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27 April 2007
Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:40:20 GMTSpend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.Gnome, Samuel Beckett
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22 February 2006
Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:27:13 GMTSchool
I can’t tell you how much I’ve wanted to just raise my hand and say “when are we going to learn something?” in a number of my classes over the past week.
I’m paying $4,865.42 (not counting housing and my meal plan). That is a shitloat of money. And I’m really not learning anything that I couldn’t just pick up a book and teach myself.
I give interesting points to a few of my courses, but I’m really not sure if I’ll be able to put up with 2 more years of college.
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15 December 2005
Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:14:31 GMT Polymathvia Kjell Olsen2246 days ago“a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning.”
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15 November 2005
Tue, 15 Nov 2005 20:56:16 GMT The Radiant VistaKjell Olsen2275 days agoImpressive photography site with useful video tutorials and podcasts. It’s great to see someone who really knows what their doing go into photoshop and do image corrections – I read the photoshop book this spring, and learned a lot, but these screencasts are a way better format.
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03 November 2005
Thu, 03 Nov 2005 12:05:00 GMT autodidacticvia Kjell Olsen2288 days agoThank you qwantz.
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26 October 2005
Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:23:44 GMT Extreme thinkingvia Kjell Olsen2295 days agothe most effective way of changing your own behaviour is to change your social role, if necessary, by creating social roles for ourselves that reinforce behaviours we want.
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20 October 2005
Thu, 20 Oct 2005 15:05:00 GMT Missed class? Try a podcastvia Kjell Olsen2302 days agoThis is getting absurd – why even pay for college? I bet there are a bunch of cool podcasts to listen to and learn from. In the days of the internet and free information, a college degree is really starting to feel like a $60,000 piece of paper.
And at the University of Hawaii, hundreds of students in a computer science class are required to show up at a lecture hall only twice a semester—for the midterm and final. Instead of a textbook, they buy a small iPod at the bookstore, though most students already have one, the course professor said.
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18 September 2005
Sun, 18 Sep 2005 15:55:00 GMT Against School: How public education cripples our kids and whyvia Kjell Olsen2334 days agoI just started college, and I’m as close as ever to deciding it’s not the right thing for me. I had quite a hunch I wouldn’t enjoy college, but thought it merited a try. I hate it more then anything I’ve done to date so far, it’s just fucking banal.
Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole.
...the Prussian system [emulated in american public schooling] was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers.
Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up.
After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.
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01 September 2005
Thu, 01 Sep 2005 08:20:07 GMT New algorithm for learning languages | Science Blogvia Kjell Olsen2351 days agoFor example, the sentences I would like to book a first-class flight to Chicago, I want to book a first-class flight to Boston and Book a first-class flight for me, please may give rise to the pattern book a first-class flight—if this candidate pattern passes the novel statistical significance test that is the core of the algorithm.
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27 February 2005
Sun, 27 Feb 2005 12:16:51 GMT Governors Work to Improve H.S. Educationvia Kjell Olsen2537 days agoThe nation’s governors offered an alarming account of the American high school Saturday, saying only drastic change will keep millions of students from falling short.
Yeah, that’s me. But I’m out this spring and on to ‘the real world,’ and I couldn’t be more excited.
Most of the summit’s first day amounted to an enormous distress call, with speakers using unflattering numbers to define the problem. Among them: Of every 100 ninth-graders, only 68 graduate high school on time and only 18 make it through college on time, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
“On time?” School is becoming too much like just an assembly line, I don’t think people should be judged as to how “fast” they “get out.” College just seems retarded to me right now, so maybe I’ll go and maybe not. I’m graduating with highest honors (whatever that means) this spring, I’ve been plenty successful in high school – but does that mean that I’m a failure if I don’t finish college by 2009?
America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don’t just mean that they’re broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools even when they’re working as designed cannot teach all our students what they need to know today. Bill Gates
I do agree with this statement a lot. In looking back at my education the years I feel that I learned the most were fifth and sixth grade, and I wish I still could be learning at the level I did then. I just went and went, and accomplished all sorts of things.
But what I really feel I learned those two years wasn’t that important as measured by the CAT test, or the MBST test (both which I scored incredibly high on) or even the more recent SAT or ACT (also) but in how ever since I’ve been motivated to learn for myself.
Since then I just haven’t cared as much for any of my schoolwork, my ‘learning,’ or my grades – but I sincerely feel that I did learn what is important to learn in school – the ability to be able to learn.
And I really wouldn’t encourage the governor’s council to just raise standards, because all I can see that doing is driving the number of struggling students through the roof. You need to give students who don’t already have a reason to learn a reason – and you need to do it promptly. Because there are a lot of kids who don’t care about college these days, both on the talented side of average and the struggling side who can think of better ways to live then struggle through another four years of mechanized and oppressive “learning.”
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11 December 2004
Sat, 11 Dec 2004 22:21:32 GMT The Goal is Excellence by Launa Ellisonvia Kjell Olsen2614 days agoI might have to use this as a source for an argumentative synthesis I’m writing for English.
What do I have to do so that my students will “pass the test” on the new standards? I have to create an emotionally safe classroom where students are comfortable thinking for themselves, asking questions, following their ideas, and reflecting on their behaviors.
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Sat, 11 Dec 2004 21:25:00 GMT
The Personal Intelligences
Launa Ellison
This was a fairly interesting book to read for me, because it was written by my teacher during a sabbatical she took while I was in her class. I’m sort of surprised I’m not mentioned more then the time or two I was, lots of my old friends are in there. Regardless, it’s really interesting to go back and read about two of the best years of my education ever from a very different perspective.
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Also somewhat recently
