"Other nations, seeking higher student performance, have greatly upgraded their standards for entering teachers colleges and for getting licensed to teach.  The United States did not do that, and we have been reaping the rewards of that failure."

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2015/04/why_have_american_education_standards_collapsed.html

​

Look like Michael Clarkson, formerly at GWU and now at Cornell, has found a lot to connect with in my "arguments not accepted from students" section...

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~clarkson/courses/csci4223/2013sp/syllabus.php

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9376232/free-speech-is-so-last-century-todays-students-want-the-right-to-be-comfortable/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEDNESDAY+PREVIEW+NEWSLETTER+%2321+%2819+November%29

I appreciate the research, but this should almost be a priori information at this point..


http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/09/26/345515451/student-course-evaluations-get-an-f?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140926

I'm hope to be able to write a bit more on this subject when I have the time. I taught college-level classes to high school students for several semesters, and this summary matches my own experiences. Although I was teaching college-level courses, for dual college-high school credit to high school students, their administrations often didn't have a clue when it came to what actual college expectations were. I was told that requiring the standard amount of homework and study time from my students was "unrealistic in the high school environment" by a rather student-whipped principal. Again, this was a college-level class taught to "advanced," senior-level high school students who were, in the same semester, finally learning how to write a rhetorical document. Other classes from more rural schools simply weren't prepared for college-level work in any way and had also had administrators who seemed to be worried more about "feelings" than actual academic progress (unfortunately, the college administrators who were overseeing the program were worried about their pocketbooks more than actual academic progress, as well). I don't blame the students. They're only doing what students of that age do best--getting away with whatever adults will let them get away with...

Will write more on this later as I start clearing my own work out of the way.

http://web.stanford.edu/group/bridgeproject/betrayingthecollegedream.pdf

I'm just curious as to why people from Brazil are blowing up my web page right now... lol..  Something going on in Brazil that I should know about?

... well, one good reason, other than the fact that you're lying to them...

http://www.lawnix.com/cases/vokes-arthur-murray.html

A woman sued her dance teachers because she couldn't learn to dance—and won!
// OMG Facts
A woman sued her dance teachers because she couldn't learn to dance—and won!

A lady only known as Ms. Vokes decided to become an accomplished professional dancer at the mature age of 51. She signed up for dancing lessons at Arthur Murray Dance School and attended classes diligently for a couple of years.

The employees praised her skills and flattered her into believing that a professional dance career was well within her grasp. Arthur Murray even convinced her to sign up for $31,000 in dance lessons.

But the sad truth was that Ms. Vokes had no potential whatsoever, and she was not making any real progress. In truth, she had absolutely no skill as a dancer and was rather uncoordinated. When she finally realized that she will never be the next Ginger Rogers, she decided to sue Arthur Murray for misrepresenting her skill as a dancer.

The court ruled in favor of Ms. Vokes, saying that Arthur Murray Dance School employees had superior knowledge of dancing and had a duty to inform Ms. Vokes that she did not have any dance potential. The court held that, because of the sheer volume of flattery and the large amount of money they received, Arthur Murray had a duty to be honest with Vokes.

Arthur Murray was ordered to pay her over $30,000 for fraudulently telling her that she can dance.

(Source)

An interesting article that points out the same message I try to get across to students: relying on observation as to what is "normal" or "abnormal," while valid for many things (e.g. blood spilling out of your forehead because you decided to be a macho and not wear a helmet while wrestling bears), might not give us a really good idea about the true nature of temporal patterns. We often think of ourselves as having "seen a lot" in our days, but frankly, we live for very fractional amounts of time. We fall into a few biases including negativity bias and the end of history bias that really skew our "observations" and our interpretations thereof.

I'm not evaluating the article's scientific merits, however, I believe the author is wholly correct when he points out that "the worst," "the most unusual," etc. are limited, prejudiced, and exceptionally biased temporal observations that have very, very, very little to do with actual history.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100254179/what-if-man-made-climate-change-is-all-in-the-mind/