Should it be more difficult to get into education programs?

The following excerpt comes from a piece by Amanda Ripley at "Slate" that suggests making it more difficult to get into an education program will greatly improve education.  To read the entire piece, click here.

"So far this month in education news, a California court has decimated rigid job protections for teachers, and Oklahoma’s governor has abolished the most rigorous learning standards that state has ever had. Back and forth we go in America’s exhausting tug-of-war over schools—local versus federal control, union versus management, us versus them.

But something else is happening, too. Something that hasn’t made many headlines but has the potential to finally revolutionize education in ways these nasty feuds never will."

Recess is back

Every schoolchild who’s ever squirmed in his seat, anxious for recess to arrive, can sympathize with students in Chicago. This year, many public schools in that city are scheduled to have recess for the first time in three decades. Chicago’s long recess drought isn’t unusual. Even before No Child Left Behind, recess was an endangered species. Since NCLB, every minute of the school day has been scrutinized for its instructional value—and recess, a break from instruction, often didn’t survive the scrutiny. It was, by definition, a waste of time. (Nicholas Day at Slate)

A town becomes a library

The Austrian city of Klagenfurt lacked a main public library. So it turned itself into one.

An initiative called Project Ingeborg has placed 70 stickers equipped with QR codes and NFC chips in various locations around the town, Engadget reports. When you hold your smartphone up to one, it sends your browser to a website where you can download a free literary classic via Project Gutenberg or a similar public-domain service.

Here's the cool part: In many cases, the book is relevant to the location where you can download it. So, according to the Project Ingeborg website, you can download a famous play about a man's quest for salvation near the Cathedral, or a short story called "The Murderer" near the police station. And there are plans to expand the project beyond books, to include reference information, music, and works of art. (Will Oremus at Slate)

Designs

Today Slate launches a crowdsourcing project on the 21st-century classroom. In this "Hive," we’re seeking to collect your best ideas for transforming the American school. We’re asking you to describe or even design the classroom for today, a fifth-grade classroom that takes advantage of all that we have learned since Laura Ingalls’ day about teaching, learning, and technology--and what you think we have yet to learn. We will publish all your ideas on Slate; your fellow readers will vote and comment on their favorites; expert judges will select the ideas they like best, and, in about a month, we will pick a winner. (Linda Perlstein at Slate magazine)