- Oct 2023
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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arguments in favor of these ''objective'' tests: They are easy to grade; uniformity and unmistakable answers imply fairness; one can compare performance over time and gauge the results of programs; the validity of questions is statistically tested and the performance of students is followed up through later years.
Some of the benefits of multiple-choice tests.
Barzun misses the fact that these are not just easy for teachers to grade, but they're easier for mass grading by machines in a century dominated by standardization of knowledge in a world dominated by standardized mechanization for a mass-production oriented society.
Cross reference educational reforms of Eliot following the rise of Taylorism.
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udenver.zoom.us udenver.zoom.us
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Some related ideas that are suggesting some sort of thesis for improving the idea of ungrading: - We measure the things we care about. - In Education, we care about learning and understanding, but measuring these outside of testing and evaluation is difficult at best (therefor ungrading). - No one cares about your GPA six months after you graduate. - Somehow we've tied up evaluations and grades into the toxic capitalism and competition within US culture. Some of this is tied into educational movements related to Frederick Winslow Taylor and Harvards Eliot. - Hierarchies instituted by the Great Chain of Being have confounded our educational process.
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- Apr 2023
- Nov 2022
- Sep 2022
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Unfortunately, many graduate and professional students rely onreading strategies taught in high school or college for their academicwork. One example is taking notes only during lectures andhighlighting passages of academic texts
It seems broadly true in the new millennium and potentially much earlier that students are not taught broader reading strategies within academic settings. The history of note taking strategies and teaching would indicate that this wasn't always true.
In prior centuries there was more focus in earlier education on grounding in the trivium and quadrivium including rhetoric. These pieces and their fundamentals are now either glossed over or skipped altogether to focus more training on what might be considered more difficult and more important material. It would seem that educational reforms from the late 1500s shifted the focus on some of these prior norms to focus on other materials, and in particular reforms in the early 1900s (Charles William Eliot , et al) which focused on training a workforce for a more industrialized and capitalistic society weaned many of these methods out of earlier curricula. This results in students dramatically under-prepared for doctoral research, analysis, and writing.
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- Dec 2021
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www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com
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It’s not an accident or a misfortune that great-books pedagogy is an antibody in the “knowledge factory” of the research university, in other words. It was intended as an antibody. The disciplinary structure of the modern university came first; the great-books courses came after.
It seems at odds to use Charles W. Eliot as an example here as his writings described by Cathy Davidson in The New Education indicates that Eliot was specifically attempting to create standards in education that are counter to Menand's argument here.
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The idea of the great books emerged at the same time as the modern university. It was promoted by works like Noah Porter’s “Books and Reading: Or What Books Shall I Read and How Shall I Read Them?” (1877) and projects like Charles William Eliot’s fifty-volume Harvard Classics (1909-10). (Porter was president of Yale; Eliot was president of Harvard.) British counterparts included Sir John Lubbock’s “One Hundred Best Books” (1895) and Frederic Farrar’s “Great Books” (1898). None of these was intended for students or scholars. They were for adults who wanted to know what to read for edification and enlightenment, or who wanted to acquire some cultural capital.
Brief history of the "great books".
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- Nov 2021
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
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it must be acknowledged that conservatism is never more respectable than in education, for nowhere are the risks of change greater.
—Charles W. Eliot
And here I thought I was original in thinking this... :)
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