"It is impossible to overestimate how important educational institutions are to society. We need to invest in them." -- Lord Ken Macdonald

The technology revolution continues to play a significant role in making it easier for students to think internationally in terms of their higher education options.  The Internet has made it simpler for students to research and apply to universities.  Interviews can be done by Skype.  At a time when President Obama has raised awareness for the rise in US college costs, American students are increasingly thinking international and seeking their degrees across the pond (in England) according to HESA.  Not only are there in many cases savings to be made in tuition fees, the top UK universities rival the best American ones in terms of prestige (see Times Higher Education World University Rankings and US News World’s Best Universities Rankings).  Putting aside finances and rankings, what price would you put on the cultural experience of studying in one of the oldest and most famous universities in the world?

“Architecture aims at Eternity,” said Sir Christopher Wren – astronomer, mathematician, the greatest architect of his age and an alumnus of Wadham College, University of Oxford.  One definitely gets the sense, when talking with other illustrious alumni of this institution, that it has been built and sustained to last for eternity.  Wadham College was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham in the reign of King James I.  Nicholas Wadham (a Somerset landowner) died in 1609, leaving his fortune to endow an Oxford college in the very capable hands of his 75 year old widow Dorothy.  This remarkable lady overcame numerous challenges to open the college within four years of her husband’s death and continued to support and sustain it until her own death in 1618.  The college only accepted men initially, but it went on to become one of the first colleges at Oxford to allow women as full members in 1974.

"Oxford now sets its own entry exams, that is, tests for individual subjects." -- Lord Ken Macdonald

On September 1, 2012, Lord Ken Macdonald, one of the UK’s top criminal lawyers and a former Director of Public Prosecutions, will commence as Warden (head of the college). Lord Macdonald was Director of Public Prosecutions for the UK from 2003 – 2008.  In 2007 he was knighted for services to the law.  In July 2010, he became a Liberal Democrat Peer and a member of the House of Lords, with the title Lord Macdonald of River Glaven QC.  He is a visiting Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Criminology at the University of Oxford.  I had the opportunity to chat with him about his international thinking for Wadham College, among other things.

What do you see as the most important contributions an Oxford education makes to the intellectual and character development of the individual?

Oxford is about education at a very high level.  Broadly speaking, entry is very competitive.  We’re looking to attract the brightest kids from the broadest possible backgrounds.  Once we understand our incoming students’ potential, we deliver a pretty intensive program of work designed around developing that potential fully.  We want them to be the best that they can be.  Right from the start of their careers as freshmen, our undergraduates are taught by college fellows who are world leaders in their field of interest, either one-to-one or in tutorial groups of two or three. So they are getting the benefit of very high level, personalised intellectual input from the start.  This approach to teaching is one of Oxford’s great strengths. Essentially, we want to provide an environment in which people can progress as far as they are capable of going.

"We want to provide an environment in which people can progress as far as they are capable of going." -- Lord Ken Macdonald

What are your views about standardized tests and the university admissions process?  How do you ensure you are getting the brightest kids out there for Wadham?

Let me give you my view of this from what I have seen at Wadham.  All the young people who enter Wadham from the UK will have done very well in their A Level examinations.  They will have achieved Grade A or A* in their subject areas.

Additionally, we have reverted to what used to happen thirty or forty years ago.  Oxford now sets its own entry exams, that is, tests for individual subjects.  For example, if a student wants to read English, the student has to take a specific test.  There are also special tests for Law, Politics and Philosophy, languages and so on.  The examinations are very good at assessing people’s potential as much as their past experience.  The tests include things that the students may have studied at A Level but there may also be questions that are well off the school syllabus.  Students will be expected to show some creativity when answering them.  That’s an important part of our assessment process.  The next part of our assessment process is that every candidate under consideration is interviewed.  They are interviewed by the world-renowned tutors who will be teaching them should they be accepted. I sat in on some interviews with students who wanted to study German as well as interviews for students who wanted to study Classics.  In each interview, the candidate was given a poem in English twenty minutes before he came in to see the tutor.  The tutor then asked him to deconstruct the poem and to critique it.  The process gives the tutor an opportunity to assess the student’s ability to think creatively and of course, under pressure.  It is a challenging process but it is designed to evaluate what a person may be capable of in the future as well as where that person is at the moment.

"Putting aside the challenges, I believe that technology is going to be at the heart of how education is delivered during the course of this century." -- Lord Ken Macdonald

I assume you want to attract students from anywhere in the world?  Those students are going to have studied different curricula in different education systems.  How will you assess those students?

Wadham is very relaxed about students coming from a different kind of education background.  That’s not a problem for us.  Let’s suppose you had a student coming from the United States.  Their school curriculum is going to be different from ours in the UK.  In the United States, students do not specialize in subject areas while in secondary school as they do in the UK, and so American students may not yet be at the level of those students coming from an English school.  That doesn’t necessarily trouble our fellows because they are looking for future potential as well as the good examination results that you will have received to date.

We have world-class universities in the UK and I think we see the rest of the world as a big opportunity in continuing to develop them. UK universities have as high proportion of international students as any other country in the world, and that is particularly true at Oxford.  For instance, Wadham accepts a group of students from Sarah Lawrence College in the US every year. This has been a very successful program.  I teach graduate classes at the London School of Economics and I would say 70% of my students are from outside the UK.  Wadham is one of the strongest colleges academically at Oxford and I am particularly keen that we increase the number of incoming students from North America because there is obviously so much talent in those countries.  Many of our foreign graduate students come from North America.  We also have many undergraduates from around the world, especially from China, Hong Kong, India and Europe.  Obviously, the larger the pool of bright students you have to select from, the higher the intellectual quality of your student body.

What’s your view on international assessments such as the IB?

I am quite keen on the International Baccalaureate and some schools in the UK have now introduced it.  I personally think A Levels are a little too specialized.  For example, my son is currently doing A Level English, History and French.  If he was doing the Baccalaureate, he’d be doing more subjects and I personally think that is better. UK academic institutions are very aware of the international marketplace.  A bright student applying from a North American school to Wadham will be assessed firstly in terms of the context of the education they have had to date and secondly in terms of the potential they show through the special Wadham assessment test and the interview.  We would not necessarily turn down a student because they were not at A Level standard in a particular subject. If we thought they were capable of getting up to speed and of thriving at Oxford, that would be sufficient and we would welcome them with open arms.

"What I want Wadham to be is a beacon for high academic achievement, for fairness in selection and for creating an international community." -- Lord Ken Macdonald

Technology presents opportunities and challenges. How do you view the role of technology and the Internet in higher education?

First of all, I believe the Internet is a fantastic resource for students.  Students now have information at their fingertips that I only dreamt of when I was a doing my A Levels.  I had two or three textbooks and what you could get out of the library.  So students now have fantastic resources.  Secondly however, this easy availability may present a risk, which is the temptation to get everything you need at the last minute — you may become over-reliant and get out of the habit of thinking for yourself. The third thing is the problem of plagiarism and that’s an issue all universities face.  We have to be vigilant. The internet, when properly used, is a fantastic resource for students.  Additionally, the ways in which students can communicate with each other, with their teachers, throughout the college and the world are brilliant.  Putting aside the challenges, I believe that technology is going to be at the heart of how education is delivered during the course of this century.

