education

Minggu, 27 Oktober 2013

Chinese University Defends Outspoken Teacher’s Firing

BEIJING — He lectured students about the trespasses of the Communist Party, publicly belittled the country’s mighty propaganda minister and issued frequent demands for an end to single-party rule in China.

But in voting two weeks ago to dismiss Xia Yeliang, an economist, from his teaching post at Peking University, university officials say, they weighed only one criterion: his performance as an academic.

“He just wasn’t a good teacher,” Sun Qixiang, dean of the school of economics, said Friday in an interview. “Politics had nothing to do with this decision.”

In the week since Professor Xia was dismissed, university officials have been buffeted by criticism that their decision was in retaliation for his activism against the government. The Committee of Concerned Scientists issued a letter condemning the vote, and faculty members at a number of educational institutions around the world have been questioning their colleges’ cooperative arrangements with one of China’s best universities.

“A university is an open forum for exploring truth, and sharing opinions and academic freedom is the foundation for its existence,” a group of professors at National Taiwan University wrote in an open letter this week. “Suppressing that freedom by political means constitutes a major obstacle to exploring truth and destroys the spiritual cornerstone of a university.”

But Professor Xia’s colleagues say such criticism is unfair, and insist that politics played no role in their decision. The vote was 30 against renewing his contract and three in favor, with one abstention, according to officials.

On Friday, three economics professors along with Ms. Sun, the dean, gathered in a university conference room to defend their votes, saying Professor Xia, who had been teaching at the university for a decade, had been repeatedly urged to improve his teaching style, which they described as deeply unpopular with students. In recent years, they said, he had racked up more than 340 negative student reviews, earning him the worst teaching record among the university’s 60 or so instructors during three evaluations. They added that he had published only one paper in recent years, an important factor in determining whether to renew faculty contracts every three years.

“We had hoped he could improve his teaching and research,” said Li Qingyun, a professor of economics who has taught at the university for more than three decades. “This is from the bottom of my heart.”

In an interview on Friday, Professor Xia, 53, defended his academic performance and maintained his insistence that the vote was politically motivated, citing warnings from the university’s Communist Party secretary that mentioned his online pro-democracy writings. He said he was notified only once about his bottom ranking in teaching evaluations, not three times as university officials assert, and noted that 340 negative evaluations represented a small portion of the thousands of students he had taught over the years.

“All such records are in their hands right now, so they can say whatever they want,” he said of administrators. He added that his name had appeared in a number of publications since 2008, including two articles that are readily available online. “They are lying,” he said.

There is little dispute that Professor Xia’s classroom style could be polarizing. Most of the 30 anonymous reviews posted on a popular teacher evaluation Web site, Pinglaoshi, or Judge the Teacher, were positive. “He’s a good professor with a conscience,” said one comment posted in 2007. “He’s brave and knowledgeable,” read another.

Xia Yeliang, an economist, has criticized China’s government. Adam Dean for The New York Times

But in recent days, a number of former students have come forward, most of them anonymously, to defend the university’s refusal to renew his contract. Valentina Luo, a former student who attended his class on principles of economics, said Professor Xia had spent more time boasting about his time as a visiting scholar in the United States than lecturing about the fundamentals of finance and market economics.

“I don’t remember much of his political rants against the government, but he gives the impression that he doesn’t prepare for his classes,” said Ms. Luo, who posted her criticisms online. “He just reads the textbook word by word.”

Another student who took the same class agreed. “There are many Peking University teachers who are also outspoken about their political views, but Xia is one of those that students don’t really like,” said the student, who asked that only his surname, Sun, be used.

Such criticisms, coupled with Peking University’s strenuous defense of its decision to let him go, are unlikely to quell the widespread perception that politics played a role in his termination. Given the Communist Party’s control over the country’s universities and a continuing crackdown on dissent — including an ideological campaign against Western-inspired liberalism — Professor Xia’s supporters say it is naïve to rule out politics.

Thomas Cushman, a sociologist at Wellesley College, which entered into an educational partnership with Peking University this year, said he remained suspicious, noting that the economist was the first professor to be dismissed from his department in more than a decade — a fact confirmed by university officials.

“There are plenty of people who are bad teachers but who don’t get terminated,” said Professor Cushman, who helped organize an open letter in support of Professor Xia that drew the signatures of more than 140 faculty members. “What troubles me is that there is no verifiable information about his so-called bad teaching.”

Although the letter calls on Wellesley to reconsider its arrangement with Peking University, Professor Cushman said he was more focused at the moment on helping Professor Xia. He said an interdisciplinary program he runs, the Freedom Project, plans to offer Professor Xia a two-year fellowship pending final approval from Wellesley administrators.

“Given how vulnerable Xia is right now, I think the best thing we can do is to follow through on bringing him here,” he said.

