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Sunday, November 21, 2010

Tom Friedman; wrong again, this time about education

I guess it wasn't bad enough that Friedman promoted the Iraq War in his New York Times column and then had to admit he was wrong. He actually is supposed to know something about the Middle East.

Now he espousing the nonsense theme of the day, that the problem in education is the teachers. I guess he saw "Waiting for Superman" and wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

So one more time for Tom: the problem is that school is boring and irrelevant and all the kids know it. They know they will never need algebra, or trigonometry. They know they will never need to balance chemical equations and they know they won't need random historical myths promoted by the school system. When all this stuff was mandated in 1892 it was for a different time and a different kind of student.

Change the curriculum to something relevant to modern life and you won't need to look for teachers. Teachers will rush to the opportunity to teach kids who actually want to be there.

3 comments:

Paul Miller said...

Thanks for being the voice of oppressed school children everywhere.

Paul Miller said...

The world may be flat or round it really does not matter as long as we don't fall off at the edges.

David Goldenberg said...

So when I repeat these ideas to my daughter's middle school principal (she's one of his top students) and he nods in agreement, and then nothing revolutionary happens...I'm starting to feel like I'm wasting my time.
Since every great journey starts with a single step--thanks for being there leading the hike.