Picking up the reins in your new role as Warden of Wadham, any final thoughts you would like to add?

I think educational institutions are wonderful things.  They are capable of building communities, spreading knowledge, developing civilization – all of these important things.  It is impossible to overestimate how important educational institutions are to society.  We need to invest in them.  I don’t just mean in financial terms but in intellectual and emotional terms as well.  What I want Wadham to be is a beacon for high academic achievement, for fairness in selection and for creating an international community in which students, fellows, and graduates can come together in intellectual drive. I think the universities in Britain are absolutely integral to the way we British see ourselves.  They are important institutions and we need to nurture them.

More information on Oxford tuition costs for international students.

Lord Ken Macdonald and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of Wadham College, University of Oxford.

Thanks to HESA and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Professor Clay Christensen (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Andy Hargreaves (UK), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld

The post The Global Search for Education: International Thinking appeared first on Education News.

"We are thrilled that Penguin made the decision to embrace us because we believe we are now a significant part of the publishing industry." -- Kevin Weiss

Once upon a time, the power of an author was not solely dependent on the strength of her words to inspire the human spirit.   A conflict which made her talent powerless was the likelihood of discoverability.  Then along came a knight in shining armor called technology.  Technology innovated the way her words were written, produced, marketed and even enjoyed.  Perhaps most important of all, technology handed the author the power (should she choose) to control the destiny of her words.

Penguin (owned by the global media company, Pearson plc) is part of one the world’s big six traditional publishers.  Author Solutions Inc. is the world’s leading provider of self-publishing services (the company has published 190,000 books by 150,000 authors).  When Penguin embraced self-publishing by acquiring ASI this July, publishing industry experts scrambled to their technology platforms to debate what it all meant.  I asked Kevin Weiss, President and CEO of Author Solutions, to discuss the Penguin union and in particular, what it might mean for the power of an author.

"We build platforms for authors and we can build them at a lightning pace compared to the pace of a traditional publishing company. I think Penguin saw those services as important." -- Kevin Weiss

What brought Penguin and Author Solutions together?  What synergies were seen?

Traditional publishers have been watching the fast changing developments in the publishing landscape.  Four or five years ago self-publishing was a very dirty word.  I tell my staff that I could pick a fight on any street corner because of where I worked.  Today I can’t do that because self-publishing has gone mainstream.

The time was right for us to look for a new parent.  We are thrilled that Penguin made the decision to embrace us because we believe we are now a significant part of the publishing industry.  We don’t do what Penguin does in terms of curation and aggressive distribution of content.  However, we do things that they do not do.  We build platforms for authors and we can build them at a lightning pace compared to the pace of a traditional publishing company.  I think Penguin saw those services as important in terms of how their business model will transform moving forward.

Author Solutions sees the Penguin process as one we can continue to learn from.  For example, three years ago we made the decision to take our business model to traditional publishers such as Harlequin and Thomas Nelson.  Thomas Nelson embraced our model (in WestBow Press – a Christian self-publishing imprint) and it has been a very successful imprint for them.  Compared to our own self-publishing imprints such as AuthorHouse and iUniverse, partner imprints like Westbow Press give authors unique access to services not available on other imprints and the parent watches the titles for potential pick up. In fact, Westbow Press has had five titles picked up by traditional publishers and only three of them have been by Thomas Nelson. Based on that example and other successful imprint models, we believe that traditional publishing will continue to be a part of what we are doing.

"I think in the future the traditional publishers are going to become far more transparent with authors about what they can and cannot do." -- Kevin Weiss

The number of manuscript submissions to Penguin must run into 5 figures each year.  Only a small percentage of those submissions ever get published.  Did you see an opportunity to convert rejected authors into self-published authors? 

We are very careful not to redirect unsolicited manuscripts.  Over time we may have to think about whether there is a way to help authors with rejected manuscripts find another route to develop them.  Penguin has been trying to do something like that with Book Country (on-line writing community owned by Penguin). At Author Solutions, we are developing an early warning system for self-published authors that are doing well so that we can share that information with our parent. We will only do this for authors published by our owned and operated imprints. Our partner imprints will be off-limits to our parent.

Recently an author in the WestBow Press imprint got picked up by another traditional publisher – not Thomas Nelson. Regardless of who issues the contract, I think it’s a good thing for indie authors when they are discovered.

Author Solutions has a global network of POD printers and distributors.  You also have a great deal of expertise and resources in the digitization of books.  Did you see operational synergies here?

I think Penguin is moving into the POD business strategically with their backlist titles. I think our experience in this area will be beneficial to them.  We are currently one of the largest global companies in POD in terms of the number of books we handle.  We also have published more than 100,000 e-book titles so we believe our experience in digital will also be an asset. One other thing that is exciting to me is that we will have access to great in house designers at Penguin.  Our team is looking forward to learning from them.

When will print on demand reach cost parity with offset printing?

It is getting there.  HP just came out with some incredible new printers.  Costs are coming down dramatically.  I’m not sure if or when POD will reach cost parity with the bigger offset runs, but with shorter runs, we are not far away from being comparable to offset.

"I’m not sure if or when POD will reach cost parity with the bigger offset runs, but with shorter runs, we are not far away from being comparable to offset." -- Kevin Weiss

Would you say five years time?

I’d say maybe even less.

Once that happens would you agree the risk would be significantly lowered for authors who want to take the plunge and self-publish?

Yes, but of course there’s a tremendous amount of work that goes into making a successful book such as editing, cover and interior designs, and marketing and promotion.  I think in the future the traditional publishers are going to become far more transparent with authors about what they can and cannot do.  At that point it will be time for authors (especially up and coming authors) to understand how things work.  Instead of thinking they have a publishing contract so they don’t have to do anything, they will understand that from an economic standpoint, that just isn’t the case.

Author Solutions hopes to work with Penguin in the same way we work with our other traditional publishers.  We do a tremendous amount of data analytics in our business.  This enables us to see where books are being sold so that we can explore new opportunities for authors.  We hope we’ll be able to assist authors in terms of building their platforms through the services we offer. Once an author has built a large following, the publisher is able to make a greater investment in terms of marketing the author’s book.

Any new predictions on market share for physical books versus e-books going forward?

ASI has not seen a decline in our physical books in the retail channel.  We’ve seen a rapid growth in the units we have that are digital.  I know that traditional publishing has seen a lot of pressure on hard cover but at the same time e-books have grown.  What’s interesting to me is that although e-books are still growing, they now appear to be growing at a slower rate.  This is despite the fact that tablets continue to grow.  I don’t have a crystal ball so I can’t tell you at this point if e-books are going to be 30%, 40% or 50% of the market.

"We are developing an early warning system for self-published authors that are doing well so that we can share that information with our parent." -- Kevin Weiss

Why should an author publish for a fee when he/she can publish for free?

