Islamic and Ismaili history. While in Lisbon, he visited a number of monuments, including the Castelo de Sao Jorge, which overlooks the city and the Tagus River.
In a YouTube video, Qayl shares that the Muslims who ruled the Iberian Peninsula about 1,000 years ago built this castle to protect the City of Lisbon from intruders. This castle was built around the same time as Fort Alamut, and it houses a permanent collection of archeological artifacts, including a coin that bears the name of Hazrat Ali.
Amazed by the rich history of Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, Qayl said, “I am so fascinated that Muslims were able to go to Western Europe and have such a large influence on the community, culture, and civilization.”
While Qayl’s current career goals are in the fields of science and technology, he says that reporting “will always be a part of who I am.” He plans to continue to “travel, learn, and spread knowledge” through his reporting. He says, “this is my way of following Hazar Imam’s guidance.”
Qayl’s advice to his peers: “love what you do! If you follow your passion, you can achieve great things. At first, some of it may be boring, frustrating, and time-consuming, but it will only get better. Never give up!”
https://the.ismaili/teen-quest-spread-k ... rce=Direct
In keeping with Mawlana Hazar Imam’s emphasis on the importance of sharing knowledge globally, ninth-grader Qayl Maherali is reaching through reporting. He enjoys “learning, connecting, and educating people about different places around the world, as well as traveling and using technology.”
Since the age of five, Qayl has experimented with various forms of reporting, including interviews, photo essays, and mini-documentaries. Some of these videos are posted on YouTube, and he is a contributor to Simerg.com.
Qayl’s early videos include interviews of interesting individuals, including astronaut John Blaha, singers Salim and Sulaiman Merchant, and members of Teams USA, India and Canada, at the 2016 Jubilee Games in Dubai.
Qayl recalls a photo essay where he interviewed eight NASA astronauts: Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, Joseph Kerwin, John Blaha, Bob Springer, Mark Lee, Kathryn Thornton, Marcos Pontes, and Nasa Launch Director Robert Sieck. “When I think about it, this was a big accomplishment for me because I was only 6 years old and my photo essay was viewed in more than 35 countries, receiving over 150 comments in 25+ languages,” says Qayl.
“My parents have always been very big on learning,” says Qayl, adding “whether it is sports, movies, talks, seminars, or anything else, they have always asked me what I have learned. When I was younger, my parents would take our family on different vacations and would ask me what I have learned on these trips. But it didn't stop there, my parents would also ask me to record and share my newly gained knowledge.”
Qayl acknowledges how privileged he was to go to events such as the Jubilee Games, saying, “I want to be able to share these experiences with people who aren’t able to go, and help them feel the joy that I am feeling.”
Most recently, Qayl was in Lisbon, Portugal, for the International Jubilee Arts Festival, and he volunteered at a 3-D art station. He remarks that “going to the Jubilee Arts Festival served a very important purpose for me and my peers. It allowed me to meet my brothers and sisters from around the world, and it showed me what we are capable of as a Jamat, as a community, and as individuals.”
Qayl enjoys learning about history, particularly Islamic and Ismaili history. While in Lisbon, he visited a number of monuments, including the Castelo de Sao Jorge, which overlooks the city and the Tagus River.
In a YouTube video, Qayl shares that the Muslims who ruled the Iberian Peninsula about 1,000 years ago built this castle to protect the City of Lisbon from intruders. This castle was built around the same time as Fort Alamut, and it houses a permanent collection of archeological artifacts, including a coin that bears the name of Hazrat Ali.
Amazed by the rich history of Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, Qayl said, “I am so fascinated that Muslims were able to go to Western Europe and have such a large influence on the community, culture, and civilization.”
While Qayl’s current career goals are in the fields of science and technology, he says that reporting “will always be a part of who I am.” He plans to continue to “travel, learn, and spread knowledge” through his reporting. He says, “this is my way of following Hazar Imam’s guidance.”
Qayl’s advice to his peers: “love what you do! If you follow your passion, you can achieve great things. At first, some of it may be boring, frustrating, and time-consuming, but it will only get better. Never give up!”
https://the.ismaili/teen-quest-spread-k ... rce=Direct
Summer Camps 2018
Welcome to our camp journey! We’d love to take this opportunity to share our excitement and fun filled experiences from this summer with you
summercamp2018-banner.jpg
Please click on the below links for more details
Caring and Sharing
Encounters
Al-Ummah Europe
Global Encounters
https://the.ismaili/united-kingdom/summer-camps-2018
Welcome to our camp journey! We’d love to take this opportunity to share our excitement and fun filled experiences from this summer with you
summercamp2018-banner.jpg
Please click on the below links for more details
Caring and Sharing
Encounters
Al-Ummah Europe
Global Encounters
https://the.ismaili/united-kingdom/summer-camps-2018
Colleges Want Students with Character, But Can’t Measure It
SATs are on their way out, but new tests aren’t quite ready.
