SUSAN D. BLUM
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Books
  • Selected Publications
  • Good Learning
  • Events
  • Media

The First Day of School

6/27/2012

4 Comments

 
My heart filled with tenderness for all the parents standing with their kids at bus stops, all the new backpacks carefully placed on tiny, bony shoulders, all the new shoes saved until this morning...all the world starting over, fresh and filled with all the possibilities imaginable, at least this one day a year.

Read More
4 Comments

Do You Like the Hermione Grangers in Your Class?

6/27/2012

2 Comments

 
She is the eager girl always raising her hand, always with an answer, always following the rules. A know-it-all, a pleaser, she is the kind of student most other kids can’t stand; she makes them all look bad. And most teachers like her because she does everything she is supposed to do, and then some. Teachers don’t have to cajole and plead and threaten; she does all the work, and she does it with joy.

Read More
2 Comments

Critical Anthropology of Education

6/27/2012

1 Comment

 
I invite you to join me in an enterprise I’m calling a Critical Anthropology of Education. This approach to education—helping young folks grow into the kinds of people we and they want—is fully anthropological in every sense. This field is, for each of you, optional. It is not on the test.

Except that for our society as a whole, it is mandatory. And the test is all around us. We aren’t doing too well.

Read More
1 Comment

Honest Self-Assessment and Its Rationale (and Resistance)

6/27/2012

3 Comments

 
I opened the class thinking that I would get students to design the assignments and evaluations themselves. I began with a discussion of what grades mean. They watched me suspiciously. What does she want? They assumed it was a trap. Then I required a page-long self-assessment. It asked them to spell out their goals and to discuss how they had and had not met them. It asked them to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their paper, in terms of both content and form, and to explain this. And, finally, I asked them to grade themselves.

Read More
3 Comments

How High School Prepared You, Our Best Student, for the Wrong Things in College, and How You Can Change Course

6/26/2012

1 Comment

 
Think about high school, if you dare: Every minute scheduled, someone telling you what to do, even having to ask permission to use the bathroom. Every night there were scheduled events, homework, tasks to complete. Why? To get into college, if you were one of the students on track to compete to get into a selective school. For years, your focus was on ferreting out the secret desires of your teachers, and slyly guessing which activities would make you stand out more than your peers. Always with an eye outward, you did what you’re told. Or else!

And now here you are, at long last, at the college of your dreams—or at least one you’ll convince yourself is close enough. The Best Years of Your Life await, right?

Read More
1 Comment

A Tale of Two A's

6/26/2012

0 Comments

 
Joey and Katie both got A’s in their classes. Joey read about 30 pages, and Katie read about 3,000. Joey took 15 quizzes and a final exam, and wrote a four-page paper. Katie wrote 15 weekly position papers and four more substantial papers, each with two drafts that received comments from both the professor and fellow students, and ended with a 15-page research project. Joey enjoyed the class and learned some important things about how to analyze the role of sport in society. Katie’s life was transformed by the class. Both learned, both succeeded, but there were some substantial differences.

Read More
0 Comments

The Natural Ends of Schooling

6/26/2012

0 Comments

 
Recent publications about schooling and parenting, such as Amy Chua’s endlessly discussed Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift have given rise to much questioning: What’s wrong with parents? What’s wrong with students?

            What has not really been asked is, What’s wrong with school?

Read More
0 Comments

M OOCs - Changes are Coming....In How We Know If Someone is Learning

6/26/2012

1 Comment

 
The latest change in the higher education world is the arrival of something called MOOCs: Massive Open Online Courses, as Harvard and MIT announced something called EdX in May 2012. These have evolved from the Open Courseware begun so generously by MIT a decade or so ago, and build on a growing body of scholarship about the ways online education can be used to make higher education more accessible to large numbers of people, or how to deal with the massification of higher education.

One of the most interesting aspects of it, though, is that when people are finished they earn badges.

