NRU education edition

Schools are using meditation -- and teaching children to figure out when they need their own peaceful moments -- and claiming results. I have no doubt it is useful, but the article never gets to the proof of the results.  I wonder if we can read an article about education without finding some claim to results -- and then never have them founded.  It says too much about our lack of introspection about what exactly test results *mean* and what other results might exist and how we might *measure* those.

Yeah, and this article, gives us more to think about in terms of what we think results look like ... it's another piece on Common Core -- but all fluff and no substance, again.  This is how we got parents to think that NCLB based test scores meant something... Don't get me wrong, I love critical thinking. It is, in fact, a fine thing to be teaching.  I am just not sure that the journalist writing this story caught the essence of what critical thinking is.  Or maybe it was the principal and the teacher who were pushing the notion that repeating, or even using correctly, big words means critical thinking.  It is not.  That is hooked on phonics on steroids.  But, bad reporting doesn't mean that some good teaching and learning wasn't actually happening here.

This piece on charter schools and the new mayor of NYC demonstrates the author's understanding of the complexities of the issue of charter schools.  He clearly sees/knows/understands that the issue goes far beyond *education* right into business, politics, wealth disparities, etc.; and he even seems to hint that he understands the exceptionalism mentality that has the mice fighting over the last piece of cheese and calling it social justice.