But officials at Peking University say Professor Xia has damaged its image at a time when it is trying to ascend to the ranks of the world’s top universities.

“Beida didn’t consider politics when dealing with this issue, but now he is using politics to hijack Beida,” said Ms. Sun, the dean, using a common shorthand for the school. “We feel badly hurt.”

Nudging Girls Toward Computer Science

My It’s the Economy column on Sunday looks at why traditional economic incentives alone don’t seem to be enough to encourage more women (or men, for that matter) to go into highly lucrative computer science jobs, which can often provide great flexibility to boot.
Part of the issue, it seems, is exposure. Most people don’t come into contact with computer scientists or engineers in their daily lives, and don’t really understand what they do. American schools don’t do a great job of teaching computer science skills either.
Trying to remedy this are numerous nonprofit and educational organizations, among them Code.org, which lobbies to get more computer science classes in schools. Others try to provide computer science lessons outside of a traditional school setting. Girls Who Code, for example, has eight-week boot camps that teach middle and high school girls programming skills – in languages like Java, PHP, and Python – as well as algorithms, Web design, robotics, and mobile app development.
But access to coding lessons isn’t the only factor in improving the talent pipeline. Role models (real and fictional) are important, too. Take a guess, for instance, as to what career aspiration is named most frequently on applications to Girls Who Code.
Nope, not electrical engineer, software developer, or really anything directly related to computer science or coding. In fact, many of the applicants don’t even know these jobs exist, or what computer science is. (Typically they’re applying because a teacher or family friend urged them to.)
The answer is forensic scientist. Not because any of the girls actually know forensic scientists, mind you, but because they’ve seen “C.S.I.” or maybe “Bones,” “NCIS,” “Crossing Jordan,” “Law & Order: S.V.U.,” or “Rizzoli and Isles,” or some other show with a cool chick in a white lab coat uses scientific know-how to save the day. These shows have been credited for helping turn forensic science from a primarily male occupation into a primarily female one.
The second most common career aspiration that the Girls Who Code applicants name is medicine. Doctors, unlike programmers, are people the girls have been exposed to and whose work even much younger children can understand. They’ve met doctors in their personal lives, and have also seen glamorous yet relatable female physicians on TV (think “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Saving Hope,” “The Mindy Project,” “Scrubs”).
There is also statistical evidence suggesting that role models encourage women’s interest and persistence in the sciences. Women’s enrollment and attrition rates in STEM college majors — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — are infamously bad. The reasons often cited include feelings of isolation, lack of support, or maybe just caring too much about grades (there is typically less grade inflation in STEM fields than in the humanities or social sciences). One study found, though, that women who took math and science classes from female professors performed better, were more likely to take future math and science courses, and were more likely to graduate with a STEM degree.
Acting on this finding is challenging, of course, since the implied solution presents a Catch-22: How do you rapidly increase the number of female STEM professors if there are so few women in the STEM pipeline?
There are other efforts to pair up girls or young women with high-achieving technologists. Girls Who Code introduces its pupils to potential mentors who work at high-powered places like Google and Goldman Sachs. Similarly, one of the most important functions of the Anita Borg Institute’s annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, I’ve been told, is to expose women studying computer science to successful women in their field.
But still, these kinds of efforts are difficult to scale up. Which is one reason why so many in the industry are pinning their hopes on Hollywood to do some of the heavy lifting, just as it did to popularize forensic science. Pop culture, after all, is a much more scalable form of propaganda than one-on-one introductions at schools, conferences or summer programs.
Right now there’s very little representation of computer science or engineering occupations on TV or in movies, and even less representation of female characters in these fields. To be sure, over the years there have been isolated examples of female characters with sophisticated computing skills, including Chloe O’Brian on “24″; Skye in a new ABC series called “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” (which actually a reader alerted me to after I wrote the magazine column); Trinity in “The Matrix” movies; and the lead character in a recently announced MTV pilot called “Eye Candy.” But these heroines, or more often supporting characters, are still few and far between.
Creating a hit TV show with a science-minded heroine is easier said than done, of course. It’s hard to make a TV show popular, even harder to force audiences to care about a particular character on that show, and probably triply hard to get a very specific audience (that is, impressionable little girls) emotionally invested in that character on that popular TV show. (Lisbeth Salander from the “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” may be the most famous female hacker character of recent years, but the books and films she appears in are probably not appropriate for the 12-year-old girls whose career paths the tech industry and women’s groups most want to influence.)
Cumulative media messages about career options matter all the same. Even if there is no one breakout programmer babe who adorns tweens’ bedroom walls, having little girls repeatedly see tech-savvy heroines save the day while simultaneously earning a decent paycheck — on TV, if not in their daily lives – can still help shape career trajectories.

New York State Seeks to Scale Back Student Testing

The New York State Education Department, responding to concerns that standardized exams in reading and math have become excessive and unwieldy, will seek to ease the burden of testing.

