Thomas Briggs writes, "Neither party is currently offering that. But one of them could. Or both! The iron is hot, and the opportunity is there for the taking. Who will strike first?"
The danger is that if either party were to embrace this idea, currents of political polarization will draw the other party to oppose it. What if, instead, we don't look to politicians for a vision here, but to educators - whether entrepreneurs or inside the establishment? An apolitical movement towards excellence could gain traction and build a coalition across party lines. I'm tired of waiting for politicians to save us. Let's build.
I love this article, but as a 20 year teaching veteran I have to say that all reforms will amount to nothing if we don’t take immediate action to get phones out of schools. International PISA scores have been in continual decline since 2014, when Apple introduced large screens and Androids became widely available at a low cost.
Let’s imagine for a moment that we dealt with teen smoking the same way we deal with smartphones. Imagine that we left every school to make its own smoking rules, and then made it up to the teacher to enforce bans on lighting up in class. Imagine that we installed pack holders in class. Imagine if every parent sent their kid to school with a carton, and wondered why the reeked of smoke when they came home.
I’m clearly not in favor of smoking, but when you compare how nicotine affects concentration and cognitive development to smartphones, it’s clear which one actually rewires the brain. And at least smokers are socializing!
I have given up on the establishment - at least as far as gifted / talented learning is concerned. Parents are going to have to carry the load either directly or indirectly. But I think that there is some hope here: The Alpha school and related experiments with AI assisted learning / tutoring are likely to eventually provide tools that can help autodidact and near autodidact students to learn relatively efficiently. Once this has been achieved and demonstrated we MAY see the adoption of successful techniques into standard schools - but none the less, once they are available on the market substantial fractions of the gifted students will start using them - and we will probably see some form of scholarship support for poorer gifted kids.
We are right now launching an online version of GT School, the gifted spinoff of Alpha (same apps platform) and tuition will be completely covered by Texas vouchers
Thomas Briggs writes, "Neither party is currently offering that. But one of them could. Or both! The iron is hot, and the opportunity is there for the taking. Who will strike first?"
The danger is that if either party were to embrace this idea, currents of political polarization will draw the other party to oppose it. What if, instead, we don't look to politicians for a vision here, but to educators - whether entrepreneurs or inside the establishment? An apolitical movement towards excellence could gain traction and build a coalition across party lines. I'm tired of waiting for politicians to save us. Let's build.
I love this article, but as a 20 year teaching veteran I have to say that all reforms will amount to nothing if we don’t take immediate action to get phones out of schools. International PISA scores have been in continual decline since 2014, when Apple introduced large screens and Androids became widely available at a low cost.
Let’s imagine for a moment that we dealt with teen smoking the same way we deal with smartphones. Imagine that we left every school to make its own smoking rules, and then made it up to the teacher to enforce bans on lighting up in class. Imagine that we installed pack holders in class. Imagine if every parent sent their kid to school with a carton, and wondered why the reeked of smoke when they came home.
I’m clearly not in favor of smoking, but when you compare how nicotine affects concentration and cognitive development to smartphones, it’s clear which one actually rewires the brain. And at least smokers are socializing!
I have given up on the establishment - at least as far as gifted / talented learning is concerned. Parents are going to have to carry the load either directly or indirectly. But I think that there is some hope here: The Alpha school and related experiments with AI assisted learning / tutoring are likely to eventually provide tools that can help autodidact and near autodidact students to learn relatively efficiently. Once this has been achieved and demonstrated we MAY see the adoption of successful techniques into standard schools - but none the less, once they are available on the market substantial fractions of the gifted students will start using them - and we will probably see some form of scholarship support for poorer gifted kids.
We are right now launching an online version of GT School, the gifted spinoff of Alpha (same apps platform) and tuition will be completely covered by Texas vouchers
https://anywhere.gt.school/