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

The United States of (Non-)Reading: The End of Civilization or A New Era?

10/8/2013

1 Comment

 
Just the other day one of my undergraduate assistants reported a friend's boast that he had not read anything for school since fifth grade. A student at an excellent university, successful, "clever," "smart," he can write papers, take exams, participate in class or online discussions. Why would he have to read?   

Students sometimes don't buy the class books. Professors are shocked.

Several years ago a student told me that she regarded all assigned reading as "recommended," even if the professors labeled it "required." Were professors so dumb that they didn't know that?

Read here or on Huffington Post:

Read More
1 Comment

Learning In and Out of School

7/29/2013

2 Comments

 
Picture
The Proceedings of a conference, Learning In and Out of School: Education Across the Globe, held at the University of Notre Dame's Kellogg Institute for International Studies on May 22-23, 2012, are now available!

This is envisioned as a contribution to broadening the scholarly but also the public conversation about the nature of learning and its relationship to the formal institutions we know as schools. In that sense, posting proceedings is a necessary offering.

We—anthropologists, psychologists, human development and education scholars from as far as Korea and Alaska—met for two full days during a gorgeous spring week just following graduation, with flowers and warmth and the peace of an academic year just completed. We ate wonderful food throughout the day and night, and had many informal conversations along with the formal proceedings. As convener, I aimed to implement my best understanding of how people learn and how they interact by structuring the conference with no papers delivered. This is somewhat like “flipping the classroom”: the independent preliminary work that could be done in advance was done in advance—writing and reading papers and preparing comments on others’ work—and the precious face-to-face time was used for what could only be done that way: discussing, asking, brainstorming, and laughing together.


2 Comments

A Teacher's Delight: My Students Are Talking about Class Behind My Back--But in a Good Way

4/15/2013

1 Comment

 
I found out by accident. One of my students had a job staffing a reception desk. They talk about my class--but don't even bother to let me know. When the students are buzzing with interest in the subject, when they don’t even tell the teacher about their out-of-class conversations—this is worth every moment.

Read it on Huffington Post, or here


Read More
1 Comment

The Happiness Deferral Chain: Music versus Test Preparation

11/27/2012

2 Comments

 
Over Thanksgiving weekend, my college-student daughter started singing. She knew, and claimed that her friends knew, hundreds of songs. My father, a pediatrician, asked what he thought was a rhetorical question, “Why do kids know the words to every song but they can’t memorize something for a test that will get them a higher grade?”

This is, actually, a real question.

Also on Huffington Post

Read More
2 Comments

The Point of College is….Points! Is this what those billions are really for?

10/29/2012

2 Comments

 
In an exasperated Facebook post, one of my young friends complained about her first-semester college class. “Don’t you hate it when you raise your hand and know the answer and your teacher doesn’t call on you?” I replied, know-it-all professor and adult that I am: Isn’t it about what you’re learning?

And she replied, “No, it’s because you have to answer questions a certain number of times to get points.”

Ah, points.

The point of learning is to get the points.

Read More
2 Comments

Friday Classes: Whose Interests are Served?

8/26/2012

1 Comment

 
At my department’s semi-annual retreat, we had another round of discussion about Friday classes. There are good reasons to have them and good reasons to avoid them. Each reason reveals a different, and compelling interest, on the part of various constituencies. But there is no way to adjudicate them, because they stem from fundamentally different goals.

Read More
1 Comment

Acing the Driving Tests While Flunking at School

8/19/2012

5 Comments

 
My visit to the American Automobile Association (AAA) office to renew our membership on the eve of helping my college-graduate daughter move out of state brought a lot of information—about the loquacious employee’s life and family. But the memorable core was about her school-challenged son’s effortless passing of his driver’s license examination.

Read More
5 Comments

Dis-Embodied Learning

7/16/2012

77 Comments

 
Observe how kids learn to throw balls, or to jump rope, or to play chords on the guitar, or to speak a new language if they move to a new place.

All of it happens with others, in activities that involve what we could call the social mind-body.

And compare that to school.

Read More
77 Comments

    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