Carnival of Education #159: Briefing the Next US President on 35 Issues

Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

Thank you for stop­ping dur­ing recess for a quick study ses­siMeditation School Studentson. 35 edu­ca­tors have col­lab­o­rat­ed to present this Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion as a use­ful les­son plan for you and your edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy team on what our real con­cerns and sug­ges­tions are.

In case this is your first vis­it to our Sharp­Brains blog, let me first of all point out some use­ful resources to stay sane dur­ing the rest of the cam­paign: select­ed Brain Teasers, a list of 21 great Brain Books, over a dozen inter­views with lead­ing sci­en­tists on learn­ing and brain-based top­ics, and more.

With­out fur­ther ado, let’s pro­ceed to the issues raised. We hope they pro­vide, at the very least, good men­tal stim­u­la­tion for you and your advisors.

Edu­ca­tion as a System 

4. Swim­ming is good, but I’d rather surf (Nan­cy at Teacher in a Strange Land).

5. Insur­gents fight­ing the Dark Side (the Sta­tus Quo) (Norm at Edu­ca­tion Notes Online).



Learn­ing and Teach­ing Philosophy

6. The First Step (for Aca­d­e­m­ic Suc­cess) Is Fail­ure (Joanne at SharpBrains).

7. 1777? (Joanne Jacobs).

8. Maybe we should revis­it what is the pur­pose of edu­ca­tion? (Mike at Dan­ger­ous­ly Irrelevant).

9. Who needs a col­lege degree? (Jacob at Ear­ly Retire­ment Extreme).

10. Are Schools (Cog­ni­tive­ly) Nutri­tive for Chil­dren’s Com­plex Think­ing? (Tom and Chris­tine at SharpBrains).

11. May our teach­ing be too suc­cess­ful for our own good? (Lau­reen at The Life with­out School).


From edu­ca­tor to educator

12. Should there be a lim­it to shar­ing best prac­tices? (Ms Cor­nelius at A Shrewd­ness of Apes).

13. Do you man­age stress well? (Gre­go­ry at SharpBrains).

14. Where in the world are my union lead­ers? (Wood­lass at Under Assault: Teach­ing in NYC).

15. Is home­work work­ing? (Sum­mer at Mom Is Teaching).

16. What is the edu­ca­tion val­ue of Yale’s Sex Week? (Dana at Prin­ci­pled Discovery).

17. What makes a good edu­ca­tor? (Car­ol at Bellringers).

18. How do we sur­vive tough schools? (Andrew at Scenes From The Battleground).

Tech­nol­o­gy

19. Give me more of it, please! (Pat at Suc­cess­ful Teaching).

20. Enough. Have you heard of Giz­mo High? (Matt at Going to the Mat).

21. Using tech­nol­o­gy in the Class­room 101 (Matthew at In Practice).

22. How can we inte­grate video in the class­room? (Matthew at Cre­at­ing Life­long Learners).

23. Any­thing beyond Junior Achieve­ment? (Adam at Ipex).

24. Cre­at­ing a Pho­tog­ra­phy-rich book (Bogu­sia at Nucle­us Learning)

25. How to cre­ate online con­tent ( Lar­ry Ferlazzo).

Kids and kids

26. Help: how do I deal with kids who mis­be­have? (Mike at Edu­ca­tion in Texas).

27. Help: what do we do with the pro­found­ly gift­ed? (The “More” Child).

28. Why do we accept unhelp­ful label­ing of kids? (Mar­cel­la at abyss2hope).

29. What is the role of nutri­tion? (Jack­son at Alter­na­tive Channel).

30. Can we edu­cate about Dar­fur? (Bill at The Tem­pered Rad­i­cal).

Enrich­ment Opportunities

31. Do you play any musi­cal instru­ment? (Megan, a high school­er, at SharpBrains).Piano musical training

32. How many plays did Shake­speare write? (Gedaly a the Bard Blog).

33. Brain Teas­er: Words in your brain! (Pas­cale at SharpBrains).

34. Please Don’t Out­source Your Brain to your Vicepres­i­dent, ok? (Alvaro at SharpBrains). 

35. After all these years…can’t we all just be hap­py? ( JM at “Lead From The Start”).

Dear Mr or Mrs Next US Pres­i­dent, we hope you have enjoyed this brief­ing. If you want to con­tribute to future Car­ni­vals of Edu­ca­tion, you can use this sim­ple sub­mis­sion form.

Enjoy the year,

35 edu­ca­tion bloggers

11 Comments

  1. Mathew on February 19, 2008 at 6:00

    Great job host­ing. The new pres­i­dent will have his/her hands full.



  2. Bellringers on February 19, 2008 at 7:48

    Thanks for hosting…Let’s hope the pow­ers that be lis­ten. Now would­n’t that be something?



  3. Alvaro on February 19, 2008 at 9:18

    Well, edu­ca­tion requires patience and per­sis­tence :-) thank you for your great posts.



  4. Gedaly on February 20, 2008 at 9:37

    This is a great edi­tion with lots of real­ly inter­est­ing posts! I hope our next pres­i­dent stum­bles upon this list. 

    When was the last time edu­ca­tion was a big issue (and not one on the list of things to get cut)?



  5. Mrs. Bluebird on February 21, 2008 at 4:25

    Great job hosting…maybe I’m miss­ing some­thing, but I’ve been try­ing to get sub­mis­sions in to the car­ni­val for the past few weeks — I used to always see a call for sub­mis­sions on the Wonk’s site, but haven’t lately…so I nev­er know where to send it…what am I doing wrong?? How do you all find out where to send your sub­mis­sions now that it’s not on the site?



  6. Alvaro on February 21, 2008 at 12:51

    The best way is sim­ply to sub­mit your best week­ly arti­cle using the sub­mis­sion form I link to at the end of the post. The arti­cle then gets auto­mat­i­cal­ly sent to who­ev­er is the host that week. Good luck! let me know if you have any ques­tions about that.



  7. Dawn on February 21, 2008 at 3:10

    Great car­ni­val! Won­der­ful­ly orga­nized and full of fan­tas­tic posts!



  8. Veni on February 24, 2008 at 1:18

    :))



  9. Pat on February 26, 2008 at 2:53

    This was a great car­ni­val. I enjoyed all the arti­cles! Thanks for your hard work get­ting all of this together.



  10. Alvaro on February 26, 2008 at 7:08

    Dawn, Veni, Pat, thank you for your com­ments and great posts! putting this togeth­er was great braon exercise :-)



  11. Mister Teacher on February 27, 2008 at 6:32

    Mrs. Blue­bird has a point. The sub­mis­sion guides have been screwed up for a cou­ple of weeks. The “easy to use sub­mis­sion form” has had ME list­ed as the next host for a cou­ple of weeks now, so I’ve been get­ting the entries. I did­n’t know about YOUR car­ni­val until I read about it on Edu­ca­tion Wonks! :(
    Nice Car­ney, though…



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

Newsletter

Subscribe to our e-newsletter

* indicates required

Got the book?