Under the plan, students struggling in English would be given exams in their native languages. A math test would be eliminated for some eighth graders. Students with disabilities would take tests matched to their level of instruction, not their age.

The proposals are modest, but they represent a rare concession from state leaders, who have faced attacks from parents and teachers in recent weeks over the rollout of a tougher set of standards known as the Common Core.

John B. King Jr., the state education commissioner, said that there was “more testing than is needed” in some districts and that some schools were too focused on rote memorization in preparing for exams.

“The amount of testing should be the minimum necessary to inform effective decision-making,” Dr. King wrote in a letter to superintendents and principals on Thursday.

Critics of high-stakes testing, however, said on Friday that the plan amounted to tweaks around the edges that would do little to change the culture of schools.

“It’s duplicitous,” said Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, a group based in Massachusetts that opposes the use of high-stakes tests. “The political intention is to try to get students and parents to accept the bad system.”

Dr. King is also looking to eliminate some tests administered by local school districts. As part of the plan, the state would offer grants to districts to study the usefulness of exams and to eliminate redundancies.

The state would also seek to do away with a class of exams known as field tests, which are administered for the purpose of weeding out bad questions from future tests.

Elected officials and parents have denounced field tests in recent years, calling them unnecessary exercises that benefit testing companies and exhaust students. In New York City, a small number of families have protested field tests by boycotting the state exams.

In place of stand-alone field tests, the state would embed more field test questions into math and reading exams. That would require the Education Department to seek more money so it could print more versions of each exam. That could cost $12 million a year.

The department will pursue the changes over the next few months. In January, it will ask the federal government to allow English-language learners to take language arts exams in their native language; currently, students who have been in the United States for at least a year must take those exams in English.

The state will also seek permission for some 57,000 eighth-graders studying algebra to take a Regents exam in lieu of a traditional math test. Those students are currently required to take both.

Responding to an outcry over lax standards, the state has taken several steps since 2009 to improve the quality of exams, including developing new tests in reading and math that are aligned with the more rigorous Common Core curriculum. Student passing rates fell sharply when the new exams made their debut last school year, a demoralizing blow for many educators.

Leaders of teachers’ unions and parents have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of the state’s efforts. In recent weeks, some parental leaders have called for Dr. King to resign, saying that the state is rushing to adopt the Common Core and that it should not use results from the new exams to evaluate schools, teachers and students.

In New York City, where concerns over testing have seeped into the mayoral race, there was criticism of the state’s plan.

“All this emphasis is being put on testing, instead of developing an enriched curriculum that produces real learning for children,” said Jane Hirschmann, co-chairwoman of Time Out From Testing, a statewide coalition. “This is not going to satisfy any of us.”

The city’s Education Department, however, praised Dr. King’s efforts.

“It’s a thoughtful response to schools’ concerns on this issue,” Erin Hughes, a spokeswoman for the department, wrote in an e-mail. “We welcome the additional flexibility.”

The New York State Education Department, responding to concerns that standardized exams in reading and math have become excessive and unwieldy, will seek to ease the burden of testing.

“The amount of testing should be the minimum necessary to inform effective decision-making,” Dr. King wrote in a letter to superintendents and principals on Thursday.

Critics of high-stakes testing, however, said on Friday that the plan amounted to tweaks around the edges that would do little to change the culture of schools.

The state would also seek to do away with a class of exams known as field tests, which are administered for the purpose of weeding out bad questions from future tests.

The state will also seek permission for some 57,000 eighth-graders studying algebra to take a Regents exam in lieu of a traditional math test. Those students are currently required to take both.

In New York City, where concerns over testing have seeped into the mayoral race, there was criticism of the state’s plan.

The city’s Education Department, however, praised Dr. King’s efforts.

Obama, at Brooklyn School, Pushes Education Agenda

President Obama on Friday visited the innovative Brooklyn high school he praised in his State of the Union address this year, to deliver a message about the urgency of education reform in the global economy.

Mr. Obama, dressed in shirt sleeves, was showered with cheers by the visibly energized students and a cadre of New York politicians as he took the podium at Pathways in Technology Early College High School. “Hello Brooklyn,” he said, before starting into his argument for creating more schools like the one he was visiting, casting them as essential in preparing the next generation for competition in a shrinking world marketplace.

“This country should be doing everything in our power to give more kids the chance to go to schools just like this one,” the president said, calling the school, known as P-Tech, a ticket into the middle class.

“In previous generations, America’s standing economically was so much higher than everybody else’s that we didn’t have a lot of competition,” he added. “Now, you’ve got billions of people from Beijing to Bangalore to Moscow, all of whom are competing with you directly. And they’re — those countries are working every day, to out-educate and outcompete us.”

