Author: Larry Sanger
-
The uses of Reading Bear
After reading some feedback from a recent survey I performed on the Reading Bear website, it strikes me that some people don’t understand how to use the site, despite the availability of help with this, including a help video. I think I understand the trouble people are having. The trouble is that there are many different…
-
Update about the boys, part 2 – February 2012
Since it’s been over a month since I updated you about H., it’s about time I updated you about baby E., who is now 16 months. First, I’m happy to report that E. is able to read! He can read most words that he can say out loud (although he doesn’t say much–see below), and…
-
Efficiency as a basic educational principle
It occurred to me that there is a simple pedagogical principle that explains the appeal of very early learning, homeschooling, and certain (not all) traditional methods of education, as well as why certain other methods of education strike me as a waste of time. I hereby dub the following the principle of individual efficiency: Seize…
-
What I dislike about experts: dogmatism
Since I started Citizendium, which invites experts to be “village elders wandering the bazaar” of an otherwise egalitarian wiki, and am well-known for criticizing Wikipedia’s often-hostile stance toward experts, I am sometimes held up as an example of someone who places too much trust in experts. In fact, I have quite a bit less trust…
-
Excelsior College announces “Bachelor’s Degree for Under $10,000” program
Excelsior College, formerly known as Regents College, is a fully accredited New York state private institution that grants degrees based on exam scores and portfolio evaluation. As such, it is a natural fit to students who want to study using free online resources and who cannot afford to attend college (or more precisely, who can’t afford…
-
The future, according to Kathy Sierra
Kathy Sierra blogged earlier today six years ago (!) that “The future is not in learning”; the future lies, instead, in “unlearning.” This sounds awfully like another example of the geek anti-intellectualism that I love to hate; we’ll see about that. Since that’s how the post comes across–beginning with the title–it has already gotten a lot of…
-
Update about the boys, part 1 – January 2012
It’s been a long time since I gave an update about what I’m doing with the boys, who are now 5.5 years (H.) and 15 months (E.). I guess the biggest news about H. is that he’s now writing regularly and doing quite well with that, but we’ve made progress and made minor adjustments with…
-
Why online conversation cannot be the focus of a new pedagogy
One of the most commonly touted features of a new, digitally-enhanced pedagogy, championed by many plugged-in education theorists, is that education in the digital age can and should be transformed into online conversation. This seems possible and relevant because of online tools like wikis and blogs. There has been a whole cottage industry of papers and…
-
Would degrees by examination revitalize university education?
A 14-year-old essay by Prof. Paul Trout inspired some random but related thoughts on university education: • Dumbing down college education, by grade inflation and lowering standards, can’t continue forever. The nature of education itself demands limits. At some point, a college degree will inevitably become meaningless, as many have said, and employers will need…
-
On educational anti-intellectualism: a reply to Steve Wheeler
Suppose a student arrived at the age of 18 not knowing anything significant about World War II or almost any other war, barely able to do arithmetic, ignorant of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dickens, and most other great writers, and wholly unschooled in the hard sciences (apart from some experiments and projects which made a few random…