Will Fitzhugh
Columnist EducationNews.org
It is an actual true fact that many if not most educators in our high schools do not allow students in general to see the exemplary academic work of their peers in their own school. (Academic work in this case does not include dance, drama, newspaper, music, band, yearbook, etc.).
Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
Columnist EducaionNews.org
When English teachers ask students to write personal journals and then turn them in for the teacher to read, the teachers have a chance to learn about the students’ hopes, wishes, dreams, fantasies, family life, anxieties, ambitions, fears, and so on.
Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
Columnist EducationNews.org
In many books, more articles, and perhaps 200 appearances a year, Alfie Kohn does what he can to spare United States students the evils of competition. While he can’t do much about athletic competition, or economic competition or the unfairness of love and war, he tries hard and successfully to persuade educators that making academic distinctions among students hurts them.
Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
Columnist EducationNews.org
Progressive educators often argue that a focus on standards, testing and accountability prevents teachers from exercising their creativity and imagination on the job. As an experiment in imagination, I offer the following suggested parallel universe.
Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
Columnist EducationNews.org
The NACAC Testing Commission has just released its report on the benefits of, and problems with, current standardized admission tests. The Commission says that “a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach for the use of standardized tests in undergraduate admission does not reflect the realities facing our nation’s many and varied colleges and universities.â€
Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
Columnist EducationNews.org
College scholarships for specific abilities and achievements are not news. There are football scholarships and volleyball scholarships and music scholarships and cheerleading scholarships, and so on—there is a long list of sources of money to attract and reward high school students who have talent and accomplishments if those are not academic.
Will Fitzhugh
Columnist EducationNews.org
Katherine Kersten tells me that at Providence Academy in Plymouth, Minnesota, high school history students are required to read James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom [946 pages] and Paul Johnson’s History of the American People [1,104 pages] in their entirety.
Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
Columnist EducationNews.org
It is seldom acknowledged that the largest Minority Group (MG) in the United States is Males. There are several other important Minority Groups (MGs) of course, such as the Iraqi MG, the German MG, the Vietnamese MG, the Irish MG, the Brazilian MG, the West Indian MG, the Hmong MG, the Danish MG, the Jewish MG, the Apache MG, the Kenyan MG, the Italian MG, the Mexican MG, the Haiti MG, the Arapahoe MG, the Hopi MG, the Somali MG, the Cuban MG, the Hindu MG, and the Korean MG, to name just a few
Will Fitzhugh
Columnist EducationNews.org
In Peanuts, when we see Lucy offering Psychiatric Help for a nickel, we know it is a joke: ("The Psychiatrist is IN"), but when English teachers in the schools insist that students write about the most intimate details of their private lives for school assignments, that is not a joke, it is an unwarranted intrusion.
Will Fitzhugh
Columnist EducationNews.org
The Concord Review
On the website www.michelangelo.com/buon/bio, I learn that: “When Michelangelo turned 13-years-old he shocked and enraged his father when told that he had agreed to apprentice in the workshop of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. After about one year of learning the art of fresco, Michelangelo went on to study at the sculpture school in the Medici gardens and shortly thereafter was invited into the household of Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent
