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My Opinion on 5 Works about Education, Teaching, and Learning - Volume 9

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Buckle up. In this edition I cover a progressive educator criticizing progressive education, a school system founded on a new religion, a public school teacher turned homeschool advocate, a physicist selling computers as the answer, and creative schools from a small town in Italy. 'Experience and Education' by John Dewey 1938 Dewey was a popular philosopher and psychologist. He wrote a number of works on education. This is a short book that he wrote later in life and is better than his early books on education. Ideals often get corrected by reality over time. Dewey was the leader of progressive education. He makes good criticisms of traditional education. But, he also points out that progressive education was largely just a rejection of traditional education. They rejected everything, the good and the bad, and largely just ended up with a different type of bad education. I like a lot of what Dewey points out in this book. A lot of it seems like it should be obvious when it'...
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My Opinion on 5 Works about Education, Teaching, and Learning - Volume 8

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At first these five works seem like they almost can't be compared. That they shouldn't be talked about at the same time. But, they fit together perfectly. 'Courage to Grow: How Acton Academy Turns Learning Upside Down' by Laura Sandefer 2017 Jeff and Laura Sandefer are a classic power couple. He has an MBA, founded a successful oil and gas company, founded an investment firm, and got involved with business education. She was successful in the insurance industry, then got an education degree, and taught fine arts. Then, they founded a private school and grew the organization to hundreds of locations in dozens of countries. It's a unique organization. Instead of teachers they have guides that allow the kids to do a lot of organization and leading in school, and guide the kids through questioning. They have a student contract that the kids commit to. They do some online academic work. They do a lot of projects that the students give exhibitions on to prove their learni...
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My Opinion on 5 Works about Education, Teaching, and Learning - Volume 7

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There are two main steps to making things better: one is problem finding, two is problem solving. Each of these five works does both, but they find and solve very different problems.  'Black Excellence - The Case of Dunbar High School' by Thomas Sowell 1975 Sowell is wonderful. He's an economic historian, which is a great combination because he digs into the statistical data as well as the history. He's autobiography is a great book and shows that he worked in the real world before academia, and worked in government, which helped open his eyes to how that works so poorly. From high school dropout to leading American intellectual, he has a good story and good arguments. He's also a photographer, and was a US Marine. Interesting people are often complex. In this article Sowell points out that people commonly study failures in black education, and seemingly purposefully ignore the successes. This goes over an all-black high school that succeeded for a long time, from 1...
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My Opinion on 5 Works about Education, Teaching, and Learning - Volume 6

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In this volume we visit pre-WW2 Poland, pre-communist revolution Russia, post-revolutionary war United States, England between the world wars, and modern China. It's a journey. 'Janusz Korczak: The Man Who Knew How to Love Children' by Itzchak Belfer 2018 Belfer grew up in an orphanage in Poland started and run by Henryk Goldszmit and Stefania Wilczynska in the early 1900s. Goldszmit was famous under the pen name Janusz Korczak for a few successful children's books he wrote, including one that's similar to Harry Potter. Korczak was also a medical doctor. When the Nazis were rounding up Jews in Poland Korczak could have gotten out because he was famous and had offers, but he would have had to abandon the kids, about 200 of them. He and Stefa stayed with the kids, went to Treblinka with them, and died. Belfer had fled Poland for Russia two years earlier when he was 16, kids generally left the orphan school at 14. Korczak's organization is astounding. He ran the or...
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My Opinion on 5 Works about Education, Teaching, and Learning - Volume 5

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These five works range from the year 1751 to 2014. That's 263 years of interesting thoughts on education. 'Idea of the English School' by Benjamin Franklin 7 January 1751 Benjamin Franklin is an amazing person. The more you learn about him the more amazing he is. He was abused as an indentured servant by his brother and became a runaway. Became wealthy as a printer and famous as a scientist. His autobiography started modern self-help literature. He drew political cartoons and wrote popular life advice. He wrote a piece on population growth that inspired Malthus, who inspired Darwin to come up with evolution. He taught swimming in England. He invented bifocal glasses and a new type of stove. He was a colonel in the Pennsylvania militia, and later President of Pennsylvania. He convinced France to support the US in the Revolutionary War, which helped win it. He proved lightning is electricity. He started the post office. He started fire services and libraries. It's therefo...
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How a Weak Country can Prevent Being Conquered by a Stronger Country

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It would appear that large countries consume smaller countries, in the same way large fish consume smaller fish. However, many small countries continue to exist. Sometimes large countries break into smaller countries, conquered colonies and territories break away from empires, and sometimes a large country just can't conquer a smaller country. Not being able to be conquered largely comes down to two decisions. One, are the people patriotic and willing to fight the foreign power? Two, are the people armed? If the answer to both of these is yes, then it's extremely unlikely that even the strongest country can conquer the weakest country. Theoretically the stronger country could kill everyone in the smaller country, but it's difficult to garner the support of the people necessary to carry out a genocide like that. It's possible, just unlikely. The United States offers several examples. The US, the most powerful country in the world, one of two world super powers along with...
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