Education

What Do ‘Good Schools’ Look Like? It Depends on What Parents Want 0
- Education, Family, MomThink
- June 28, 2024
I often hear people in the education world, especially those who are more rooted in traditional schooling models, express concern about the “quality” and “outcomes” of the innovative schools and spaces now emerging. “How do we know these are ‘good’ schools with high academic achievement and strong outcomes for students?” they’ll ask. My response is always some
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In Defense of the Freedom to Be Wrong 0
- Philosophy, Education, MomThink
- June 27, 2024
It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks. —Tacitus It’s very important for institutions of concentrated power to keep people alone and isolated: that way they’re ineffective, they can’t defend themselves against indoctrination, they can’t even figure out what they think. —Noam Chomsky
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Why Is Higher Ed So Expensive?2
- Economics, Education
- June 26, 2024
Two things seem like they should go without saying: People use their own money more efficiently than they use someone else’s, and the more you subsidize a thing the more of it you tend to get. Both profoundly apply to American higher education, a teetering tower of ivory made simultaneously skyscraping and bloated by federal
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Is Your Vocabulary Worse Than Your Ancestors’?6
- Culture, Education, Featured
- June 24, 2024
“Are Americans more intelligent than a few decades ago, or less intelligent?” Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbell, and Ryne A. Sherman asked this question in their 2019 paper, “Declines in Vocabulary Among American Adults Within Levels of Educational Attainment, 1974–2016.” To answer one angle of this inquiry, they examined American’s vocabulary over the last
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I Was Homeschooled and Became a School Teacher. Here Are Honest Pros and Cons of Learning at Home.2
- Education, Featured, MomThink
- June 21, 2024
It’s true. Sometimes homeschoolers do school in their pajamas. But that wasn’t the norm in my home when I was growing up. Generally, my mother kept us to a set schedule. Piano practice was at 8:15 sharp. Math class started at 9:00. The other subjects fell into place around that. Often, we finished our work
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Is Social Justice Ideology Bad for You?5
- Culture, Education, Featured, Politics
- June 19, 2024
In their universally acclaimed 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff show that the youth mental health crisis has its origins in bad thinking on school campuses. For example, schools and universities often encourage students to see life as a struggle between good and bad people. As a result,
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