According to Smartest State 2002-2003, my life has been in a downward spiral from the start.
“METHODOLOGY–The Smartest State designation is awarded based on 21 factors chosen from Morgan Quitno’s new annual reference book, Education State Rankings, 2002-2003. These factors reflect a strong commitment to students and teachers, an emphasis on excellence in the classroom and support of safe, well-run public schools.”
I was born in Connecticut (#1), went to college and worked in Massachusetts (#7), to grad school in New York (#26) and spent the last 22 years in California (#29). At least my fall is decelerating. At this pace, I should be be hailing my Maker from Oklahoma.
Or maybe my cosmic purpose in life is to nudge my adopted state to the #1 spot. Works for me.
From Education Week comes an article by Robert Sternberg, one of my favorite educational psychologists. It gives order to some fuzzy thoughts I’ve been having lately.
“The road to teaching for wisdom is bound to be a rocky one. First, entrenched educational structures, whatever they may be, are difficult to change. Wisdom is not taught in schools. In general, it is not even discussed.”
True enough. I remember that David McClelland did some work on teaching for wisdom long ago. Sternberg’s at Yale and McClelland was at Harvard, and the latter got interested in this topic by contemplating the worth of a liberal arts education. The only trace of McClelland’s work I can find on the web is his 1981 book New Case for Liberal Arts. As for Sternberg, here’s a description of his grant studying wisdom. I also came upon an interesting overview of wisdom from a conference in the UK.
This would be an interesting new direction to take with WebQuests, I think. It would be a lot heavier on the quest part and only incidentally about the web. Hmmm.