Mr. Obama’s wish list included preschool availability for every 4-year-old in the United States, access for every student to a high-speed Internet connection, lower college costs, redesigned high schools that teach the skills needed in a high-tech economy and greater investment in teachers. Some said they heard in his words a boost for the new, more rigorous academic standards that have been adopted around the nation, known as the Common Core, as he praised Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and others as having courage for raising standards for teachers.

“We should stay at it,” he said.

President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited Pathways in Technology Early College High School in Brooklyn on Friday. Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times

At one point, Mr. Obama zeroed in on Congress, imploring it to “do something” on education. One way to start, he said, was by “passing a budget that reflects our need to invest in our young people.”

He made a few sharper comments as well, referring to the recent government shutdown as a “manufactured crisis,” and suggesting that every member of Congress come to Brooklyn, to see P-Tech and to meet its students.

“If you think education is expensive,” he said at one point, “wait until you see how much ignorance costs.”

The crowd applauded.

Mr. Obama made his way to the school, in the borough where he once lived, after Marine One touched down in the shared outfield of a series of baseball fields in Prospect Park, kicking up a large cloud of dust and debris, and at least one gray T-shirt. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, was there to greet the president, and the two rode together to the high school, in the Crown Heights neighborhood.

President Obama and Bill de Blasio stopped by Junior's Restaurant in Brooklyn on Friday to pick up some cheesecakes. Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times

In his State of the Union address, Mr. Obama had said, “We need to give every American student opportunities like this.” It was a reference to the way P-Tech’s students are given both high school and college curriculums in a six-year program that is tailored for a job in the technology industry.

When the first of those students graduate, in 2017, they are expected to have associate degrees in applied science, computer information systems or electromechanical engineering, having followed a course of studies developed in consultation with I.B.M.

In 2012, five P-Tech-styled schools opened in Chicago, in collaboration with companies like Microsoft, Motorola and Verizon. This year, two more schools modeled on P-Tech opened in New York City, with three more expected to open next year.

After his speech, Mr. Obama stopped at a Junior’s restaurant, on Flatbush Avenue, entering with Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee for mayor, and shaking hands with employees and patrons. “Do you know your next mayor here?” the president asked, before ordering two cheesecakes, one plain and one strawberry.

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Obama Visits Brooklyn High School

All the excitement of a presidential visit aside, the education historian Diane Ravitch said the day’s events perhaps concealed a subtle truth: The federal government has “never had a large role in public education,” and provides a razor-thin portion of its overall revenues.

In fact, Ms. Ravitch pointed out that the federal Education Department “is prohibited by law from interfering with curriculum or instruction.”

On the streets around P-Tech, though, no one seemed to note that fact.

Hours before Mr. Obama arrived, the signs of preparation were in evidence: Streets scrubbed clean, stray cars towed and metal barricades erected.

And Kiambu Gall, 16, was wearing brand-new shoes.

“Man, Obama’s coming,” Mr. Gall said as he stood with a half-a-dozen classmates on the corner of Albany Avenue and Bergen Street outside the school.

“Who else can say that?” he asked, displaying gleaming, blue-and-gray leather boat shoes. “What other students can say, ‘He came to our school.’ ”

It was roughly three hours before Mr. Obama came to make his pitch, from a lectern in the gymnasium. But Mr. Gall and his fellow 11th-graders, among the lucky students picked to meet the president in a math class, were recounting their preparatory drills.

Radcliffe Saddler, 16, was assigned to introduce the president. (He had a haircut for the occasion and got a hug from Mr. Obama, at the podium.) Leslieanne John, 16, who plans to become a lawyer and who was chosen to sing the national anthem, was reciting her mother’s advice: “Set your eyes on one point and don’t mess up the words.”

Spencer Jones, 15, still wondered what to say to Mr. Obama.

“Something like, he should make more schools like ours,” he said.

Hours later, at a fund-raiser in Manhattan, the president was still talking about his afternoon at P-Tech and the optimism he saw among the students. “That’s what Washington should be about every single day,” he said.

Minggu, 20 Oktober 2013

Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

Sept. 27, 2013 7:17 p.m. ET

I had a teacher once who called his students "idiots" when they screwed up. He was our orchestra conductor, a fierce Ukrainian immigrant named Jerry Kupchynsky, and when someone played out of tune, he would stop the entire group to yell, "Who eez deaf in first violins!?" He made us rehearse until our fingers almost bled. He corrected our wayward hands and arms by poking at us with a pencil.
Today, he'd be fired. But when he died a few years ago, he was celebrated: Forty years' worth of former students and colleagues flew back to my New Jersey hometown from every corner of the country, old instruments in tow, to play a concert in his memory. I was among them, toting my long-neglected viola. When the curtain rose on our concert that day, we had formed a symphony orchestra the size of the New York Philharmonic.

