Items to Share: 29 November 2015

Education Focus 

• How Much Learning Can Occur in Safe Spaces? | Foundation for Economic Education 

• Richard Feynman On Believing What Isn't True [farnamstreetblog.com] Feynman's famous address on Cargo Cult Science: much alluded to in relation to educational fads by Ben Goldacre and Tom Bennett. Well worth reading and sharing.

• Is it just me or is Sugata Mitra an irresponsible charlatan? | David Didau: The Learning Spy 'Maybe Mitra isn’t a charlatan and I’ve just not understood the power and beauty of his guesses about how best to teach children. But this is the real kicker: if I’m wrong, we’ll turn out children who can spell, and do mental arithmetic. We’ll share some of the most culturally rich ideas and produce children who don’t just know how to look things up, but that know what to look up and have the wit and background to make sense of what they look up. If Mitra’s wrong we’ll produce a generation of kids who can’t spell, who’ve learned that mental arithmetic is worthless and will be reduced to the very narrowest curriculum; that which they find directly relevant during the formative years. They’ll leave knowing nothing except that someone somewhere does know stuff and that it’s there’s for the asking. Except it isn’t.'

• The Future of Finance - Bloomberg View 'Review of John Kay's "Other People's Money". He wrote "Obliquity". This is about secondary institutions becoming ends in themselves—apply to education?

• PIXL: panacea or poison? | e=mc2andallthat 'A colleague described a recent visit to a highly successful science department that has drunk mighty deep of the PIXL well. I shall summarise some of her observations and comments below. My reactions varied from intrigued to puzzled to horrified,' (See http://www.pixl.org.uk/ for background.)

• This much I know about…the merits of students copying from the board | johntomsett Good argument, good comments—and a lovely poem.

Other Business

• Not Even Scientists Can Easily Explain P-values [fivethirtyeight.com]