Tag Archives: education

Hey, Teacher! Leave Those Kids Alone!

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“You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!”

It’s one thing to regulate recess (a stupid thing), but entirely another to arrest a kid for playground misbehavior. Somehow I don’t think the punishment fit the crime.

“He told her he was placed ‘in a dark room with a window, a metal toilet and a metal sink,’ and that inmates banged on the window ‘saying they were going to get him and cussing,’ she said. He said officers told him to stop crying or they’d let the inmates get him, she said.”

Purple Passion

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Here’s an article about reaction to teachers dropping red correcting pens in favor
of purple ones.

According to the teacher, red may be a startling color, but the important thing is that it gets results. Jago notes, just as a red stop sign is the best way to get drivers to pay attention to a potentially dangerous intersection, making red marks on a pupil’s paper is the best way to get the student’s attention focused on a learning or comprehension problem that needs to be corrected.

Pitt Pride

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Banana split turns 100

University of Pittsburgh alumni have won the Nobel Prize, played in the National Football League and unlocked the secrets of DNA. On Wednesday, the university celebrated a less prestigious but equally sweet accomplishment — the banana split.

Pitt declared Wednesday “Banana Split Day” and celebrated the dessert’s 100th birthday by serving about 4,000 ice cream cones to university freshmen, family members, students and others returning to campus for the new school year.

Banana spilts I can be proud of. These poor excuses for journalism, I cannot.

High school’s at home; welcome to the collegiate hook-up (Part 1)

High school’s at home; welcome to the collegiate hook-up (Part 2)

What college doesn’t need a drunken debauchery and hedonism sex column? *rolls eyes*

Seeing Red

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Would red marks on a paper or test frighten your child? Would
he/she be scarred for life? Well, thanks to some pseudoscience that’s growing in
popularity, your kids (and mine) probably won’t be subjected to such “frightening”
corrections. It seems purple is the new grading color of choice.

“If you see a whole paper of red, it looks pretty frightening. Purple stands out, but it doesn’t look as scary as red. ” – Sharon Carlson, a health and physical education teacher

I have nothing against purple. In fact, it’s my favorite color. Then again, I don’t have anything against red, either, at least as the color of grading pens. On the whole, I think this pen color issue is nonsense. Heaven forbid we scare a kid into doing better next time! A little bit of negative reinforcement can be a good thing.

On the other hand, there is some substance to studies of psychological responses to color. For instance, green is a dominant color in hospitals because it is a soothing color. Red can be an a aggressive color. Bright, hot colors inspire aggressive thoughts. Cool colors are soothing.

I still think the pen switch is a waste of time, thought, and energy, though. Instead of worrying about Americans falling behind the rest of the industrialized world in education, particularly in sciences, we’re trying to soften the blow of failure. Instead of wondering why the kids make so many mistakes – and fail to learn from them – we’re color coordinating marks of their inadequacy with fuzzy feel-good quackery.

Suddenly, I have the urge to reread The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis.

Poor Florida

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Poor Florida can’t stay out of the spotlight. They have persistent voting troubles, they got slammed by a vicious hurricane, and apparently they have a frightening number of sexual predators.

A new state law prohibits school bus stops from being within 1,000 yards of a pedophile on probation. That means that about 400 stops in Broward County may have to move to avoid the 1,100 registered sexual predators in the county! Move bus stops? I think I’d move my kids to another county. (Thanks, Fark)