Mr. K began teaching at East Brunswick High School when it opened in 1958. Kupchynsky Family

The Saturday Essay

A Nation Built for Immigrants (9/21/13)
America, Syria and the World (9/14/13)
The Ultimate End-of-Life Plan (9/7/13)
Hard-Wired for Giving (8/31/13)
The Failed Grand Strategy in the Middle East (8/24/13)
In Defense of Football (8/17/13)
Take Back Your Pregnancy (8/10/13)

I was stunned by the outpouring for the gruff old teacher we knew as Mr. K. But I was equally struck by the success of his former students. Some were musicians, but most had distinguished themselves in other fields, like law, academia and medicine. Research tells us that there is a positive correlation between music education and academic achievement. But that alone didn't explain the belated surge of gratitude for a teacher who basically tortured us through adolescence.
We're in the midst of a national wave of self-recrimination over the U.S. education system. Every day there is hand-wringing over our students falling behind the rest of the world. Fifteen-year-olds in the U.S. trail students in 12 other nations in science and 17 in math, bested by their counterparts not just in Asia but in Finland, Estonia and the Netherlands, too. An entire industry of books and consultants has grown up that capitalizes on our collective fear that American education is inadequate and asks what American educators are doing wrong.
I would ask a different question. What did Mr. K do right? What can we learn from a teacher whose methods fly in the face of everything we think we know about education today, but who was undeniably effective?

Luci Gutiérrez

As it turns out, quite a lot. Comparing Mr. K's methods with the latest findings in fields from music to math to medicine leads to a single, startling conclusion: It's time to revive old-fashioned education. Not just traditional but old-fashioned in the sense that so many of us knew as kids, with strict discipline and unyielding demands. Because here's the thing: It works.
Now I'm not calling for abuse; I'd be the first to complain if a teacher called my kids names. But the latest evidence backs up my modest proposal. Studies have now shown, among other things, the benefits of moderate childhood stress; how praise kills kids' self-esteem; and why grit is a better predictor of success than SAT scores.
All of which flies in the face of the kinder, gentler philosophy that has dominated American education over the past few decades. The conventional wisdom holds that teachers are supposed to tease knowledge out of students, rather than pound it into their heads. Projects and collaborative learning are applauded; traditional methods like lecturing and memorization—derided as "drill and kill"—are frowned upon, dismissed as a surefire way to suck young minds dry of creativity and motivation.
But the conventional wisdom is wrong. And the following eight principles—a manifesto if you will, a battle cry inspired by my old teacher and buttressed by new research—explain why.
1. A little pain is good for you.
Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson gained fame for his research showing that true expertise requires about 10,000 hours of practice, a notion popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers." But an often-overlooked finding from the same study is equally important: True expertise requires teachers who give "constructive, even painful, feedback," as Dr. Ericsson put it in a 2007 Harvard Business Review article. He assessed research on top performers in fields ranging from violin performance to surgery to computer programming to chess. And he found that all of them "deliberately picked unsentimental coaches who would challenge them and drive them to higher levels of performance."