Jon Boeckenstedt devours data. As DePaul University’s associate vice president for enrollment management, he studies how the institution’s 16,000 undergraduates are doing, trying to forecast their performance. Many in his position would turn to standardized tests like the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) and the ACT (American College Testing). But Boeckenstedt believes the tests carry too much weight in college admissions. “We know there are students for whom the tests don’t represent their true ability,” he says. Today more than 800 four-year colleges and universities in the United States no longer require standardized tests as part of their admissions process—that’s about 20 percent of the total. In 2011, DePaul became the largest private nonprofit among these.
The flaws in standardized testing are well-documented at this point. They punish disadvantaged students and minorities, entrench class lines, and their predictive powers only forecast a student’s progress as far as the first semester of their freshman year. The University of California, Berkeley1 economist Jesse M. Rothstein has found that the combination of a student’s high school grades and demographic information predicted first-year grades in college about as well as her high school grades and SAT scores do. Based on his experience evaluating undergraduate performance, Boeckenstedt agrees. “It’s double counting,” he says.
As colleges de-emphasize tests scores for applicants, they are turning to research showing that a student’s potential relies on more than cognition. Traits such as optimism, curiosity, resilience, and “grit” may actually play a stronger role in determining a student’s long-term success.
In the face of a growing agreement that these so-called “soft skills” are important is a question that remains stubbornly unanswered: How can they be measured consistently and fairly? Boeckenstedt has often heard admissions officers say, “you can’t measure heart.” The expression rings true. But is it?
More...
http://nautil.us//issue/12/feedback/col ... 0-60760513
SATs are on their way out, but new tests aren’t quite ready.
Jon Boeckenstedt devours data. As DePaul University’s associate vice president for enrollment management, he studies how the institution’s 16,000 undergraduates are doing, trying to forecast their performance. Many in his position would turn to standardized tests like the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) and the ACT (American College Testing). But Boeckenstedt believes the tests carry too much weight in college admissions. “We know there are students for whom the tests don’t represent their true ability,” he says. Today more than 800 four-year colleges and universities in the United States no longer require standardized tests as part of their admissions process—that’s about 20 percent of the total. In 2011, DePaul became the largest private nonprofit among these.
The flaws in standardized testing are well-documented at this point. They punish disadvantaged students and minorities, entrench class lines, and their predictive powers only forecast a student’s progress as far as the first semester of their freshman year. The University of California, Berkeley1 economist Jesse M. Rothstein has found that the combination of a student’s high school grades and demographic information predicted first-year grades in college about as well as her high school grades and SAT scores do. Based on his experience evaluating undergraduate performance, Boeckenstedt agrees. “It’s double counting,” he says.
As colleges de-emphasize tests scores for applicants, they are turning to research showing that a student’s potential relies on more than cognition. Traits such as optimism, curiosity, resilience, and “grit” may actually play a stronger role in determining a student’s long-term success.
In the face of a growing agreement that these so-called “soft skills” are important is a question that remains stubbornly unanswered: How can they be measured consistently and fairly? Boeckenstedt has often heard admissions officers say, “you can’t measure heart.” The expression rings true. But is it?
More...
http://nautil.us//issue/12/feedback/col ... 0-60760513
Essential skills for the future: UAE youth engage in robotics and computer science
In today’s digital world, coding is increasingly becoming a fundamental skill. As part of The.Ismaili’s November theme of Science and Technology, and to recognise International Children’s Day today, we will learn about the children and youth of the UAE Jamat, who are engaging in a variety of stimulating technology-related programmes, from computer software to robotics.
“Where individuals have access to computers in their homes or, as will be the case in rural areas in developing countries for some time to come, in community centres, technology can provide the first real opportunity for lifelong education on a broad scale. One lesson is clear. The mastery of the use of the essential elements of communication and information technologies will have to be part of the experience of every university student sooner rather than later. The use of the technology should have a place in the educational process itself, and its mastery should be on the list of competencies that every graduate should possess.”
-Mawlana Hazar Imam, Centenary Celebration Meeting, Association of American Universities, Washington DC, 22 April 2001
Although computer programming has yet to find its way on to many school curriculums, coding skills are in huge demand and potential employers are looking for this ability across a variety of career paths.