There are a lot of free services in the marketplace.  ASI has a free service (Booktango) and I think we’ve got one of the best platforms in free publishing.  The tools are fairly good in the marketplace for free publishing because they’re easy, the process is fast, it’s online, and so why would somebody spend $1500 to publish their book when they can do it for free?  The primary reason is our focus on quality.  We work with authors to make each book the best that it can be. We are there for authors 24x7x365.  We are a one-stop shop for all of the services needed to make your book successful in the marketplace. In the free publishing space, there is still work to be done to increase the depth and quality of the offerings.  We have years of book publishing experience and we are working to embed that experience in our Booktango offering, but one thing that we do offer are the highest royalties in the industry with the broadest distribution network of any of our competitors.   As I’ve said before, it’s the best time ever to be an author.  Authors are able to do a tremendous amount of research on the publishing process and make choices depending on the goals they want to achieve.

Will ASI be developing partnerships with other traditional publishers going forward?

During our discussions with Penguin, it was important to us that we were able to continue to expand our partnerships with other publishers.  Penguin was emphatic that we do this. I was an IBM sales rep when IBM announced the PC in 1981.  At that time, many believed that PC’s had no future as business tools.  We know now that not only did PC’s have a future, but the innovation and adjacent product lines that followed were unbelievable. In five years time, when people look back on what we’ve done with Penguin, I believe they’ll see this as a watershed moment – this will be the moment traditional publishers and Penguin in particular recognized that self-publishing is a real and a vital part of the industry.

Kevin Weiss and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of Penguin Group (a division of Pearson plc) and Author Solutions Inc.

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworl

The post How Will We Read? – The Power of an Author appeared first on Education News.

"I think our key strategy to engage students in learning is to have good teachers, those who understand their students, tailor teaching strategies according to their students’ profile, and make lessons interesting." -- Dr. Pak Tee Ng

Singapore is recognized globally as a high performing education system. Singapore students fared very well in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Out of 65 countries that took part in these tests, Singapore students ranked fifth in reading, second in mathematics and fourth in science. Singapore also had the second highest proportion (12.3%) of students who are top-level performers in all three domains.

How do teachers motivate students in the Singapore school system?  How do they level the playing field between rich and poor students?  How do they handle behavioral problems?   Are they obsessed with testing?

These are some of the questions I received from readers after the last Q and A we did on the Singapore education system in May.  This week we are honored to once again share the views of Dr. Pak Tee Ng on these questions. Dr. Pak Tee Ng is Associate Dean, Leadership Learning, Office of Graduate Studies and Professional Learning, and Head and Associate Professor, Policy and Leadership Studies Academic Group, at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Republic of Singapore.

What methods of motivation does the Singapore school system use to keep kids engaged in learning?

Student motivation in learning is a challenge in many education systems, including Singapore’s. We do not have a standardized way or a best practice of addressing this challenge. But I often ask educators to reflect: “How do we expect inspired learners if we do not have inspired teachers?”  I think our key strategy to engage students in learning is to have good teachers, those who understand their students, tailor teaching strategies according to their students’ profile, and make lessons interesting. I also think we need to challenge our mindsets regarding students’ motivation to learn.  Young children start off with a natural curiosity and willingness to learn. But many seem to have lost their motivation after some years of schooling, despite teachers’ motivational efforts.  Why?  Perhaps, we have gotten the wrong end of the stick. The challenge is not to find methods of developing their learning motivation. The challenge is not to extinguish it!  Educators should continuously cultivate and tap children’s innate interest in learning.  A different philosophy suggests different strategies!

"There was recently an increasing awareness of the importance of pre-school education in a child’s development and therefore an effort on the part of the government to improve the quality of pre-schools in Singapore." -- Dr. Pak Tee Ng

How does your education system nurture the theme of innovation? Can you share some examples from schools in Singapore that are already doing this?

In 2004, the Education Ministry launched an initiative called “Innovation and Enterprise” (I&E) to focus educators’ attention on the theme of innovation. However, we do not focus on innovation for the sake of innovation. Instead, it is a reminder to educators to allow our students to try new things and to use their enterprising spirit to undertake projects that can be beneficial to others. It is to encourage students to be intellectually curious about matters beyond textbooks or examinations, have the courage to live with ambiguity and to take calculated risks, and be passionate, persistent and resilient.  Moreover, I&E is a platform for values inculcation, as part of its aim is to help students develop a sense of teamwork and contribution to the community, grounded in a set of timeless values such as integrity, social responsibility and respect for others. In other words, we are developing character traits that will be helpful to our next generation, whether they become scientists, businessmen or public officers.

Each year, the Education Ministry organizes the MOE ExCEL Fest (ExCEL stands for Excellence through Continuous Enterprise & Learning), which is a platform to celebrate and share innovative practices in schools.  During the two-day event, various schools show their students’ innovations to other schools and the public.  Examples of student innovation for the 2012 festival ranged from mathematics games that were designed by pupils of Chua Chu Kang Primary School to complement the teaching and learning efforts by their teachers, to a prototype for an “Ultra Flu Relief Mask” comprising a disposable surgical mask with an inbuilt semi-permeable membrane that secretes a medication such as Vicks, by two students of Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School.

How do teachers and leaders in your school system handle behavioral issues?

Most behavioral issues (especially persistent ones) are symptoms that have deeper root causes.  Teachers and leaders in our schools handle students with behavioral problems by first trying to understand the deeper problems that these students face. They usually take a problem-solving and counseling approach to work out long-term solutions that can help these students grow in maturity.

In Singapore, the philosophy toward student discipline is that discipline is an educational process to develop students’ values and moral faculties. The aim of discipline is not to punish but to develop self-discipline in them.  But this does not mean that students can escape punishment for wrongdoing. However, educators recognize that meting out a punishment is not equal to solving the problem.

Singapore schools are allowed to cane students if necessary. This applies to boys only.  However, there are strict guidelines to determine the appropriateness of such punishment and clearly defined procedures for meting out the punishment.  It is one of the last courses of action rather than the first line of remedy. The caning may be administered only by the Principal or Vice-Principal, or by a specially designated and trained discipline teacher. Other teachers do not cane students. The parents of the errant student are informed of his misbehavior and punishment.

Prevention is better than cure. Our schools now teach students Social Emotional Learning, comprising 5 core competencies of self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship management, and responsible decision-making, so that they may acquire the skills, knowledge and dispositions to be mature and productive individuals who can manage themselves and relate well with others.

"If a school or school system continues to assess students in a way that is not relevant to the industries, that school or school system will become redundant." -- Dr. Pak Tee Ng

What are your thoughts on what many call an obsession with testing?  If there were less testing, wouldn’t teachers and educators be able to focus on a more holistic education?

The key word here is “obsession”.  Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with a test. With appropriate feedback and follow through, students can learn from a test. However, what many educators are concerned with now is an obsession by various stakeholders (including educators themselves) with testing and the test results. Such tests are not really motivated by learning but come with high stakes and consequences, real or perceived, related to one’s future paths.  The challenge is therefore to gradually increase the number of alternative pathways for students and widen the definition of success.  Testing can then indeed become a tool for learning, and not a driver for obsessive behaviors by stakeholders of education.  This of course is easier said than done.  I think holistic education does not refer to an education without test.  I think holistic education aims to help each person find identity, meaning, and purpose in life. Suitable levels and amount of testing, focused on learning, can play a positive role in it.

