Video for International Education Week

Before we move on from the topic of internationalizing education, I wanted to post this video and get people’s feedback on it. This video was made by the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, last November to recognize International Education Week. However, in the video he seems to speak more about sports and Title 9 than anything else. There’s been quite a bit of debate among those involved in international education programs about what this means. Is he sending a signal that he doesn’t care about international education at all? Is he saying move over all other programs and make room for sports, that’s how we’re going to address all of our education needs? Is Title 6 doomed? (Title 6 provides funding for a lot of international and foreign language education initiatives in the US ED.) My first thought was that he just made a mistake: An aide may have written that he should talk about “Title 6” and he misread it be “Title 9.” However, a professor I work with believes he’s saying that given our current budget crisis, his priority with regard to programs worth saving will be programs related to sports.  

I’m interested to know what others think. Do you think we’re over-reacting? What do you think this means for the future of initiative like the ones we’ve been reading about for class?

It's just a three minute video. Please take a look and let me know what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrGbUmnfb58

 

Week 7 - Group grades revisited - On facebook!

The following just appeared on my facebook page. (I've copied everything below exactly as it was posted including the picture and the suggestion to share at the end.) Interesting that the author never asks what I consider the most important question of all when it comes planning assessment for a class: What is the purpose of the assessment? I guess the story has some value as a good example of false parallelism. Also, I don't know if this story is true or fictional, but it will be interesting to see how we fare compared to this class.




An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on) These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Can you think of a reason for not sharing this?
Neither could I.