With this fundamental shift of educational trends in mind, the Aga Khan Education Board in the UAE organised a series of courses on coding for students aged 13-18. The courses aim to introduce students to computer sciences and basic programming concepts using the Python 3.6 programming language. Classes were designed to build logical thinking skills and help students write programs to solve basic and advanced technical problems.
Led by Shaheen Khoja, a software engineer at the multinational company General Electric, 16 students attended the course over a two-month period. Shaheen spoke of the daily ubiquity of software programs in the form of mobile apps and online portals.
“I remember when I joined university, I had no prior knowledge of programming concepts. However, this is not the case right now; children from a very young age are learning to code and participate in online programming competitions. This was one of the objectives of the Python programming session, to expose young children to basic concepts in programming and have them apply this skill to solve a real-world challenge,” explained Shaheen.
In the beginners course, students were tasked with completing one of three projects: creating software for a travel agency, a currency exchange service, or a quiz show.
More...
https://the.ismaili/news/essential-skil ... er-science
In today’s digital world, coding is increasingly becoming a fundamental skill. As part of The.Ismaili’s November theme of Science and Technology, and to recognise International Children’s Day today, we will learn about the children and youth of the UAE Jamat, who are engaging in a variety of stimulating technology-related programmes, from computer software to robotics.
“Where individuals have access to computers in their homes or, as will be the case in rural areas in developing countries for some time to come, in community centres, technology can provide the first real opportunity for lifelong education on a broad scale. One lesson is clear. The mastery of the use of the essential elements of communication and information technologies will have to be part of the experience of every university student sooner rather than later. The use of the technology should have a place in the educational process itself, and its mastery should be on the list of competencies that every graduate should possess.”
-Mawlana Hazar Imam, Centenary Celebration Meeting, Association of American Universities, Washington DC, 22 April 2001
Although computer programming has yet to find its way on to many school curriculums, coding skills are in huge demand and potential employers are looking for this ability across a variety of career paths.
With this fundamental shift of educational trends in mind, the Aga Khan Education Board in the UAE organised a series of courses on coding for students aged 13-18. The courses aim to introduce students to computer sciences and basic programming concepts using the Python 3.6 programming language. Classes were designed to build logical thinking skills and help students write programs to solve basic and advanced technical problems.
Led by Shaheen Khoja, a software engineer at the multinational company General Electric, 16 students attended the course over a two-month period. Shaheen spoke of the daily ubiquity of software programs in the form of mobile apps and online portals.
“I remember when I joined university, I had no prior knowledge of programming concepts. However, this is not the case right now; children from a very young age are learning to code and participate in online programming competitions. This was one of the objectives of the Python programming session, to expose young children to basic concepts in programming and have them apply this skill to solve a real-world challenge,” explained Shaheen.
In the beginners course, students were tasked with completing one of three projects: creating software for a travel agency, a currency exchange service, or a quiz show.
More...
https://the.ismaili/news/essential-skil ... er-science
Event Students Assist the Aga Khan
Seneca’s Event Management, Event and Exhibit Design students learned how challenging an event installation can be. Working under the creative direction of Professor Marta Urbanowicz (with support from Professor John MacBride), the students assisted with the installation of the Lapis Ball, the annual fundraiser for the Aga Khan Museum.
The event took place on one of the most temperamental weather days of the year. Students and staff endured searing heat in a clear vinyl tent, followed by gale-strength winds and torrential rain.
“This one was of the most difficult installations we have worked on in a very long time,” says John MacBride, “It taught students how challenging outdoor events can be. Students had the opportunity to see tents and rigging installed, along with furniture load-ins and catering setup. All of this was managed following proper safety protocols despite the horrific weather conditions.”
This is the second year that Seneca Event students have worked on the gala.
Photos at:
https://senecafashion.org/2018/11/20/ev ... -aga-khan/
Event video at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxv--1FlrWc
Seneca’s Event Management, Event and Exhibit Design students learned how challenging an event installation can be. Working under the creative direction of Professor Marta Urbanowicz (with support from Professor John MacBride), the students assisted with the installation of the Lapis Ball, the annual fundraiser for the Aga Khan Museum.
The event took place on one of the most temperamental weather days of the year. Students and staff endured searing heat in a clear vinyl tent, followed by gale-strength winds and torrential rain.
“This one was of the most difficult installations we have worked on in a very long time,” says John MacBride, “It taught students how challenging outdoor events can be. Students had the opportunity to see tents and rigging installed, along with furniture load-ins and catering setup. All of this was managed following proper safety protocols despite the horrific weather conditions.”
This is the second year that Seneca Event students have worked on the gala.
