From The Seattle Times, Bill would require all Idaho school kids to read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ to graduate:
The chairman of the Idaho Senate’s Education Committee has introduced legislation to require every Idaho high-school student to read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and pass a test on it. He said he was making a “statement.”
Lisa Von Damme explains why the purpose of an education is to prepare a child for life.
WOW! This is awesome!
ARI has produced a free e-course based on Leonard Peikoff’s Philosophy of Education lectures. This course will answer the following questions.
This course presents an account of the philosophy of education from an Objectivist perspective. The course is adapted from recorded lectures that Dr. Leonard Peikoff gave at a conference for fans of Ayn Rand in 1985. Primary and secondary education are Dr. Peikoff’s focus, but many of the principles discussed apply to all levels of education.
Topics include: different theories of the basic purpose of education; how to teach thinking methods, with special emphasis on the principles of proper motivation, integration, and hierarchy; a proper curriculum; teacher’s colleges and the politics of education.
My Word: Jack Chambless Is it time to think about home schooling your child?
Drawing from a sample size this large multiplied by two decades multiplied by hundreds of thousands of test answers has put me in a good position to offer the following advice to any reader of this paper with children in Florida’s K-12 public schools.
Get them out now before you ruin their life.
While this may seem to be a bit harsh, let’s look at the facts.
First, my best students every year are in order — Chinese, Eastern European, Indian and home-schooled Americans, and it is not even close when comparing this group to American public-school kids.
Since it is highly unlikely that any of you plan to move to Beijing, Warsaw or Bangalore, you might want to look at the facts concerning public vs. home-schooled American students.
Read the rest at the Orlando Sentinel
Writes Mark Cuban in The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Any Time Soon:
I don’t think any college kid took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt with the expectation they would get a job working for minimum wage against tips.
At some point potential students will realize that they can’t flip their student loans for a job in 4 years. In fact they will realize that college may be the option for fun and entertainment, but not for education. Prices for traditional higher education will skyrocket so high over the next several years that potential students will start to make their way to non accredited institutions.
While colleges and universities are building new buildings for the english , social sciences and business schools, new high end, un-accredited, BRANDED schools are popping up that will offer better educations for far, far less and create better job opportunities.
As an employer I want the best prepared and qualified employees. I could care less if the source of their education was accredited by a bunch of old men and women who think they know what is best for the world. I want people who can do the job. I want the best and brightest. Not a piece of paper.
[…]
The Higher Education Industry is very analogous to the Newspaper industry. By the time they realize they need to change their business model it will be too late. Higher Education’s legacy infrastructure, employee costs /structures and debt costs will keep them from being able to re calibrate to a new generation of competitors.
James Tooley writes in Private Schools for the Poor:
The accepted wisdom is that private schools serve the privileged; everyone else, especially the poor, requires public school.
The poor, so this logic goes, need government assistance if they are to get a good education, which helps explain why, in the United States, many school choice enthusiasts believe that the only way the poor can get the education they deserve is through vouchers or charter schools, proxies for those better private or independent schools, paid for with public funds.
But if we reflect on these beliefs in a foreign context and observe low-income families in underprivileged and developing countries, we find these assumptions lacking: the poor have found remarkably innovative ways of helping themselves, educationally, and in some of the most destitute places on Earth have managed to nurture a large and growing industry of private schools for themselves. [“Private Schools for the Poor“, The Catholic Education Resource Center]