How in your view should 21st century students be assessed in a competitive world?

It is quite fashionable nowadays to say that 21^st century students should learn and be assessed in 21^st century skills.  However, beyond this broad statement, there does not seem to be an authoritative answer to what this assessment should look like in practice, taking into consideration contextual differences and the difficulties in accurately assessing certain types of learning.  But I think a model of 21^st century assessment will emerge in due course, not because of what we think it should be from a theoretical perspective, but because of changes driven by the increasing proximity between schools and industries.

I feel that in the future, education will be brought closer to working life and the industries.  The closer interaction between schools and industries will bring about a change in the way that students are assessed. If a school or school system continues to assess students in a way that is not relevant to the industries, that school or school system will become redundant.  On the other hand, if a school or school system assesses students in a way that is closely aligned to industrial needs, the qualifications given out by the school or school system will be sought after by various stakeholders.  Students who can demonstrate competence in such assessments will definitely find themselves needed by the world after they leave school.  Therefore I think 21^st century assessment is not a static picture but an evolving one, as schools and industries come more closely together.

"What has been done in Singapore to make education more equitable is to allow students access to educational pathways based on their merit and to give financial aid to poor but deserving students." -- Dr. Pak Tee Ng

How does your education system level the playing field between children from rich and poor families?

Children from rich families have more resources at their command compared with those from poor families, and the field is never completely level.  However, what has been done in Singapore to make education more equitable is to allow students access to educational pathways based on their merit (not on financial abilities), and to give financial aid or subsidies to poor but deserving students, so that they are not denied access to education because of financial difficulties.

For example, the Ministry of Education provides a Financial Assistance Scheme to needy Singapore citizen students so that all Singaporeans, regardless of their financial background, can benefit from education.  Under this scheme, needy students receive full waiver of school fees and miscellaneous fees, and receive free textbooks and school uniforms.  The government also provides a School Advisory Committees’ Fund to allow more targeted aid to students who need even more assistance.  Interestingly, there was recently an increasing awareness of the importance of pre-school education in a child’s development and therefore an effort on the part of the government to improve the quality of pre-schools in Singapore.  A government committee was immediately set up to examine the issue of removing barriers which prevented children from low-income families from attending pre-school.

Realistically, I think we will never be able to level the playing field completely. But, there are mechanisms to make it possible for a child from a poor family to overcome financial barriers to pursue education according to his or her potential.  Singapore is too small to afford wastage in human resources.

Dr. Pak Tee Ng and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of Dr. Pak Tee Ng.

In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Professor Clay Christensen (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld

The post The Global Search for Education: More from Singapore appeared first on Education News.

"How do we preserve some sense of Truth, Beauty and Goodness at a time we have so much change going on?" -- Howard Gardner. Photo by Megan Morr, Duke Photography

Truth, Beauty, Goodness – what do they mean to young and old in a 21^st century world experiencing dramatic technological and philosophical change?  A man who understands the difficulty in educating for the virtues in a challenging new age is perhaps better known around the world for his theory of multiple intelligences than for his decades of study of a topic which is arguably the most pertinent of our times.

I wondered how the theories and views expressed in Dr. Howard Gardner’s book, Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter, might apply to some of the egregious moral break-downs such as the sexual abuse, invasion of privacy, standardized test cheating and plagiarism scandals which have haunted some of our most respected institutions recently.  He agreed to discuss this with me.

Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. He has received honorary degrees from 26 colleges and universities. In 2005 and 2008, he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world.

What inspired you to write Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter?

I began as a psychologist.  When educators showed interest in my work, I began to reflect on my own educational vision. 15 years ago, I began working on a book called The Disciplined Mind.  In that book I argued that the purpose of education, beyond the acquisition of literacies, is to give us the tools to determine what’s true and what’s not, what’s beautiful and what’s not, and what’s good and what’s not.  To make it concrete, I used three examples.  For truth, I used the theory of evolution.  For beauty, I used the music of Mozart.  For goodness and badness, I used the Holocaust.  I was interested in how we could make use of our multiple intelligences to convey these very rich topics.

Critiques came from two different directions.  On the one hand, there were philosophical and epistemological critiques from postmodernism, which basically said; “Who are YOU to say what’s true?  Beauty is an old fashioned idea. Goodness is relative.” So I got a pretty severe postmodern critique.  The second critique came from the emerging technologies. At the time the book was written, no one had thought about the web, social networks, twitter, and virtual realities. And yet each of these inventions challenges traditional notions of truth, beauty, goodness. I realized I had to go back to the drawing boards.  If Truth, Beauty and Goodness are to be the backbone of education, I had to be able to respond to the philosophical critiques on the one hand and to the technological revolution on the other.  So that is what inspired me to write the book.

"Either you say this is the way things are and there is nothing more we can do OR you say this is the new world and we can do better." -- Howard Gardner. Photo by Jared Lazarus, Duke Photography

What is the principal message of Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed? 

The right question: How do we preserve some sense of Truth, Beauty and Goodness at a time we have so much change going on?

1.  With respect to truth, we need to understand the METHOD by which people make their assertions. What is the basis, what is the evidence, for truth claims?

2.  With respect to beauty, the canon is gone.  The good news is that we have access to all the works of art ever created and we can each form our own portfolio (physical, virtual or just in your head) of beauty.   These will be things that we find interesting and memorable, things we wish to revisit.  Our portfolio of beautiful things can be very diverse and it will also change over time.

3.  With respect to goodness:  When it comes to how you treat your neighbor, the answer is contained in the Ten Commandments. But when it comes to how you deal with people in a complex, division of labor, hyper connected world, we have to reinvent our relations to other people. In our study of good play (see goodworkproject.org) we ask how, in the 21^st century, we reinvent things like privacy, intellectual property, identity, trust-worthiness, and what it means to belong to a community.

Competition to succeed has become more intense than ever.  How do we balance competition in our lives? How might the views in your book apply to some of the standardized test cheating scandals that continue to make headlines?

In Truth, Beauty and Goodness, I recommend the creation of what I call “commons”.   Within schools (both physical and virtual) we need places where people can talk honestly about the problems that arise in our contemporary world with respect to the mission of that institution — for example a school, or a newspaper.

Consider, for example, how to use a commons when there is an epidemic of cheating.  We bring together parents, students and teachers, and it’s often a revelation.  For example, the parent might say, “You know you should not cheat.  I told you cheating was wrong.”  The child might reply, “Yes, but when I came home with a B you said I don’t want any more B’s.”  The child says to the teacher, “Sam and I told you that Johnny cheated but you did nothing about it.”  Or, “You wrote the same thing on all of our papers rather than reading each paper carefully.” And so you need to have very open conversations, skillfully moderated, leading to viable policies that are enforced.

An example discussed in the book.  Some years ago the Dean of Admissions at a major university had been fired because she had lied about her credentials.  In the group of 20 students I was working with, nobody endorsed the firing of the Dean.  Either the students said, “Well, if she was doing a good job, why fire her?”  Or they said, “Everybody lies on their resume.”

