We live less than 1/2 a mile and two tiny streets away from the 9 year old’s school and she asked if it would be OK for her to walk to school on her own. I asked The Google what … Continue reading →

As I mentioned, we had quite a few stories of teacher on pupil violence. Mine was best:-) It was the end of the third year (8th grade for the ‘mercans)  and we had to pick our subjects for ‘O’ Level … Continue reading →

A long time ago, I went to a school called Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar. It was a good school: very academic and very sporty. Purple blazers. It was about as close to being a public (i.e. private) school that you … Continue reading →

I hope it’s not bad taste to post a story about good versus bad teachers on a day when Santa Clara laid off 1000 teachers. Brooks: We’ve spent years working on ways to restructure schools, but what matters most is … Continue reading →

Roger Ebert has written a powerful, meandering essay about shame. The essay takes many twists and turns and each one of them is fascinating journey in its own right. It starts out as a review of the movie The Reader … Continue reading →

Just read Alan Kay’s Early History of Smalltalk. It was timely for me because Brian Marick’s mention of the New Math put me in auto-rant mode on how schools optimize for students who are unlikely to excel in the subjects … Continue reading →

[Here's a post that I started about 2 years ago and probably will never finish - which is a shame because it would've been a good one....] I always look forward to the Science Fair because … …. rant about … Continue reading →

Dylan had to make a castle for school and made Leeds Castle which is just up the road from where my sister lives. If you look closely, you can see the Frenchman in the tower about to fetchez la vache … Continue reading →

My lovely wife sent me this: Mr. Whitson taught sixth-grade science. On the first day of class, he gave us a lecture about a creature called the cattywampus, an ill-adapted nocturnal animal that was wiped out during the Ice Age. … Continue reading →

When I was at grammar school, I used to rank the subjects according to how ‘like maths‘ they were. We were taught chemistry, physics and biology as separate subjects and, while I enjoyed all the sciences, I enjoyed physics the … Continue reading →