Read More
1 Comment

June Fourth: Student Voices, We're Waiting for You

6/26/2012

1 Comment

 
For most of the twentieth century, students were revolutionaries. New ideas originated with them, or at least intellectuals spread their ideas to students, who took to the streets. In China this happened in 1919, in 1966, in 1989. In much of the world this happened in 1968.

In 2011 it began to happen in the US, with the many Occupy movements.

Expect more action.

Read More
1 Comment

Camp - Er, College - Commencement 2012

6/26/2012

0 Comments

 
In commencement season, we should acknowledge that college has many meanings and purposes, and sometimes we should listen to what those experiencing it tell us. For them, it is mostly about the people who have created their daily world.
And that’s not, mostly, us.

Read More
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Archives

    May 2021
    March 2021
    August 2019
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012

    Categories

    All
    6-4
    Academic Freedom
    Adhd
    Affect
    Agency
    Anthropology
    Anthropology Of Education
    Anti-intellectualism
    Arne Duncan
    Art
    Assessment
    Atlanta Teaching Scandal
    Attention
    Authentic Assessment
    Authenticity
    Authorship
    Badges
    Banking Model
    Barack Obama Election
    Bilingualism
    Blum
    Catfish
    Censorship
    Cheating
    Chen Guangchen
    Childhood
    China
    China Bashing
    College
    College Admissions
    College Football
    Commencement
    Communication
    Competition
    Confucius Institutes
    Con Games
    Corruption
    Cost Of College
    Costs Of College
    Covid-19
    Creativity
    Credentials
    Credits
    Critical Anthropology Of Education
    Cs Peirce
    Cultural Literacy
    Culture Of College
    Culture Of Poverty
    Curiosity
    Deception
    Decline In Reading
    Deep Learning
    Delayed Gratification
    Design Thinking
    Education
    Engagement
    Equality
    Ethics
    Evolution
    Exchange Value
    Executive Function
    Extrinsic Motivation
    Families
    Feminist Pedagogy
    Football
    Freedom
    Friday Classes
    Game Of School
    Gaming
    Gaokao
    Garden
    Gender
    Gender Ratio
    Goals Of College
    Goals Of Education
    Grades
    Grading
    Graduation
    Higher Education
    High School
    High Stakes Testing
    High-stakes Testing
    Homeschooling
    Hong Kong
    Honor Codes
    Human Nature
    Humor
    Inequality
    Intellectual Property
    Intelligence
    Intrinsic Motivation
    Jacques Dubochet
    Joshua Wong Hong Kong
    June 4
    June Fourth
    Language
    Language Gap
    Learning
    Linguistic Anthropology
    Literacy
    Literature
    Lying
    Malala
    Marx
    Meaning
    Medicalization
    Mental Illness
    Meritocracy
    Metaphor
    Money
    Mooc
    Moocs
    Morality
    Motivation
    Mo Yan
    Multilingualism
    Multimodality
    Music
    Neurobiology
    New Media
    New Year Resolutions
    Nobel Peace Prize
    Nobel Prize
    No Child Left Behind
    Notre Dame
    Nyu
    Occupy
    Pandemic Pedagogy
    Paolo Freire
    Pedagogy
    Permaculture
    Plagiarism
    Play
    Pleasure
    Politics
    Praise
    Procrastination
    Questions
    Race To The Top
    Rand Paul
    Reading
    Reading Habits
    Return On Investment
    Sat Test
    School
    Schooling
    Self-censorship
    Semiotics
    Sign
    Sociality
    Socialization
    Soft Power
    Steven Mosher
    Student Centered Learning
    Student-centered Learning
    Student Revolutions
    Students
    Supersign
    Symbol
    Teaching
    Technophilia
    Technophobia
    Teenagers
    Term Paper Mills
    Testing
    Tiananmen
    Transcript
    Truth
    Unessay
    Ungrading
    Unschooling
    Use Value
    Verbal Play
    Wellbeing
    Wicked Problems
    William Ayers
    Writing
    Youth

    RSS Feed

​SusanBlum.com by Susan D. Blum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Books
  • Selected Publications
  • Good Learning
  • Events
  • Media