To answer your question, here are the simple choices.  Either you say this is the way things are and there is nothing more we can do OR you say this is the new world and we can do better.  We need vivid examples of good work, and vivid examples of the consequences of bad work — both for the bad worker and for the larger society.  When the head of a large bank in England recently got in trouble because of tinkering with the interest rates, he was forced to resign. If teachers or presidents of universities submit the work of others as their own, they should be fired.

"There need to be norms and rules that emerge from the discussions of the principal stakeholders in an organization." -- Howard Gardner. Photo courtesy of Harvard Graduate School of Education

You have said that “the odds of ascertaining the truth about something are better than ever…” Would this apply to the Murdoch hacking scandal?

There is a huge amount of information on the internet and there are many claims.  If somebody makes a claim, you have to ask what kind of evidence do they have?  If they have evidence, they are credible.  If they do not, you should ignore it.  Twenty or thirty years ago, there were only a few recognized media.  There were also things that journalists knew but that they did not publish.  That has all changed.  The delicious paradox of the Murdoch case is that he was using  technology tools to get information but now those technology tools are been used on him.

How do the views expressed in your book apply to some of the egregious moral break-downs within our most respected institutions such as the child abuse scandal at Penn State and the alleged abuse at the Horace Mann School in Riverdale?

My distinction between neighborhood morality and the ethics of roles is helpful here.  Abusing children is always wrong.  These are immoral acts that need to be identified and punished the way any violations of the Ten Commandments are.  Anybody who would defend pedophilia would be foolish.

The ethics of roles comes in when the question is raised about organizations that do credentialing of other professional organizations. On what basis can they remove either the individuals who work at those institutions (like a coach or a president) or the institution itself (removing its degree granting powers)?  How do you deal with a large institution in cases where a Dean lies about her credentials or the higher-ups ignore the reports of child abuse?  In my terms, those are ethical issues not moral issues. It is easier to deal with a situation if you already have an operating ethical code like the Hippocratic oath.

"When somebody violates a core principle, that person needs to be punished and that punishment needs to be known." -- Howard Gardner. Photo by Megan Morr, Duke Photography

When we create a culture that is highly competitive, i.e. success is based on results – are we setting ourselves up for some of the issues we’ve discussed today?

Absolutely.  When the word goes out that you are going to be judged by how much money you bring in, and in addition, someone is indicating “I’m not interested in how you are going to do it, just go for it!”, there is a problem.  If you see your life as a series of steps from an elite private school to an Ivy League School to Goldman Sachs or its equivalent, and you are going to keep blinders on from anything that might keep you from getting there, you are likely to end up in big trouble.  One of the things I say in my book is this:  If you want to be a journalist, the decision whether to work for NPR or for Fox is an incredibly important decision.

In the case of issues that institutions like News Corp, or Penn State or Horace Mann are facing today, I think the first question one needs to ask is: Is this damage control or does this require serious purging, rethinking, reinvention?  If it’s damage control, how we get better press releases, and what we do to correct the immediate problem, then I can predict the next crisis is at hand.

If we decide there is something seriously wrong with a community that could do this kind of thing, and that we need to reflect, rethink and perhaps rework what we do and how we do it, then there is some hope for serious change. And here is where the “commons” comes in.  There need to be norms and rules that emerge from the discussions of the principal stakeholders in an organization.  In a school, that may include the college admissions officer, the teachers, the parents and the students in the same room.   Policies must have “buy in” from all these groups.  One of the reasons some institutions don’t prosecute kids for cheating is that the parents threaten to sue.  The consequences have to be publically known and the stakeholders, including parents, have to support them.

When somebody violates a core principle, that person needs to be punished and that punishment needs to be known. As far as I know, in 375 years, Harvard has never fired a tenured professor for plagiarism. But today you can’t keep things secret anymore and that is what’s good.

How should we assess truth and goodness?

Someone in India took my work very literally and came up with a ten point scale for goodness. I responded.  Rather than quantifying, why don’t we just have an arrow instead?  If something looks healthy and ethical, we’ll let the arrow point up.  If it looks like it’s getting worse, we’ll let the arrow point down.  To me, that’s a far better way to think about the moral fiber of a place, and not 1 to 10.  I’d be happy if Goldman Sachs, Horace Mann, Penn State, or Harvard would install a commons with an arrow that could be reoriented in the center.

More information on Howard Gardner’s good work: The GoodWork Project

Howard Gardner and C. M. Rubin

In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Professor Clay Christensen (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.

The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld

The post The Global Search for Education: What is Good? appeared first on Education News.

Annelies Štrba - Nyima 438, 2009. Courtesy Annelies Štrba and Frith Street Gallery, London. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012.

Ever since Lewis Carroll gave the original manuscript of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland  to 10 year old Alice Liddell as an early Christmas gift in 1864, the visualization of the story has been an integral aspect of the work.  From the late 19^th century to the present day, visual artists around the world have found their own ways to reflect and portray the imaginative dreamlike world first discovered by an extremely curious and courageous little girl.  So what do Carroll’s “Alice” books mean to Germans young and old?

The Hamburger Kunsthalle is now presenting its own Alice in the Wonderland of Art exhibition, a considerably modified version of the Alice in Wonderland exhibits shown earlier this year at the Tate Liverpool (UK) and the MART Rovereto (Italy). The exhibit features many new works drawn from Hamburger Kunsthalle’s own collection as well as from other major international museums and private collections.  I asked the Curator of the exhibit, Dr. Annabelle Görgen-Lammers, to take me down the rabbit hole and talk me through the fantastic experience that visitors to the Hamburger Kunsthalle have in store.

Thorsten Brinkmann - Bertha von Schwarzflug mit Zahmesdunkel, 2010. Courtesy Galerie Mathias Günther. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012.

What do Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books mean to Germans young and old?

Most Germans seem to remember Carroll’s “Alice” from their childhood. Their parents have read it to them and they have read it to their children, or they have seen one of the multiple “Alice” films. Thus for most visitors, the first association with the exhibition is going back into their own childhood and rediscovering the childhood feelings and childhood questions. However, especially with the last popular film (by Tim Burton), “Alice” has become very popular with all people. Finally, with cult-films of the 1990s like Matrix referring to scenes from “Alice”, mid-life people started to rediscover the wide range of interpretations and different layers of the story. As “Alice” has become part of the collective memory worldwide, and this to a great degree based on the multiple films, we also placed an emphasis on film rooms with artistic interpretations of the story from the very first film (1903) onwards. We also added historical and recent popular theatre references – costumes and films – of productions our public in Germany remembers (e.g. a Robert Wilson show with music from Tom Waits).

What can visitors to the Hamburger Kunsthalle “Alice in the Wonderland of Art” exhibit expect to discover when they visit?

The broad range of media on show demonstrates the variety of approaches to this subject matter, and with a special mise-en-scene, the exhibition transforms itself into a striking visual wonderland. Visitors can thus expect to discover new information on the making and reception of the story and exhibits of the highest art-historical quality. In addition, they also can expect to dive emotionally and psychically into a wonderland themselves. They are confronted with very sensual art works, film rooms and whole room installations, in which their own bodies will seem to have shrunk together or expanded like Alice’s. With these corporal experiences they can start to understand in an emotional way all the metamorphoses Alice had to go through. They actually can experience what it is like to be confronted with repeated metamorphoses of the rooms, the language, the images, and their own bodies, and thus they can experience what it means to be confronted like Alice with the constant metamorphoses of your very self.

