Reuters reports that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pouring money into the development of biometric devices that will be worn as bracelets by students to monitor their “attentiveness” and “engagement.”  The biometric bracelets will send a small current across the skin and measure subtle changes in electrical charges as the nervous system responds...Read More

I’ve noticed a new buzz word hovering around educational circles these days.  It’s called 21st century learning.  My first reaction to this is:  aren’t we living in the 21st century?  And doesn’t that mean that any kind of learning we engage in is 21st century learning?  Well, I suppose that’s unfair.  What the people behind this...Read More

Teachers have been taking it on the chin a lot lately with calls for the abolishment of tenure, and its replacement with what have been called “value-added models” of teaching evaluation.  Basically, what this means is that teachers are going to be increasingly assessed in terms of their ability to raise the standardized test scores of their students. ...Read More

There’s a whole new climate of opinion that’s been sweeping over the educational scene in America these days.  It’s all about accepting as perfectly normal the creation of a monstrous monolithic “learning” enterprise from preschool to post-college that consists of uniform standards, standardized testing, the collection of “data”, and the evaluation of teachers based on test scores (a practice incongruously called “value-added”). I find this...Read More

Back in the early 1970’s, I remember reading a book by George Leonard (who just passed away last month) called Education and Ecstasy.  The book was in part a futuristic look at education.  In one section, children faced a giant screen and all they had to do was touch it and they could learn practically...Read More