Photos at:
https://senecafashion.org/2018/11/20/ev ... -aga-khan/
Event video at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxv--1FlrWc
14-year old Ayaan Esmail's article on Genomic Sequencing
How Genomic Sequencing will change the way we live...
Right now when you go to the grocery store, labeled on almost all the foods are Nutrition Facts. They give you the overall nutritional information for the food if you were to scan each and every molecule. This is very important to know as then you can figure out if the foods you are eating are healthy or not. Like a nutritional label, genomic sequencing is also very important! It is important because it uses information from DNA to develop new ways to treat, cure, or even prevent the thousands of diseases that affect you. See, everybody on planet Earth is different. Genetically speaking there are no two people who are exactly the same. With genomic sequencing, more formally known as the sequencing of DNA, Doctors, Biological researchers, etc. are able to "read" every part of your DNA, to treat or manage any conditions you might have (e.g. & Acrocallosal syndrome).
More...
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-geno ... an-esmail/
How Genomic Sequencing will change the way we live...
Right now when you go to the grocery store, labeled on almost all the foods are Nutrition Facts. They give you the overall nutritional information for the food if you were to scan each and every molecule. This is very important to know as then you can figure out if the foods you are eating are healthy or not. Like a nutritional label, genomic sequencing is also very important! It is important because it uses information from DNA to develop new ways to treat, cure, or even prevent the thousands of diseases that affect you. See, everybody on planet Earth is different. Genetically speaking there are no two people who are exactly the same. With genomic sequencing, more formally known as the sequencing of DNA, Doctors, Biological researchers, etc. are able to "read" every part of your DNA, to treat or manage any conditions you might have (e.g. & Acrocallosal syndrome).
More...
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-geno ... an-esmail/
Teaching Children Regardless of Grade
Educators in a remote valley in India devised a community approach to instructing students when teachers were sparse. It’s catching on.
One day at the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year in the rural Rishi Valley region of Andhra Pradesh, India, two dozen children in Grades 1 through 5 gathered quietly around four tables on colorful mats on the floor of their one-room school, working with books and worn laminated materials. Few looked up when I walked in.
Their school has no chairs and is more than three hours from Bangalore, the closest major city. But the students were working with learning aids so effective that by now they’ve been adopted by more than 250,000 schools across India and in more than a dozen countries, including Kenya, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The common problem they address is one of the thorniest in education: teaching in primary schools where one teacher instructs children at multiple grade levels at once.
The issue contributes to what Unesco called a “global learning crisis” in 2014, when it found that 130 million children couldn’t do basic math or read, even after four years in school. Recent data indicates the crisis is even more grim, according to Manos Antoninis, director of the Global Education Monitoring report at Unesco.
But experts, including Mr. Antoninis, say that Rishi Valley’s pedagogy, which lets children study at their own pace, offers a solution to the problem. The approach has also been found to be useful in wealthier countries like Britain and Germany, and is applicable in countries like the United States, where teachers often manage large classes of students who have varied levels of understanding even within the same grade.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/opin ... dline&te=1
Educators in a remote valley in India devised a community approach to instructing students when teachers were sparse. It’s catching on.
One day at the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year in the rural Rishi Valley region of Andhra Pradesh, India, two dozen children in Grades 1 through 5 gathered quietly around four tables on colorful mats on the floor of their one-room school, working with books and worn laminated materials. Few looked up when I walked in.
Their school has no chairs and is more than three hours from Bangalore, the closest major city. But the students were working with learning aids so effective that by now they’ve been adopted by more than 250,000 schools across India and in more than a dozen countries, including Kenya, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The common problem they address is one of the thorniest in education: teaching in primary schools where one teacher instructs children at multiple grade levels at once.
The issue contributes to what Unesco called a “global learning crisis” in 2014, when it found that 130 million children couldn’t do basic math or read, even after four years in school. Recent data indicates the crisis is even more grim, according to Manos Antoninis, director of the Global Education Monitoring report at Unesco.
But experts, including Mr. Antoninis, say that Rishi Valley’s pedagogy, which lets children study at their own pace, offers a solution to the problem. The approach has also been found to be useful in wealthier countries like Britain and Germany, and is applicable in countries like the United States, where teachers often manage large classes of students who have varied levels of understanding even within the same grade.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/opin ... dline&te=1
12-year-old Prior Lake girl organizes holiday donation drive for charity she started at age 7
PRIOR LAKE, Minn. (FOX 9) - She’s only 12 years old, but Sanya Pirani is already giving back to her community.
Pirani is a Prior Lake Middle School student who founded the nonprofit Sanya’s Hope for Children. She organized a donation drive Saturday morning to stuff 500 bags for homeless children. It’s just one part of her plan to make the world a better place.