Pipilotti Rist - Das Zimmer, 1994. Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in Hamburger Bahnhof. © Courtesy Pipilotti Rist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Stefan Rohner.

What will make the Kunsthalle’s exhibit unique in contrast to the Mart and the Tate version?

The artistic reflections on the subject of Alice in Wonderland clearly show that hidden within this apparently simple children’s story is an intricate web of references to the history of ideas, principles of logic and philosophical concerns. At the same time it is a highly entertaining story that contains many absurd, alogical or nonsense elements, and it is also peppered with subtle wit and irony. The imaginative dream-like world of the narrative thus allows existential issues to be explored in a “playful way”. We took this “playful way” of experiencing highly philosophical questions “seriously”.  We took it as a model for our additions and remodeling of the exhibition. We added more than 20 additional artistic positions.  Amongst others, we added fascinating works of very well-known artists like Pipilotti Rist, Leonor Fini, and Sir John Tenniel. We added major works of well-known German artists such as Stephan Balkenhol, and room-installations of Stephan Huber, but we also included very playful, sensual works of unknown young artists such as an interactive installation of the Finnish artist Hanna Haaslahti. In addition, we arranged the exhibition in a completely new way. We quit the strict chronology and invented a course of metamorphoses that the visitor can experience himself. To help the public, which may not be completely clear anymore on the fascinating ideas and texts of the original book, we placed in every room one of the illustrations of John Tenniel, like a motto, introducing the specific topics and social or philosophical questions to which the artists displayed in the room refer.

Sir Peter Blake - Illustrationen für Through the Looking-Glass, 1970. Tate Collection. © Peter Blake 2002. VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012.

Can you tell us about some of the German artists and writers that have been inspired by Lewis Carroll’s works? Are any of these important artists or their works featured in the Kunsthalle exhibit?

We added a lot of important works by international as well as German artists such as Max Ernst, Richard Oelze, Thorsten Brinkmann, Stephan Balkenhol, and Stephan Huber. Stephan Huber’s room installation for example consists of a tiny, secret door through which all visitors have to pass, to encounter behind this a giant hat of more than 2 meters size, which finally speaks to you, citing experiences that Alice had.

Do you think Germans are aware of the story behind the story, i.e. that Alice Liddell was Carroll’s inspiration for the story and also that many of the characters in the book were inspired by her family and her environment?

I think after the visit to the exhibition, which includes a lot of material on Dodgson and the Liddell family, the visitor’s view on Alice is enriched on not only this point. As I have already experienced in the first weeks of the exhibition, this information is of great interest to the public who want to learn more about the historical background of this most imaginative story. Finally, we even have a photo by Dodgson of Alice Liddell as our main marketing motif and thus everyone dives into the wonderland by first getting to know the context of its creation.

Kiki Smith - Pool of Tears II (after Lewis Carroll), 2000. © Kiki Smith/Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc.

What does this exhibit mean to you?

I think it is a great chance for every visitor to rediscover himself and his own childhood dreams – the fears as well as the hopes, the fantastic as well as the cruel sides of growing up. Thus it is a chance to reflect on one’s own life, in addition to discovering fascinating and historically prominent artworks. In the two years preparation, I myself had the chance by diving back into the book again to completely fall in love again with the story, its wit, and its deep content. Even if Wonderland is cruel in some parts, Carroll showed us that humor is a way to solve things. It is a highly philosophical book, which can be read on different layers like the exhibition we created about it and out of its spirit.

What are some of your personal favorites in the exhibits?

As I am a specialist on surrealist art, I highly respect and value the reflection of the book by the surrealists, such as in Max Ernst’s “Alice from 1941”. But I also love the room installations allowing the spectator to become a playful participant and forcing him or her to reflect on his or her own identity. I highly appreciate the fascinating art films on Carroll’s inventions, such as Jan Svankmeier’s film, Jabberwocky, or Gary Hills’ Come on Petunia. But indeed, as in Wonderland, it is not the single encounter or one single work which puts things into question, it is the whole deliberately incoherent flow of the story and thus the totality of our reworked exhibition which is my favorite.

For more information on the Hamburger Kunsthalle “Alice” exhibit 

Dr. Annabelle Görgen-Lammers and C. M. Rubin

All photos are courtesy of the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

Alice Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld

The post Alice – In Germany appeared first on Education News.

“Ruskin's concern for art education applied to the development of the power of the hand and eye for everyone." -- Professor Robert Hewison

John Ruskin was probably the greatest British critic of art, culture and society of the nineteenth century, in addition to being an educator. He believed that art and the development of imagination were profoundly important to an individual’s education. Ruskin was Oxford University’s first Slade Professor of Fine Art. I recently had the pleasure to connect with Professor Robert Hewison after reading his illuminating book, Ruskin and Oxford: The Art of Education. “Ruskin believed that everyone had visual as well as verbal capacities that needed to be developed in order to become a complete human being, and that the apprehension of truth depended on the power of observation,” explained Hewison. “His concern for art education applied to the development of the power of the hand and eye for everyone, not just people who hoped to become professional artists.”

My curiosity to discover more about John Ruskin’s legacy found me outside the great doors of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art on Oxford’s High Street.  Would Ruskin recognize all the practices that went on there today, I wondered?  I had the pleasure of discussing this with Dr. Jason Gaiger, Head of the school today and a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

"Drawing and painting are not just about producing beautiful objects. They are also about learning to look, and to learn to look is to learn to understand." -- Dr. Jason Gaiger

Jason, would you say John Ruskin’s legacy is evident in the Ruskin School today?

Ruskin’s legacy is not evident in the way that is sometimes thought.  He has the historical status of being a great Victorian figure, so people sometimes think that the School is a very traditional center of painting and drawing techniques.  In fact, it is a contemporary art school.  Students here study everything from installation, performance, and video art to the latest multi-media technology.  But they also have a strong grounding in traditional art skills.  One of the things that makes the Ruskin distinctive is that it is now the only art school in the country where students still draw from the cadaver, made possible through the close connection with the School of Pathology here at the University of Oxford.  There are also life-drawing classes that are open to the students and to other members of the University.

Where does the school fit in under the larger University of Oxford umbrella?

The School was founded in 1871 and was originally housed in what is now the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology.  The students at that time would draw from the casts and the sculptures there.  For a long while, the School was not, perhaps, central to the main concerns of the University and it didn’t have degree awarding powers.  In 1974, it moved from the Ashmolean to the current site on the High Street.  In 1977 it was fully incorporated and the degree course was introduced, becoming a classified BFA honours degree in 1991. Equally importantly perhaps, all the students now have a college association.  That means although they study here at the Ruskin, they also belong to one of the colleges, whether it be Christ Church or St. Edmund Hall or one of the others.  Students here are being trained to be artists.  However, because they are studying at the University of Oxford, their experience is different from that of students at some of the London art schools who can sometimes be trapped in a fine-art bubble where they only encounter other art students.  Our students share college facilities with people who are studying a range of subjects across the University. Art is as much about ideas as it is about physical materials, and here at Oxford, students have direct access to a treasure house of ideas.  The University is an incredible source of knowledge that artists can draw on and allow to feed into their art practice.

