Tag: schools

I’m back. I used to be a big fan of “grit,” and how important it was to a young learner’s ability to become smarter and stronger. Angela Duckworth, a professor at The University of Pennsylvania, first termed the phrase “grit” back in the 2010’s, referring to a learner’s ability to persevere and become passionate about…

Tomorrow will be the 100th anniversary of James Baldwin’s birth. Baldwin was an African-American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. In an article written in October of 1963, Baldwin addressed the challenges of education to prepare to grapple with the myths and realities of U.S. history. An excerpt of this article follows: “I began…

How do you get young learners smarter and stronger when places called schools aren’t available? Back at the turn of the century, in the year 1999, an Indian software engineer named  Sugata Mitra realized that there was no way India was ever going to build enough brick and mortar schools to meet the needs of…

Americans love their brick and mortar schools. It’s part of the traditional public education system. But in other parts of the world, leaders have learned to adapt to their environments by creating learning spaces anywhere and everywhere. Most recently, Getting Smart’s Nate McClennen sat down with Mohammed Rezwan, who has spent over 20 years increasing…

There are millions of kids in the world who do not go to brick and mortar schools (think of rural India and China). Instead, these young learners work on their reading, writing, and problem-solving skills wherever they can find a place to learn. Instead of thinking of these global microschools as strange, like many Americans…

It used to be that the Republicans was the party interested in privatizing education in this country. The Republicans were friendly to private schools, charter schools, and vouchers – anything to improve America’s failing public school system. The Democratic Party were always the ones playing the role of cheerleader for America’s public education system, especially…

Stronger and smarter learners depend on the ability to make good decisions. When learners develop their own learning plans, when they define, plan, execute, and evaluate their own learning, they make hundreds if not thousands of decisions about what and how they will learn. Recently, Arthur C. Brooks, a contributing writer to The Atlantic and…