Thursday, March 06, 2008

Educating kids: Some links


  • Steve Mirsky of Scientific American: This is Your Brain on Arts.

    A three-year, multi-institutional study finds that early training in performing arts is really good for the brain.

  • Ellen Gamerman in WSJ: What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

    Finland's teens score extraordinarily high on an international test. American educators are trying to figure out why.

  • Jennifer Medina in NYTimes: Next Question: Can Students Be Paid to Excel?

    School districts nationwide have seized on the idea that a key to improving schools is to pay for performance, whether through bonuses for teachers and principals, or rewards like cash prizes for students. New York City, with the largest public school system in the country, is in the forefront of this movement, with more than 200 schools experimenting with one incentive or another. In more than a dozen schools, students, teachers and principals are all eligible for extra money, based on students’ performance on standardized tests.

1 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    Rewards for performance is nice idea to some extent. In the same article, there is one important critic "children should be inspired to learn for knowledge’s sake, not to earn money, and question whether prizes will ultimately lift achievement"
    But, Rewards can be given to teachers so that teachers come with innovative teaching ideas. This can be implemented in India to strengthen the basic education.