"New technology is definitely on the rise and students are of course interested in the possibilities it opens up." -- Dr. Jason Gaiger

What are your thoughts on the amount of focus given to the arts in K through 12 in the UK?

What we find during the admissions process is that students who come straight from A level (secondary school) aren’t always ready to study art at degree level.  A school education is not usually enough and students generally need to do a foundation course after secondary school to bring them to the appropriate level.  There may be a few exceptions of incredibly gifted students or students who have received unusually good support in the secondary school they have come from.  An underlying question here is whether visual intelligence is valued in the same way as verbal intelligence in secondary schools.  The Ruskin is perhaps unusual in that, as well as a strong portfolio, students need to get the same high A level grades as for any other academic subject at Oxford; the same criteria apply whether you want to study fine art, medicine or law. At the Ruskin, 25% of the BFA degree is in the history and theory of art, which means that a substantial part of the program is academic as traditionally conceived. We tend to attract students who are both verbally and visually gifted.  But in the portfolio we’re really looking for potential.  I think that’s where we feel we are not given the support we would like from secondary schools.  Fine art teaching in secondary schools often takes the form of set projects.  All the pupils in a class are given the same specified tasks to complete with the result that the work they produce ends up looking rather similar. In other words, the students’ individuality has not been fully developed.  For this reason, we always interview candidates and ask the students to talk to us about the work they have produced.

"Ruskin believed that everyone had visual as well as verbal capacities that needed to be developed in order to become a complete human being." -- Professor Robert Hewison

What do you believe the role of the arts should be in education today?

It troubles me when the arts are treated as something supplementary or merely ancillary to the university’s core activities.  My own view is that the arts are just as intellectually rigorous, just as demanding and just as exacting in their standards of excellence as any other field of learning.  The students here at the Ruskin don’t feel they have any less standing than their peers working in other subject areas.  As I mentioned, there is a substantial academic component to the BFA degree involving the study of art history and theory, but the studio-based component of the degree has its own intellectual value.  Art does not have to rest upon the traditional methods of academic learning in order to justify itself as an independent mode of enquiry.  Perhaps the appropriate comparisons are not to be made with other humanities subjects. The sorts of activities that take place in the studio are quite dissimilar to the largely text-based research that takes place in the history faculty, for example. But there may be points of commonality with the forms of research that take place in science labs or among mathematicians. We need to recognize that there are many different forms of rigorous intellectual enquiry (like studio art) that don’t involve sitting down and writing essays.

One of the leading education systems in the world – Finland – is planning to increase the number of hours allocated to the arts in secondary education.  Does that surprise you?

It doesn’t surprise me.  There is a difference, of course, between the attempt to develop a more holistic approach to educational development at school level and the inevitable degree of specialization that takes place at university. By the time students come to Oxford, they have already elected to study a particular subject.  However, we encourage students not to isolate themselves in a specific discipline.  One of the advantages of the collegiate system is that it allows students to make connections across disciplinary boundaries and thus to acquire a much broader sense of what constitutes knowledge. I strongly endorse providing greater support for the arts at school level. Drawing and painting are not just about producing beautiful objects.  They are also about learning to look, and to learn to look is to learn to understand.

"The arts are just as intellectually rigorous, just as demanding and just as exacting in their standards of excellence as any other field of learning." -- Dr. Jason Gaiger

Technology has changed the arts enormously.  How do you view the benefits and the challenges of this change?

Here at the Ruskin there used to be a large print making department.  It was a slow, rather time-consuming process and the equipment took up a lot of space.  Today that process has been replaced in part by the use of computer imagery and digital software such as Photoshop, though print making still remains.  There is an element of organic evolution in this.  New technology is definitely on the rise and students are of course interested in the possibilities it opens up.  However, you still have to learn how to use the technology and even then the technology is not going to do the work for you. We encourage students to acquire the necessary skills to enable them to do what they want, but without becoming slavishly dependent on acquiring skills that aren’t deployed for some purpose. The world is full of people who are technically accomplished but this doesn’t suffice to turn them into artists.  Nonetheless, technical skills are indispensible. Let me give you an example. Someone may have the most wonderful ideas for building a large-scale sculpture, but unless she has learned how to construct it properly, perhaps through making a maquette, she does not yet know whether it will be sufficiently stable to carry its own weight.

For more information about the Ruskin School

Dr. Jason Gaiger and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.

In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Professor Clay Christensen (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.

The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld

The post The Global Search for Education: Art in Education appeared first on Education News.

“I mark this day with a white stone.” – Lewis Carroll

On a special day in the town where Lewis Carroll (aka Charles Dodgson) lived and wrote his famous fairy tale, where would an author dream of sharing her book? Where would an author want to show off her carefully selected outfit while browsing through hundreds of other books thoughtfully and tastefully displayed to complement her book event?  Where would an author expect to discover savvy booksellers while savoring the scent of freshly brewed coffee?  Where would an author get the chance to connect with another talented author, a Victorian historian, a Carrollian expert, a celebrated screenwriter, enthusiastic book fans…oh, and not to mention a rabbit and a dormouse?  Where else in the world but the wonderland that is Waterstones book shop in Oxford?

The name’s James.  James Daunt.

When I interviewed the charismatic Chief Executive of Waterstones in November of last year (see here), he had recently taken over the job of reorganizing the troubled chain.  We spent a fair amount of time talking about the difficulty for books to continue to compete with alternative forms of entertainment and for book shops such as Waterstones to remain vibrant and successful in a publishing age of disruptive innovation led by the new game changers on the endcap, Amazon and Apple.  “There is a clear dynamic within Amazon to dominate its markets,” commented Daunt.

Since that interview, this mover and shaker in the world of books has proved to be a bit of a game changer himself.   He changed the book chain’s name (Waterstone’s became Waterstones).  He changed the cornerstone of the book chain’s sales strategy by doing away with its renowned discount (three books for the price of two).

Do you know that expression, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”?  James does.  Unlike Barnes and Noble, which chose to take on Jeff Bezos with their multi-million dollar investment in the Nook, James felt his chain had neither the time nor expertise for that.  He recently announced a tie-up with Amazon in which Waterstones will stock Amazon’s Kindle plus offer free Wi-Fi so that customers can buy or download books in-store.  Daunt prefers to focus his efforts on improving the book shop experience for his customers – a special day out that would be memorable for both authors and readers.  To ensure that is the case, James Daunt is spending his multi-millions on sprucing up over 100 of Waterstones book shops with enhancements that include dedicated Kindle areas as well as Waterstones’ own brand of café and cakes. Ladies and gentlemen, coming soon to a Waterstones near you: Café W.

