Executive Corner
How Cognitive Science Helps Teachers: Educators say research findings are not widely understood.
July 2007
Are our children overscheduled? Should preschool children be taught to read? When does academic challenge become academic pressure?
Cognitive science is beginning to answer such questions, but the findings don’t always make it into the classroom. (Reprinted with permission from CQ Press, How Cognitive Science Helps Teachers: Educators say research findings are not widely understood., CQ Researcher)
Students Under Stress: Do Schools Assign Too Much Homework?
July 2007
The average homework load for first- through third-graders has doubled over the past two decades, even though research shows homework doesn't benefit such young children. Indeed, some schools require preschoolers to tackle academic subjects like reading and writing. In response a parents' movement has arisen — mainly in middle- and upper-income suburbs — protesting excessive homework and other forms of academic pressure, including so-called high-stakes testing. (Reprinted with permission from CQ Press, Students Under Stress: Do Schools Assign Too Much Homework?, CQ Researcher)
Beyond the Basics: Achieving a Liberal Education for All Children
July 2007Recent months have brought yet another challenge to liberal learning, as well-meaning business leaders and policy makers, rightly concerned about American competitiveness, are pushing "STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) training. Yet America's true competitive edge over the long haul is not its technical prowess but its creativity, its imagination, its inventiveness. And those attributes are best inculcated not by skill-drill but through liberal arts and sciences, liberally defined.
This volume argues that case. It emerges from a Thomas B. Fordham Foundation-sponsored conference in December 2006 (underwritten by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Louis Calder Foundation). It develops the rationale for liberal education in the primary and secondary grades, explores what policymakers and educators at all levels can to do sustain liberal learning, and sketches an unlovely future if we fail.
Chapter on Virtual Education and the Liberal Arts
By: John Holdren and Bror Saxberg