Mr. Kupchynsky helps his daughter with her bow stroke in 1966. Arthur Montzka

2. Drill, baby, drill.
Rote learning, long discredited, is now recognized as one reason that children whose families come from India (where memorization is still prized) are creaming their peers in the National Spelling Bee Championship. This cultural difference also helps to explain why students in China (and Chinese families in the U.S.) are better at math. Meanwhile, American students struggle with complex math problems because, as research makes abundantly clear, they lack fluency in basic addition and subtraction—and few of them were made to memorize their times tables.
William Klemm of Texas A&M University argues that the U.S. needs to reverse the bias against memorization. Even the U.S. Department of Education raised alarm bells, chastising American schools in a 2008 report that bemoaned the lack of math fluency (a notion it mentioned no fewer than 17 times). It concluded that schools need to embrace the dreaded "drill and practice."
3. Failure is an option.
Kids who understand that failure is a necessary aspect of learning actually perform better. In a 2012 study, 111 French sixth-graders were given anagram problems that were too difficult for them to solve. One group was then told that failure and trying again are part of the learning process. On subsequent tests, those children consistently outperformed their peers.
The fear, of course is that failure will traumatize our kids, sapping them of self-esteem. Wrong again. In a 2006 study, a Bowling Green State University graduate student followed 31 Ohio band students who were required to audition for placement and found that even students who placed lowest "did not decrease in their motivation and self-esteem in the long term." The study concluded that educators need "not be as concerned about the negative effects" of picking winners and losers.
4. Strict is better than nice.
What makes a teacher successful? To find out, starting in 2005 a team of researchers led by Claremont Graduate University education professor Mary Poplin spent five years observing 31 of the most highly effective teachers (measured by student test scores) in the worst schools of Los Angeles, in neighborhoods like South Central and Watts. Their No. 1 finding: "They were strict," she says. "None of us expected that."
The researchers had assumed that the most effective teachers would lead students to knowledge through collaborative learning and discussion. Instead, they found disciplinarians who relied on traditional methods of explicit instruction, like lectures. "The core belief of these teachers was, 'Every student in my room is underperforming based on their potential, and it's my job to do something about it—and I can do something about it,'" says Prof. Poplin.
She reported her findings in a lengthy academic paper. But she says that a fourth-grader summarized her conclusions much more succinctly this way: "When I was in first grade and second grade and third grade, when I cried my teachers coddled me. When I got to Mrs. T's room, she told me to suck it up and get to work. I think she's right. I need to work harder."
5. Creativity can be learned.
The rap on traditional education is that it kills children's' creativity. But Temple University psychology professor Robert W. Weisberg's research suggests just the opposite. Prof. Weisberg has studied creative geniuses including Thomas Edison, Frank Lloyd Wright and Picasso—and has concluded that there is no such thing as a born genius. Most creative giants work ferociously hard and, through a series of incremental steps, achieve things that appear (to the outside world) like epiphanies and breakthroughs.
Prof. Weisberg analyzed Picasso's 1937 masterpiece Guernica, for instance, which was painted after the Spanish city was bombed by the Germans. The painting is considered a fresh and original concept, but Prof. Weisberg found instead that it was closely related to several of Picasso's earlier works and drew upon his study of paintings by Goya and then-prevalent Communist Party imagery. The bottom line, Prof. Weisberg told me, is that creativity goes back in many ways to the basics. "You have to immerse yourself in a discipline before you create in that discipline. It is built on a foundation of learning the discipline, which is what your music teacher was requiring of you."
6. Grit trumps talent.
In recent years, University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth has studied spelling bee champs, Ivy League undergrads and cadets at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.—all together, over 2,800 subjects. In all of them, she found that grit—defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals—is the best predictor of success. In fact, grit is usually unrelated or even negatively correlated with talent.

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Tough on the podium, Mr. K was always appreciative when he sat in the audience. Above, applauding his students in the mid-1970s. Arthur Montzka

Prof. Duckworth, who started her career as a public school math teacher and just won a 2013 MacArthur "genius grant," developed a "Grit Scale" that asks people to rate themselves on a dozen statements, like "I finish whatever I begin" and "I become interested in new pursuits every few months." When she applied the scale to incoming West Point cadets, she found that those who scored higher were less likely to drop out of the school's notoriously brutal summer boot camp known as "Beast Barracks." West Point's own measure—an index that includes SAT scores, class rank, leadership and physical aptitude—wasn't able to predict retention.
Prof. Duckworth believes that grit can be taught. One surprisingly simple factor, she says, is optimism—the belief among both teachers and students that they have the ability to change and thus to improve. In a 2009 study of newly minted teachers, she rated each for optimism (as measured by a questionnaire) before the school year began. At the end of the year, the students whose teachers were optimists had made greater academic gains.
7. Praise makes you weak…
My old teacher Mr. K seldom praised us. His highest compliment was "not bad." It turns out he was onto something. Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck has found that 10-year-olds praised for being "smart" became less confident. But kids told that they were "hard workers" became more confident and better performers.
"The whole point of intelligence praise is to boost confidence and motivation, but both were gone in a flash," wrote Prof. Dweck in a 2007 article in the journal Educational Leadership. "If success meant they were smart, then struggling meant they were not."
8.…while stress makes you strong.
A 2011 University at Buffalo study found that a moderate amount of stress in childhood promotes resilience. Psychology professor Mark D. Seery gave healthy undergraduates a stress assessment based on their exposure to 37 different kinds of significant negative events, such as death or illness of a family member. Then he plunged their hands into ice water. The students who had experienced a moderate number of stressful events actually felt less pain than those who had experienced no stress at all.
"Having this history of dealing with these negative things leads people to be more likely to have a propensity for general resilience," Prof. Seery told me. "They are better equipped to deal with even mundane, everyday stressors."
Prof. Seery's findings build on research by University of Nebraska psychologist Richard Dienstbier, who pioneered the concept of "toughness"—the idea that dealing with even routine stresses makes you stronger. How would you define routine stresses? "Mundane things, like having a hardass kind of teacher," Prof. Seery says.
My tough old teacher Mr. K could have written the book on any one of these principles. Admittedly, individually, these are forbidding precepts: cold, unyielding, and kind of scary.
But collectively, they convey something very different: confidence. At their core is the belief, the faith really, in students' ability to do better. There is something to be said about a teacher who is demanding and tough not because he thinks students will never learn but because he is so absolutely certain that they will.
Decades later, Mr. K's former students finally figured it out, too. "He taught us discipline," explained a violinist who went on to become an Ivy League-trained doctor. "Self-motivation," added a tech executive who once played the cello. "Resilience," said a professional cellist. "He taught us how to fail—and how to pick ourselves up again."
Clearly, Mr. K's methods aren't for everyone. But you can't argue with his results. And that's a lesson we can all learn from.
Ms. Lipman is co-author, with Melanie Kupchynsky, of "Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations," to be published by Hyperion on Oct. 1. She is a former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and former editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Portfolio.

