After 40 + years as an eduholic seems students have actually changed very little. They are as lazy as I allow them to be. They are as enthusiastic to me as I am to them. I always seem to be in a kind of fear that my students will not learn the same thing the same way I learned it.

I am no fan of NCLB but I don’t think the youth of today are much different than the youth of yesteryear. As way past senior citizen in my life, I still recall dozing off in organic chemistry. “Studying” over a pitcher of beer at the county line and changing majors to find an easier way out. Luckily there were teachers there to change my mind and my habits.

Lessons learned

“The American educational landscape is dotted with evidence of the proclivity of educational policymakers to seek the panacea. Proposing surefire remedies to completely solve a problem, their magic elixirs are advanced with total confidence that they will bring paradise to at least part of the educational world. Indigenous to this position is policymakers' steadfast unwillingness to learn from the wisdom of the past, resulting in a never-ending parade of reforms. Of value in themselves, these reforms share the same fate and suffer an unhappy ending, only to see the process born again and begun anew.”

Education Reforms -- Lessons from History Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 87, No. 01 (September 2005): 84-89. Thomas C. Hunt

Laws of Education

Teaching cannot be conducted or tested with mechanical rules. The more complicated and rigid the mechanism, the sillier.

A good teacher can make any system work: a poor teacher can ruin any system.

Easy courses drive out hard courses.

For an innovation in education to continue, continual ferment is needed.

Success in education research consists of identifying and labeling the obvious.

A system that makes teachers and students work harder will produce higher grades, and will disappear.

Mechanisms that increase student-teacher contact, good; Mechanisms that reduce student-teacher contact, bad.

Swartz, Clifford E. 1891. "Journal of Geological Education, 1982, v.30, p.96.

Among our faculty, we have all noticed that the kids are not reading enough. Even at the Advanced Placement level, I can see that students do not have enough experience with reading to tackle challenging texts. They do have pretty high auditory levels of vocabulary acquisition, I think, from being exposed to media in all its forms from a very early age. My observation is that they can use words properly in context but are poor spellers. My guess has been that they are familiar with hearing the words but do not have a visual record of the words, because they hear far more words than they read.

It has occurred to me that in Elizabethan times not many people could read. They went to "hear" a play, not see one. Though most were illiterate, they lived in an aural society and were better listeners than we are today. When books became pervasive, the experts of the time said these easy references would destroy the discipline of memorization. And they were right. Could we be moving to an era where reading is not as essential as it once was?

If u cn rd ths, u cn ern $! Remember those ads on the matchbook covers (back when everybody smoked)? The ads were for shorthand courses, but they look like the text messages of today. Language is always changing. Maybe reading will be an old technology sometime soon.

Mary T, high school English and journalism teacher:

Socrates explaining to Phaedrus
In the Egyptian city of Naucratis was a famous god, named Theuth. He invented arithmetic, calculation, geometry, astonomy, draughts, dice, and letters. Theuth showed Thamus, the king of Egypt, all of his inventions. Thamus thought they were all wonderful and useful except letters. Thamus told Theuth that the discovery of letters would create forgetfulness. Learners would not use their memories. They would trust the written characters and not remember it for themselves.
"the specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth: they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing: they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without reality.
Socrates rebuke to Phaedrus
"...when once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them..."
From the Dialogues of Plato translation by Jowett

“Students today can't prepare bark to calculate their problems. They
depend on their slates, which are more expensive. What will they do
when the slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to
write.”
1703 Teacher's conference
“Students today depend on paper too much. They don't know how to write
on a slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They can't
clean a slate properly. What will they do when the run out of paper? “
1815 Principle's publication

Students today depend too much upon ink. They don't know how to use a
pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the
pencil.
1907 NEA Journal
Students today depend upon store-bought ink. They don't know how to
make their own. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write
words or ciphers until their next trip to the settlement. This is a
sad commentary on modern education.
1928 Rural American Teacher
Students today depend on these expensive fountain pens. They can no
longer write with a straight pen and nib. We parents must not allow
them to wallow in such luxury to the detriment of learning how to cope
in the real business world, which is not so extravagant.
1941 PTA Gazette
Ballpoint pens will be the ruin of education in our country.
Students use these devices and then throw them away. The American
values of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Businesses and
banks will never allow such expensive luxuries.
1950 Federal Teachers
From Plato's Phaedrus
Socrates explaining to Phaedrus
In the Egyptian city of Naucratis was a famous god, named Theuth. He
invented arithmetic, calculation, geometry, astonomy, draughts, dice,
and letters. Theuth showed Thamus, the king of Egypt, all of his
inventions. Thamus thought they were all wonderful and useful except
letters. Thamus told Theuth that the discovery of letters would
create forgetfulness. Learners would not use their memories. They
would trust the written characters and not remember it for themselves.
"the specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but
to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the
semblance of truth: they will be hearers of many things and will have
learned nothing: they will appear to be omniscient and will generally
know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom
without reality.
Socrates rebuke to Phaedrus
"...when once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those
who may or may not understand them..."
From the Dialogues of Plato translation by Jowett
And now computers will ruin our students – I guess what goes around
comes around. Luckily there a few brave teachers who step into
uncharted waters. Seems like some of them belong to this list. Keep
up the good work. Your students will be prepared for the future.
Check out Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky. The
short paper can be found at

VA

Nature449, 153 (13 September 2007) | doi:10.1038/449153b; Published online 12 September 2007

50 & 100 Years Ago

50 Years ago

"British public schools and the future" — [Another] demand which parents make on the public schools is impossible to justify on educational grounds and has social, political and moral implications. Many parents...send their sons to public schools because membership of these schools will be of service to them in their future careers. Although this charge may be exaggerated — the full effects of the establishment of grammar schools under the Education Act of 1902 have not yet been seen — the public school system undoubtedly confers advantages on its products which are denied to those from State schools. A system which enables less able men to come to the top and prevents the abler from doing so cannot be justified on human, economic or moral grounds. But even this does not provide a case for abolishing schools which have so much to commend them educationally; if the wrong boys are getting into public schools, other means of selecting them must be found.

From Nature 14 September 1957.

100 YEARS AGO

Theoretically at least most observers admit that the adoption of the scientific method in the management of the affairs of State is a preliminary necessity if national efficiency is to be secured... There is growing evidence, also, that politicians in most countries are beginning to realise that statesmanship is no exception to this rule, but, like other skilled labour, is most satisfactory when conducted on scientific principles. But whether British statesmen appreciate this truth to the same extent as those of other great nations is a matter of grave doubt. Their education generally has been of such a character as to leave them with a colossal ignorance of science and scientific methods; and it is only by overcoming the bias received at the public school and university that most of them come to understand the modern outlook.

From Nature 12 September 1907.