What Does It Mean to Be Well Educated? PDF Download

Author: Alfie Kohn
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 9780807032671
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 216

View

Book Description
Few writers ask us to question our fundamental assumptions about education as provocatively as Alfie Kohn. Time magazine has called him'perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores.' And the Washington Post says he is 'the most energetic and charismatic figure standing in the way of a major federal effort to make standardized curriculums and tests a fact of life in every U.S. school.' In this new collection of essays, Kohn takes on some of the most important and controversial topics in education of the last few years. His central focus is on the real goals of education-a topic, he argues, that we systematically ignore while lavishing attention on misguided models of learning and counterproductive techniques of motivation. The shift to talking about goals yields radical conclusions and wonderfully pungent essays that only Alfie Kohn could have written. From the title essay's challenge to conventional, conservative definitions of a good education to essays on standards and testing and grades that tally the severe educational costs of overemphasizing a narrow conception of achievement, Kohn boldly builds on his earlier work and writes for a wide audience. Kohn's new book will be greeted with enthusiasm by his many readers and by any teacher or parent looking for a refreshing perspective on today's debates about schools.

Author: Tara Westover
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 039959051X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 352

View

Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University “Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • BILL GATES’S HOLIDAY READING LIST • FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle’s Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home. “Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”—Vogue NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • Time • NPR • Good Morning America • San Francisco Chronicle • The Guardian • The Economist • Financial Times • Newsday • New York Post • theSkimm • Refinery29 • Bloomberg • Self • Real Simple • Town & Country • Bustle • Paste • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • LibraryReads • Book Riot • Pamela Paul, KQED • New York Public Library

Author: Philip W. Jackson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226389391
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 135

View

Book Description
One day in 1938, John Dewey addressed a room of professional educators and urged them to take up the task of “finding out just what education is.” Reading this lecture in the late 1940s, Philip W. Jackson took Dewey’s charge to heart and spent the next sixty years contemplating his words. The stimulating result of a lifetime of thinking about educating, What Is Education? is a profound philosophical exploration of how we transmit knowledge in human society and how we think about accomplishing that vital task. Most contemporary approaches to education follow a strictly empirical track, aiming to discover pragmatic solutions for teachers and school administrators. Jackson argues that we need to learn not just how to improve on current practices but also how to think about what education means—in short, we need to answer Dewey by constantly rethinking education from the ground up. Guiding us through the many facets of Dewey’s comments, Jackson also calls on Hegel, Kant, and Paul Tillich to shed light on how a society does, can, and should transmit truth and knowledge to successive generations. Teasing out the implications in these thinkers’ works ultimately leads Jackson to the conclusion that education is at root a moral enterprise. At a time when schools increasingly serve as a battleground for ideological contests, What Is Education? is a stirring call to refocus our minds on what is for Jackson the fundamental goal of education: making students as well as teachers—and therefore everyone—better people.

Author: Seymour A Papert
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 154167510X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 256

View

Book Description
In this revolutionary book, a renowned computer scientist explains the importance of teaching children the basics of computing and how it can prepare them to succeed in the ever-evolving tech world. Computers have completely changed the way we teach children. We have Mindstorms to thank for that. In this book, pioneering computer scientist Seymour Papert uses the invention of LOGO, the first child-friendly programming language, to make the case for the value of teaching children with computers. Papert argues that children are more than capable of mastering computers, and that teaching computational processes like de-bugging in the classroom can change the way we learn everything else. He also shows that schools saturated with technology can actually improve socialization and interaction among students and between students and teachers. Technology changes every day, but the basic ways that computers can help us learn remain. For thousands of teachers and parents who have sought creative ways to help children learn with computers, Mindstorms is their bible.

Author: Barbara Oakley, PhD
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 052550446X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

View

Book Description
A surprisingly simple way for students to master any subject--based on one of the world's most popular online courses and the bestselling book A Mind for Numbers A Mind for Numbers and its wildly popular online companion course "Learning How to Learn" have empowered more than two million learners of all ages from around the world to master subjects that they once struggled with. Fans often wish they'd discovered these learning strategies earlier and ask how they can help their kids master these skills as well. Now in this new book for kids and teens, the authors reveal how to make the most of time spent studying. We all have the tools to learn what might not seem to come naturally to us at first--the secret is to understand how the brain works so we can unlock its power. This book explains: Why sometimes letting your mind wander is an important part of the learning process How to avoid "rut think" in order to think outside the box Why having a poor memory can be a good thing The value of metaphors in developing understanding A simple, yet powerful, way to stop procrastinating Filled with illustrations, application questions, and exercises, this book makes learning easy and fun.

