Education

A London music hall ditty of some years past goes,Shakespeare Sidebar —“Shakespeare dead? Poor old Will! Why, I never knew the old fellow was ill!” But he is ill, at least in a majority of the universities of America, where a new report shows that even English majors no longer are required to take a course on one of the Read More ›

The historically significant Washington State campaign on school reform is continuing to develop in curious ways. There is an old political adage, “If you can’t win an argument on an issue, argue about something else,” and that is just what opponents of the two school reform initiatives are doing. In the past week, with the election fast approaching, proponents of Read More ›

There are at least four “school reform” constituencies in Seattle, as well as the hard-core body of voters who habitually vote against any tax measure, including special levies. Unless three of the groups of reform voters combine, the special levy for regular maintenance and operation swill fail next Tuesday. How the levy goes, moreover, will affect the future of all Read More ›

Passions over school reform are running high in this state and could wind up splitting the ever wobbly majority of people who support education. Properly channeled, however, the enthusiasm generated by proponents of two initiatives–I-173, the school voucher proposition, and I-177, the public charter schools proposition–could inaugurate a new age of educational progress. The opportunity is in the hands of Read More ›

It is all too true that Americans have become inarticulate, at least in some respects. Television, families without much parental interaction with children and schools more interested in socializing kids than instructing them have combined to reduce the expressive refinements of, say, 100 years ago. Then, young people were trained to write with a legible hand and high-school students studied Read More ›

A radical formula for cutting through the bureaucracy of the traditional education system proposes the implementation of technologically innovative media as learning tools and privatization of schools to introduce competitiveness. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Are school systems, classrooms and teachers obsolete? No less so than the horse was with the coming of the automobile age, argues Perelman, a senior Read More ›