We clearly hit “peak education” a few years ago, and overall college student population has been dropping for years now. The for-profits have taken the brunt of this, though that’s more of a technicality—those schools are being regularly closed as frauds. Amongst the “legit” schools (and bear with me on that classification), the community colleges […] … learn more→

Critical thinking is one of the supposed pillars of higher education, lauded in commencement addresses and celebrated on institutional websites. The great crises of our day – climate change, political corruption, economic injustice and corporate surveillance – demand problem-solvers who can apply their critical minds to complex situations, we are told. Critical thinking skills are […] … learn more→

I realised the other day, in the midst of a brutal surge of anxiety about my PhD, that I never fully commit… to… A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G…. UNLESS I am assured it will be successful. Mistakes? Phooey. Perfection. YES! Pleasing and impressing. YES! Life’s Journey in a straight line. YES! I am a recovering perfectionist, as so beautifully […] … learn more→

There is simply no denying the fact that Cloud related services have made a big impact on the world. Not only are businesses taking advantage of Cloud and similar servers, but everyday people are taking advantage of services like this. That being said, it probably is Microsoft Azure that is one of the biggest players […] … learn more→

My commute is a big chunk of my working life these days. I’m more than five years into a job for which I commute about 3 hours a day (1.5 hours there and back). It’s usually a two-leg journey—train then bus—and occasionally a three-leg one—two trains then bus. I love my job and the people […] … learn more→

When I was younger I decided to learn Greek. I learnt the letter-sound correspondences and could say the words – the sounds, that is. But although I could and still can decode these words, I can’t actually read Greek because I don’t know what the words mean. Being able to make the connection between the […] … learn more→

The College Meltdown recently had a post which basically said what I showed years ago in my book: accreditation is a fraud. Before going on, a quick overview of accreditation: well over a century ago, our institutions of higher education got together and decided to share ideas on how to run their institutions. It was a completely […] … learn more→

When the Berlin wall fell 30 years ago, on November 9 1989, it marked the end of a 40-year divide between Germany’s communist East and the free market system of the West. For people living either side of the wall, this split led to differences in many areas of life, including education. So while the West […] … learn more→

This week, the royal commission into disability heard horrifying stories of children’s experiences in the education system. It is no wonder children with disabilities are over-represented among the tens of thousands of Australians who leave school before finishing year 12. Many early school leavers are bored or disengaged; some are escaping bullying, while others do so due to poor […] … learn more→

I feel like plucking some low-hanging fruit today, and so let’s take a look at Common Core. I’ve written of it before, how it ignores science, how it’s just another excuse to inject more indoctrination into our schools, and how by changing the approach to how mathematics is learned, will further separate the children from […] … learn more→