Water Revisited
Water is everywhere. It is not hard to understand why water is so taken for granted. That is until there is not enough water to sustain life. Then every drop is precious.
Category: Education
These Perilous Times
Posted in Education
A strategy of doing is a planetary imperative because each human being is contributing to changes in earth’s physical and political ecology. Too much of what we are doing, individually and collectively, is not sustainable. We are part of a community and that is our ecology; the place where we interact with ever changing relationships….
Synthetic Biology
Posted in Biological Sciences, Education
Genetic engineering has been with humanity for longer than anyone can imagine. What is now becoming increasingly clear is that engineering new life forms will require more than mere manipulation of what we think we know about genes and the proteins they make. Life is never simple at any level from molecules to ecosystems. A…
Thoughts for a Preface
Posted in Education
June and July have seen an effort to complete a draft of a book on education. Hence no essays posted to this blog since May. The draft was put to bed on July 31. My intent for the month of August is to make an intense effort to revise the draft. The paragraphs below tell…
Paulo Freire
Posted in Education
This morning I began reading a long known but neglected book about education. My beginnings have included the book’s introductions by scholars and contemporary friends of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian intellectual giant who died in 1997 after writing from experience or Praxis of teaching in South America and being both jailed and ostracized. Not many…
Earth Day
Posted in Education
The Planetary Imperative came into forcus today when I opened www.raingarden.com to figure out what to do with a URL that has been a disappointment, though with much potential, for nearly 20 years. It has been retitled “Lucrative Website For Sale.” Rain Gardens will hardly save the Earth, but restricting water runoff is a step…
Risky Business
Posted in Education
Education Reform has been a long way in coming to American schools. Unfortunately almost nobody seems to realize that the problem with education may just be the schools. We try to continue doing what we have always been doing for better than two centuries and expecting better results. It may be time to try something…
Project-Based Learning
Posted in Education
Most of yesterday’s effort centered around the much touted school reform movement in education advocating Project-based Learning or PBL for short. The PBL effort is grounded in laudable goals of assisting the learning of 21st Century skills including creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication. It is a worthwhile movement away from the linear application of…
A New World is Here.
Posted in Education
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem. John Kenneth Galbraith Living in Minneapolis for the past two years has made possible re-connection with former colleagues at Normandale Community College. My former NCC colleagues were, and still are, an amazing group who, with few exceptions, were talented and committed people. Almost to…
Global Higher Education
Posted in Education
Education beyond secondary school is widely regarded as essential. The questions mostly hinge on what form this post-secondary education should take and how costly or cost-effective it should be. While that is an urgent item of discussion at the family level, it also has international relevance. University World News provides a weekly news aggregation that…