She started the charity when she was 7 years old. She organized hunger drives and learned to sew bags for children in need. Now, her operation has grown to include classmates from her school district and beyond as they work to put smiles on the faces of children over Christmas.
Image Gallery 6 PHOTOS
Sanya Pirani instructs volunteers what to do.
Pirani gives her friends pep talks inside her Prior Lake home as the group prepares to spend several hours on a Saturday morning stuffing holiday bags for children in need.
As they work hand-in-hand to form an assembly line putting crayons, notepads and toys into handmade bags by Pirani and her friends, these middle and high school students can’t help but feel good about donating their time.
“I think it’s great that youth are helping other youth in the community and this is what the holiday season is all about: giving back to the community,” said Sara Carlson, a Prior Lake Middle School student.
Carlson teamed up with Pirani recently to help organize Saturday’s event. She is inspired by Pirani’s selfless approach to helping others.
“It’s our obligation to feel that poverty is not acceptable and that we need to do something and help other people,” Pirani said.
Pirani recognized the need to give back at a young age. At 7 years old, she was already running hunger drives and bake sales before learning how to sew.
As her love of sewing turned into an influential nonprofit, she now collects holiday bags full of goodies to be dropped off at homeless shelters over Christmas.
“I’ve been working with Sanya since I’ve been in second grade and I’ve always loved to come here, and last year I got to go to the orphanage and see the kids’ faces and it really was a miracle that so many people are caring enough to do this for the kids that don’t have the money to,” said Andrea Reichwald, a fellow student and volunteer.
Joe Vaughn is the executive director of the Scott, Carver, Dakota Cap Agency which will distribute the bags to children. He says Pirani first reached out to him when she was 7 years old and he’s amazed what she’s accomplished in these few years.
“The positive energy in the room and the positive feelings they generate for helping others and it’s an authentic general feeling they have—it’s just contagious,” Vaughn said.
Over the next few days, the 500 bags stuffed full of presents will be brought over to the Sharing and Caring Homeless Shelter located in downtown Minneapolis.
http://www.fox9.com/news/12-year-old-pr ... d-at-age-7
PRIOR LAKE, Minn. (FOX 9) - She’s only 12 years old, but Sanya Pirani is already giving back to her community.
Pirani is a Prior Lake Middle School student who founded the nonprofit Sanya’s Hope for Children. She organized a donation drive Saturday morning to stuff 500 bags for homeless children. It’s just one part of her plan to make the world a better place.
She started the charity when she was 7 years old. She organized hunger drives and learned to sew bags for children in need. Now, her operation has grown to include classmates from her school district and beyond as they work to put smiles on the faces of children over Christmas.
Image Gallery 6 PHOTOS
Sanya Pirani instructs volunteers what to do.
Pirani gives her friends pep talks inside her Prior Lake home as the group prepares to spend several hours on a Saturday morning stuffing holiday bags for children in need.
As they work hand-in-hand to form an assembly line putting crayons, notepads and toys into handmade bags by Pirani and her friends, these middle and high school students can’t help but feel good about donating their time.
“I think it’s great that youth are helping other youth in the community and this is what the holiday season is all about: giving back to the community,” said Sara Carlson, a Prior Lake Middle School student.
Carlson teamed up with Pirani recently to help organize Saturday’s event. She is inspired by Pirani’s selfless approach to helping others.
“It’s our obligation to feel that poverty is not acceptable and that we need to do something and help other people,” Pirani said.
Pirani recognized the need to give back at a young age. At 7 years old, she was already running hunger drives and bake sales before learning how to sew.
As her love of sewing turned into an influential nonprofit, she now collects holiday bags full of goodies to be dropped off at homeless shelters over Christmas.
“I’ve been working with Sanya since I’ve been in second grade and I’ve always loved to come here, and last year I got to go to the orphanage and see the kids’ faces and it really was a miracle that so many people are caring enough to do this for the kids that don’t have the money to,” said Andrea Reichwald, a fellow student and volunteer.
Joe Vaughn is the executive director of the Scott, Carver, Dakota Cap Agency which will distribute the bags to children. He says Pirani first reached out to him when she was 7 years old and he’s amazed what she’s accomplished in these few years.
“The positive energy in the room and the positive feelings they generate for helping others and it’s an authentic general feeling they have—it’s just contagious,” Vaughn said.
Over the next few days, the 500 bags stuffed full of presents will be brought over to the Sharing and Caring Homeless Shelter located in downtown Minneapolis.
http://www.fox9.com/news/12-year-old-pr ... d-at-age-7