Because I was worried about the chances of getting into college if you don’t chase the top 10% (a misconception that turned out not to be true) and I liked the idea of getting your undergraduate degree at a school that emphasized teaching undergraduates over graduate research, I found the idea of a liberal arts college appealing. So, what is the difference between college and university degrees? What are the differences between liberal arts colleges and research universities?…
Consider a Liberal Arts College – how to choose a college part 1/5
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It’s that time of year again. College application deadlines are approaching and seniors are trying to figure out how to choose a college or university to apply to. Where do they want to go to college? And why should they choose one college or university over another. What are the different types of colleges and universities? There are lots of choices!
At freshman orientation for our second child, I greatly appreciated that the principal started trying to address how competitive our high school had become.
He pointed out that 90% of the class will not be in the top 10%.
Obvious math, I know. But he was pointing this out because the idea was becoming prevalent that if you weren’t in the top 10% of the class, you were doomed to attend a second rate college or university and wouldn’t be successful. Therefore, “everyone” was chasing the top 10% so they wouldn’t be left behind. But when you embrace that reasoning, 90% of the kids sitting in orientation would be “left behind” and doomed to be unsuccessful.
A depressing idea.
90% of our children are living with constantly being told that they are failures.
No wonder everyone is scared and chasing the top 10%!
As an alternative to having the goal of attending only elite universities, he suggested considering the colleges proposed in Colleges that Change Lives, by Loren Pope.…
Most Likely to Succeed – Learn more Part 11/11
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Like I said at the beginning of this post series, Most Likely to Succeed points out many concerns with the current educational system that I agree with, and proposes some of the best solutions I’ve seen to correct these problems.
Children hate school and doing well in school doesn’t necessarily lead to success; school doesn’t have to be this way and is not teaching our children skills for the jobs that will be available to them, ones that can’t be replaced by machines. Our current educational system was designed over a hundred years ago for a vastly different world and is going to have to change to keep up with the world….
Cut the School Curriculum – Most Likely to Succeed Part 10/11
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The other thing that is going to have to be changed with project based learning – or more student exploration type learning – is the size of school curriculum.
It’s going to have to be cut.
Drastically.
I am constantly told by administrators and teachers that the current curriculum is too broad and too specific to adequately teach in a school year….
The problems with group projects – Most Likely to Succeed Part 9/11
This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.In my last post I mentioned that ranking our kids against each other isn’t useful because companies don’t need the best engineer, they need ten “of the best” engineers who can work together. They need kids who can work in groups. That’s the whole reason given for all the group projects my kids have been assigned at school. But in the past, school group projects have had all sorts of problems, especially for top achieving kids.
To look at this, I’ll again refer back to the documentary Most Likely to Succeed and how they do group projects at High Tech High. And for this method of learning to work another thing (besides how we think about grades) that would have to change at our school is how we do group projects….
Grades – What are they for? Most Likely to Succeed Part 8/11
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In my last post, I mentioned that changing how learning happens in school is going to mean changing how we see grades. Let me explain what I mean. What are grades for? Just exactly why are grades important in school?
I am going to guess that initially, as class sizes got larger and standardization was occurring, grades were meant to be a measure for both students and teachers. Some way was needed to assess whether or not the material had been learned.
In this system, a “high” grade would indicate that enough of the information has been understood to move on to a different or more complex topic. (Remember when a 70 was considered “passing” and an indication that you could move on?)…
Project Based Learning – Most Likely to Succeed Part 7/11
This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.The response at our school district’s showing of Most Likely to Succeed was overwhelmingly positive. The film did a good job of pointing out all the weaknesses of our current system, but left you with an uplifting feeling. This was a welcome change from all of the other research I’ve done that has confirmed my fears that something is drastically wrong with our current educational system, but with little to offer in the way of change other than patching over some real problems.
I think the positive response was also in part to a growing concern I have seen in our district about the amount of homework and anxiety in our kids. Parents did bring up some valid concerns, some of which were answered by other parents present who work for testing agencies, state education agencies, and universities. The concerns were mainly centered on project based learning.
As I said, the documentary gave the impression that project based learning was the only option. Even though it was acknowledged early on in the discussion in our district that it was just one option, the discussion stayed pretty much on project based learning. The long and the short of it is…
High Tech High – Most Likely to Succeed Part 6/11
This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.After pointing out the many flaws of our current educational system, the makers of Most Likely to Succeed go in search of a new model for teaching, an alternative to memorizing facts and to regurgitate them on tests. To go even further, a school alternative that more closely matches up to tasks that students will have to be able to complete in their future jobs.
A large portion of the film is then spent profiling a select group of students at a High Tech High, which teaches primarily by having the students do independent projects in groups, or project based learning….
Fear of Failure in Education – Most Likely to Succeed Part 5/11
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Most Likely to Succeed – Fear of failure – Schools are as much afraid of failing the test as students are, in spite of it not being a guarantee of success.
In my last post, I talked about how the documentary Most Likely to Succeed showed that the history of education led us to the practice of students memorizing enormous amounts of material.
Most Likely to Succeed uses AP history as an example of a course that requires memorizing an overwhelming number of facts. The way they described it matches up exactly with what my kids have experienced first hand. They are learning loads of facts, and they aren’t retaining it. I think both the book and the documentary cite an example of a school who gave a repeat AP history test to their students a few months after they finished the course. …
We don’t need human calculators, so why are we training them? – Most Likely to Succeed, Part 4/11
This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.Most Likely to Succeed – Our education system was designed to train workers for jobs that are being replaced by machines. It’s outdated.
I managed to write two posts on just the first few minutes of the documentary Most Likely to Succeed: about how the concerns of the filmmakers about school resonated with me, disputing the reasoning that kids quit liking school because it gets harder and questioning whether or not doing well in school really will lead to success.
After that brief introduction, Most Likely to Succeed spends quite a bit of time illustrating how computers will make knowledge-based jobs obsolete,…
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