Author: Guy Claxton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780744722
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 272

View

Book Description
Why the education system is failing our kids and how we can start the revolution that will save our schools With their emphasis on regurgitated knowledge and stressful exams, today’s schools actually do more harm than good. Guiding readers past the sterile debates about City Academies and dumbed-down exams, Claxton proves that education’s key responsibility should be to create enthusiastic learners who will go on to thrive as adults in a swiftly-changing, dynamic world. Students must be encouraged to sharpen their wits, ask questions, and think for themselves - all without chucking out Shakespeare or the Periodic Table. Blending down-to-earth examples with the latest advances in brain science, and written with passion, wit, and authority, this brilliant book will inspire teachers, parents, and readers of all backgrounds to join a practical revolution and foster in the next generation a natural curiosity and the spirit of adventure.

Author: Sir Ken Robinson, PhD
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143134167
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 145

View

Book Description
A call to action that pulls together all of Sir Ken Robinson’s key messages and philosophies, and that challenges and empowers readers to re-imagine our world, and our systems, for the better. Sir Ken Robinson changed the lives of millions of people. The embodiment of the prestigious TED conference, his TED Talks are watched an average of 17,000 times a day--a figure that Chris Anderson, Head of TED, says is the equivalent of selling out the Millennium Dome every night for fifteen consecutive years. A New York Times bestselling author, Sir Ken’s books have been translated into twenty four languages. In his final years, Sir Ken was working on a book that would serve as his manifesto. This book was being written for both new and dedicated audiences alike as a coherent overview of the arguments that he dedicated his life to, and as a pivotal piece of literature for the education revolution he began. When Sir Ken received his cancer prognosis in August 2020 he asked his daughter and collaborator, Kate Robinson, to finish writing this manifesto and continue his work. At its core, Sir Ken’s work is a love letter to human potential--a celebration of what we as a species are capable of doing, and of being, if we create the right conditions. It is a rallying cry to revolutionize our systems of education, and the ways in which we run our businesses and structure our social systems, so that they bring out the best in each and every person. Sir Ken often observed that what separates us from the rest of life on Earth is our power of imagination: the ability to bring to mind things that are not present to our senses. It is imagination that allows us to create the world in which we live, rather than just exist in it. It also gives us the power to recreate it.

Author: Suleika Jaouad
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0399588590
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

View

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist • “I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review “Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad’s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us.”—The Washington Post In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times. When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live. How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.

Author: Christopher Emdin
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807028029
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 234

View

Book Description
A New York Times Best Seller "Essential reading for all adults who work with black and brown young people...Filled with exceptional intellectual sophistication and necessary wisdom for the future of education."—Imani Perry, National Book Award Winner author of South To America An award-winning educator offers a much-needed antidote to traditional top-down pedagogy and promises to radically reframe the landscape of urban education for the better Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color, Dr. Christopher Emdin has merged his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America. He takes to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student’s culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning. Putting forth his theory of Reality Pedagogy, Emdin provides practical tools to unleash the brilliance and eagerness of youth and educators alike—both of whom have been typecast and stymied by outdated modes of thinking about urban education. With this fresh and engaging new pedagogical vision, Emdin demonstrates the importance of creating a family structure and building communities within the classroom, using culturally relevant strategies like hip-hop music and call-and-response, and connecting the experiences of urban youth to indigenous populations globally. Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, Emdin demonstrates how by implementing the “Seven Cs” of reality pedagogy in their own classrooms, urban youth of color benefit from truly transformative education.

Author: Marc Prensky
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807774944
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 145

View

Book Description
In his most visionary book, internationally renowned educator Marc Prensky presents a compelling alternative to how and what we teach our children. Drawing on emerging world trends, he elaborates a comprehensive vision for K–12 education that includes new goals, new means, a new curriculum, a new kind of teaching, and a new use of technology. “Marc Prensky—one of the smartest people working in educational reform today—offers us a lucid, inspiring, optimistic, doable, and crucial blueprint for how we can build a future with the schools children desperately need in our modern, high-risk, highly complex, fast-changing, and imperiled world.” —James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Regents’ Professor, Arizona State University “Marc Prensky was always ahead of his time. Education to better their world continues this trend in spades. This book is a goldmine and a powerful wakeup call that the future is already here—in pockets right now but a harbinger of what is rapidly emerging. Read the book and make yourself part of the future today. As we are finding in our own work, students are agents of change—in pedagogy, in learning environments, and of society itself. Exciting possibilities await!” —Michael Fullan, Professor Emeritus, OISE/University of Toronto “Marc Prensky’s answer to the question ‘What is the purpose of education?’—that education should now empower youth to improve their communities and the world—would unleash the energy, creativity, and compassion of students and teachers in ways we have never imagined. We need the better world Prensky envisions and we need it now.” —Milton Chen, The George Lucas Educational Foundation “Prensky offers perhaps the most compelling case and model yet articulated by anyone for today’s globally-empowered children. A must-read book for all educators and anyone who cares about education.” —James Tracey, Head of School, Rocky Hill School, RI “Wow. As a takeaway it is good—very good.” —John Seeley Brown “A great book. Filled with ‘food for thought’, common sense, provocative ideas and fun to read.” —Nieves Segovia, Presidenta, Institucion Educativa SEK (SEK International Schools)