Importance of Education in Society

Education, if looked at beyond its conventional boundaries, forms the very essence of all our actions. What we do is what we know and have learned, either through instructions or through observation and assimilation. When we are not making an effort to learn, our mind is always processing new information or trying to analyze the similarities as well as the tiny nuances within the context which makes the topic stand out or seem different. If that is the case then the mind definitely holds the potential to learn more, however, it is us who stop ourselves from expanding the horizons of our knowledge with self-doubt or other social, emotional, or economic constraints.

While most feel that education is a necessity, they tend to use it as a tool for reaching a specific target or personal mark, after which there is no further need to seek greater education. Nonetheless, the importance of education in society is indispensable and cohering, which is why society and knowledge cannot be ever separated into two distinct entities. Let us find out more about the role of education in society and how it affects our lives.

Purpose of Education in Society

Education is Self Empowerment
Receiving a good education helps empower you, thus making you strong enough to look after yourself in any given situation. It keeps you aware of your given surrounding as well as the rules and regulations of the society you're living in. It's only through knowledge that you can be able to question authority for its negligence or discrepancies. It is only then that you can avail your rights as a citizen and seek improvement in the structural functioning of governance and economy. It's only when a citizen is aware about the policies of its government can he be able to support or protest the change. As a whole, people can bring about development only when they know where improvement is necessary for the greater good of mankind. Education helps you understand yourself better, it helps you realize your potential and qualities as a human being. It helps you to tap into latent talent, so that you may be able to sharpen your skills.

Financial Stability and Dignity of Life
Another importance of education is that it helps you gain sufficient academic qualification so that you are able to get suitable employment at a later stage. A decent employment would be combined with hard-earned remuneration or salary through which you can look after your personal expenses. While you earn for yourself, you gradually begin to realize the true worth of money and how hard it is to earn it. You realize the significance of saving for a rainy day and for unforeseeable contingencies. You feel empowered because there is a new sense of worth that develops within you, and you feel the need to be independent and free from any further financial support. You take pride in the fact that you are earning for yourself, and are not obligated to anyone.

Growth in Personal Aspiration
There also comes a phase when the amount you are earning presently will seem inadequate because your aspirations and expectations from yourself would have grown considerably. After this, you will want to change jobs so as to have a higher profile. However, here is when you need to be prepared. A promotion of this figure can occur in two given situations, which are, that either you have the necessary higher academic qualification or a college degree which allows you a safe passage, or that you have amassed enough practical experience which allows you to be a suitable candidate for the employment you seek.

On the Job Efficiency
This is why college education is very important after high school and must not be taken for granted. When faced with the option of choosing between a highly qualified candidate and a not so educated candidate, the employers will most probably go in for the qualified person. The reason being that, a qualified candidate will not require much investment of the employer's time and money. The organization need not teach him or her the tricks of the trade, or the various ways of functioning and performing the tasks of the workplace. On the contrary, a novice / amateur applicant would need to be taught everything from scratch, which many employer's are usually not willing to do. The same applies for people who seek higher education and get advanced diplomas while working. These people are continuously improving their profile and their knowledge base so as to go higher up on the competitive ladder.

Helps Plan Ahead
Those who have amassed enough education, steer the path of development and progress for their country. It is these individuals who go ahead and become teachers, scientists, inventors, welfare activists, soldiers, and politicians who work together to form the very backbone of the society. Without this pool of intellect, the economic and social framework would crumple and fall, paving its way for anarchy, degradation, and violence. While this intricate balance of growth is maintained, there will be a continuous rise in progress in all quarters of life, whether that be personal growth, or development of the nation as an entity. This progress has a very important role to play for the coming generations, which will reap the benefits of our hard work, as they develop it further. At the same time, the negative impact of our actions shall have its collateral damage on the coming generation as well. Which is why we must be exceptionally prudent about the decisions we make and the actions we take in the present.

Job Seeker vs. Job Provider
There will come a time, when you will no longer feel the need to be working as someone's mere employee. You would want to take charge and control over your own life and income. This is when you will decide to become a self-employed individual, who would like to watch his / her own ideas take realistic form. You would prefer being the one offering job opportunities to others and aid in providing income to them. At this stage of entrepreneurship, you may use your own expertise as well as that of other trained and skilled associates. As a team, you will find your business or venture expanding and yielding good results. You may even gain the confidence and insight, which will help you diversify and spread your expertise into other business arenas, which were previously unknown to you, or you were unsure about. This ability, comes with experience and knowledge amassed over the years.

