5 Education Articles to Start Your Week: Higher Education Studies, Tech Boot Camp and Chinese Education Systems
Hope you”re ready for some interesting reading after your long weekend!
This week in 5 Education Articles to Start Your Week, I focus in on some new studies that came out this past week including one which determined, most unfortunately, that 36% of U.S. College Graduates don”t acquire any additional critical thinking or writing skills after 4 years of college.
Study Suggests U.S. Colleges Fail to Challenge Undergrads
by Caralee Adams, Education Week Blog “College Bound”
According to a new study by the Social Science Research Council, the largest of its kind, 45% of undergraduates had no significant improvement in their critical thinking, complex reasoning or written communication during the first two years of college. While you’d think that many would have improved by the end of the four years, think again. A whopping 36% had no gains by the end of their college career.
The writer of the article also touched base with one of the authors of the study to discuss the research’s findings. He attributes the lack of improvement on behalf of the students is due to colleges placing emphasis away from traditional undergraduate learning and more on acquiring new knowledge which will win them grants, rankings and research endowments.
by Sue Shellenbarger, Wall Street Journal
Having trouble understanding social networking, the perks of Facebook, and plainly, how teens feel about technology? According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, teenagers from all over the country are joining programs such as Net Literacy’s “Senior Connects” which trains senior citizens on how to use internet technology in their daily life.
The organization recruits 400-600 high school students a year to reach out to senior citizens and train them how to use social networking sites to connect with their friends and family. The senior citizens relish the attention and take pride in being saavy, while the teenagers get to bond with their elders in a way that helps them become more helpful, empathetic and valuable in the community.
Will Parents Use Better Educational Information if They Have it?
by Andrew Kelly, The American
If parents knew that a higher education school was prone to have a higher drop-out rate, would they encourage their children to invest in it, over a school with a lower drop out rate? What if they didn’t have this important piece of information available, what then?
Andrew Kelly, one of the authors of a six-year graduation rate student of American Colleges (“Diplomas and Dropouts”) sought to discover how information about college drop out rates affect parent’s support of the programs.
What We Can Learn from the Chinese Education Sytem and “Tiger Mothering”?
by Kristina Chew, Care2
Is the secret to a smarter, more educated society simply to prioritize education above all over pursuits?
Kristina Chew, Care2 blogger examines a recent New York Times Op-Ed about the “Confucian reverence for education” in China. She touches on her personal experience being the daughter of a Chinese immigrant with an autistic son who can’t go to college due to his disabilities. She also ties in the recent chatter about the Chinese “Tiger Mother.” The writer of the book, Amy Chua, has received a lot of criticism for her philosophy of parenting where she’s less concerned for the child’s self-esteem and more concerned about the child’s endurance educational pursuits, which in her option, will give them self-esteem.
Students who write about anxieties do better on tests, study says
byAmina Khan, Baltimore Sun
Tutors, before your students take a test, ask them to write down their feelings about taking the test first. You might just find that they perform better.
According to a study by the University of Chicago, getting students to write and ruminate about the emotion event they are about to face helps them focus their brain power away from their fears, but towards the task at hand.
featured photo by Anniferrr
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