An Idle Mind is The Devil's Workshop
Education and studying regularly, gives people of all age groups something substantial and challenging to do. It helps them think and use their idle hours, doing something productive and worthwhile. Education need not be purely academic and may include reading for leisure or as a passion for literature, philosophy, art, politics, economics, or even scientific research. There is no limit, to all that you can teach yourself, only if you take the interest to learn and grow as an individual. However, those who treat knowledge as trash, eventually find themselves getting absorbed with thoughts of violence, and jealously against those who are better off than themselves. It is people such as these who turn towards drug addiction, unnecessary rebellion, crime, and plain inactivity. Such people lack the self-esteem, that a good education often provides to its followers.

Education plays its continuous role in all spheres of life. The reason being, that if we are aware of the drawbacks of a decision and we know about the possible contingencies and the collateral damage, our consequent actions would be wiser, which would help us to keep danger at bay at all times.
By Rohini Mohan

At Department of Education, diving back into routines and making up for lost time

By Lyndsey Layton, E-mail the writer

Once she got the 12:46 a.m. text message from the Office of Personnel Management that she should return to her job at the Department of Education on Thursday, Zina Watkins jumped up and started ironing clothes to get ready.
“I was excited,” said Watkins, who lives in Prince William County and works on adult education programs.

Thania Sayne of Effingham, Ill., collapses against the grave of her husband, Army Sgt. Timothy D. Sayne, during the playing of taps at a nearby burial service at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Va., Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013, a day before what would have been their third wedding anniversary. Sayne, was 4 months pregnant with their second son, Douglas, when her husband was killed on Sept. 18, 2011, in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

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Watkins and other furloughed employees at the Education Department returned to overflowing inboxes and serial meetings as they figured out how to attack the backlog that had accumulated over two weeks.
Some workers were reading more than 200 applications from the department’s newest Race to the Top competition among school districts vying for $120 million in grants. Applications were due last Friday — despite the shutdown — and program officers were wading through stacks of paperwork.
There was also a fresh batch of applications for the department’s Race to the Top contest for early-learning programs, which had been due Wednesday.
Bill Moser, an IT specialist, spent hours helping other employees log into their computers, which they had trouble accessing because the machines had been updated with security software during the shutdown. It took some up to 40 minutes to log on, he said.
Still, the day had a distinctly back-to-school vibe, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan was eager to play principal.
He strode through the carpeted hallways of his department Thursday, seemingly intent on welcoming back each of his 4,200 furloughed employees.
“Hey, what’s going on?” said Duncan, as he poked his 6-foot-4 frame around cubicle partitions on the 11th floor of one of the agency’s offices. “I’m Arne. What’s happening? Thanks for coming back.”
He shook hands, posed for pictures and thanked his employees for weathering the shutdown. Thursday also happened to coincide with the agency’s birthday — it was 34 years ago that President Jimmy Carter signed legislation to create a Cabinet-level Department of Education.
In Christina Anzelmo’s office, Duncan accepted a homemade cookie and told a trio of managers that he was relieved to see desk chairs filled and copying machines humming.
“I never felt so helpless,” he said, describing what it was like to run a sprawling agency with a skeleton crew of about 240 excepted workers. Excepted workers, in federal government terms, are those who are required to work during a shutdown.
“You miss everything,” Duncan said. “The people, the camaraderie. You don’t realize how much until something like this happens. The building was empty. It was dark, it was quiet. It felt awful. ”
But on Thursday in the hallways and cafeteria (the department was the only federal agency in the L’Enfant Plaza neighborhood with a fully functioning cafeteria), employees talked about their spick-and-span homes, organized closets, mowed lawns — all byproducts of their forced time away from work.
“There are a lot of clean windows and garages throughout the D.C. region,” said Massie Ritsch, the deputy assistant secretary for external affairs.
Duncan sent an e-mail blast in the morning addressed to members of the “ED Family” and suggested that the 16-day partial government shutdown had forged familial bonds throughout the bureaucracy.
“I would normally start a message to all of you with ‘Dear Colleagues,’ ” Duncan wrote. “But what has been normal about the last three weeks? Given what we’ve all been through — and the support I’ve seen so many of you give to your coworkers — ‘family’ seems like a better way to acknowledge the ties that we at this agency have to each other and to the vital work we do together.”
During the shutdown, Duncan called a couple of dozen furloughed employees, just to see how they were faring.
One was Jocelyn Logan-Friend, who was at home in Cheverly, in Prince George’s County, organizing her things when her cellphone rang. “I didn’t recognize the number, so I didn’t answer,” she said.
When she listened to the voice mail later, she was surprised.
“It was just a very kind gesture,” said Logan-Friend, who works in the office of special education and had seen Duncan in person only once before, at a large staff meeting.
When he came by her department Thursday, she thanked him for his call.