Now….. once the digital enemy has been let inside the wonderland that is Waterstones, which of the two strong brands will dominate?  Will Jeff be able to steal away James’ precious customers despite all those stimulating store improvements and knowledgable, helpful Waterstones staff, once those patrons are linked up to Amazon?  That depends a lot on us, the book customers.  Will we continue to support the places of recreation which we all grew up loving?  Will we seek out Waterstones special events and a chance to live a little, show off our finery, schmooze with new friends, meet talented people, sample a café, nibble a cake and at the end of it all, take home our personally signed copies for our deeply cherished bookshelf?  Alternatively, will we prefer to stay indoors and browse the internet, save several pennies, shop around in cumfy pyjamas, click on a mouse, download a file or wait a few days for the physical purchase to arrive in its functional little brown box?

Ever the optimist and always the romantic, I can’t help thinking that now Jeff and James are metaphorically under the covers together, meaning they must have schmoozed and figured out that jointly they represent the perfect world for writers and lovers of books.  Jeff has bragged about the fact that his bestselling authors smile when his company is their publisher.  Amazon authors are ecstatic about the number of customers Amazon can deliver without a lot of hard promotion work on the author’s part.

But authors, like customers, are complicated people.  Of course, we like to sell lots of books and make lots of money.  But I don’t know an author who doesn’t cherish a book signing in a lovely store to present her hard work to the enthusiastic people who come to meet her.  A day so special she would want to “mark it with a water stone.”

C. M. Rubin, Gaynor Arnold, Gabriella Rubin

Photos courtesy of Henmead Enterprises, Inc.

Alice Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld

The post Alice – Mark It With a Water Stone appeared first on Education News.

"When students own their learning, they feel responsible for it and motivated to do it." -- Michael Horn

Disrupt and Conquer! How far can technology go to ensuring no child gets left behind in school?   In America’s race to eliminate the domestic and international achievement gaps, when will blended learning models be effective enough to disrupt the existing mainstream classroom system?

In 2008,  Michael Horn and Clayton M. Christensen co-authored the book, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (McGraw-Hill).  Today, as Executive Director of the Innosight Institute, Horn leads a team which studies the innovative ways technology is already transforming America’s education system into one in which every student, whatever his/her learning needs, can realize his/her full potential. Heather Staker is a Senior Research Fellow for the Education Practice at Innosight Institute and the author of “The rise of K-12 blended learning: Profiles of emerging models.”

I asked Michael and Heather to share their insights on blended learning in this week’s edition of The Global Search for Education.

Heather, can you briefly describe the term, blended learning, and the 4 different types of models that serve as blended learning?

Blended learning is a formal education program that includes two components. The first is online delivery of content and instruction, where the students have at least some control over the time, place, path, and/or pace of their learning. The second is that the students also attend a supervised brick-and-mortar location.

Through our research, we are observing four main models. The Rotation model is any time students rotate on a fixed schedule between online learning and other modalities for any given course. In the Flex model, student schedules are more fluid and content and instruction are delivered primarily by the Internet. The Self-Blend model is any time students take one or more courses entirely online to supplement their traditional courses. The Enriched-Virtual model involves students dividing their time within each course between attending campus and learning remotely online.

"The Flex model also creates natural and potentially rich opportunities for students to interact with other students." -- Michael Horn

Michael, which of the 4 models do you believe is best?

None of the models is “the best” per se. At this point, different schools will be able to put in place different models depending on their distinct needs and capabilities. Long term, I am most intrigued by the Flex model and believe that a combination of it and the Self-Blend model will likely represent the ideal educational model. The reason is that it most naturally puts students first so that all students can personalize and own their learning, which should mean more motivated students and more effective learning for all. The Flex model also creates natural and potentially rich opportunities for students to interact with other students to engage in challenging projects based on each student’s needs while preserving and potentially strengthening activities such as fitness and the arts.

Can you give me a real life example of the Flex model?

One of the best examples I have seen of the flex model was in Morgan Hill, California.  This is a district south of San Jose where about a third of its students are Hispanic and I believe over a third of its students are on free-and-reduced price lunch.  The school is called the Silicon Valley Flex Academy – Grades 6 through 12.  As you walk into the school there are a couple of huge open spaces on either side where every student has his/her own office.  In this space, each student has his/her own computer. The students are encouraged to decorate their own space with things they like (in the same way an adult might decorate an office at work).  There are break out classrooms around the perimeter of the building.  Here teachers are getting the data on how the kids are doing.  Teachers can pull students into these break-out classrooms in very small groups.  The teacher is then able to focus on a student’s individual issues. The teacher’s job is totally different in this arrangement.  The fascinating thing was how much ownership the students have over their learning.  They all knew exactly what was expected of them the entire year.  They knew exactly how they were doing at any point.  Their job was to learn the material.  If they could get the work done during the school day there was no homework.  So it was up to the individual students to make those decisions.

"Because online learning allows for modularity, it can in theory customize learning for each student’s individual needs." -- Michael Horn

You say “the teacher’s job is totally different in this arrangement.”  Were teachers learning on the job? Did you see any challenges in terms of educating teachers to use the Flex model?

The teachers I spoke to explained that they had been trained to do lesson planning, lectures to large groups of students and classroom management — none of which they were now doing.  They explained that the adjustment was difficult. Training has not been built into the formal teacher training system for programs like this, and few are really thinking about it at the moment.  Now, the teacher is still doing teaching or tutoring when pulling students out into small groups for project-based work, but instead of this being determined by a pacing guide, this is now being determined by where the students are in their learning.  What was so interesting was that in this model, teachers were able to do the tutoring and value enrichment work that teachers really like to do but don’t always get time to do in a classroom.  One of the challenges the teachers mentioned was staying on top of scheduling.  How do you keep track when you have students at different places in the curriculum?  Those were tough decisions for teachers to make and they were, as you say, learning on the job.

What feedback did you get from the students in terms of being motivated to learn?

A number of students said to me: “Last night I was so bored.  It was a three-day weekend and I decided to jump on my computer and do some Math.”  So I said, “You decided to jump on during the weekend and do Math?” One student explained she thought it was fun to go on and get ahead a little bit.  When I asked them if they ever did that in their old school model, they replied, “Not a chance!” When students own their learning, they feel responsible for it and motivated to do it.  What they also appreciated was that the teacher was no longer there to “punish them” or “grade them down”.  Instead the teacher was there to help them reach their goal.  This is much more of an environment built around success and motivation versus failure.

"Several schools are already delivering highly customized blended-learning environments, and the results are promising." -- Heather Staker

How far can online learning in blended systems go towards leveling the playing field for different types of learners?

At the moment, it appears that the sky is the limit but we also don’t fully know. Because online learning allows for modularity, it can in theory customize learning for each student’s individual needs. However, we are just in the early days of leveraging this as well as leveraging the enormous amounts of data we can receive in real-time about how a student is doing, which should allow us to adapt our approaches in exciting ways also in real time for each child. Today we’ve grasped the power of online learning to individualize for students, particularly those struggling ones, along the dimension of pace. But we haven’t come close to grasping the power to vary the paths for students.

Heather, what do you believe is the effectiveness of a blended learning school versus a brick and mortal school and versus a school that uses some tech but is not blended?

By many measures, America’s traditional brick-and-mortar classroom model is failing. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2009 ranked U.S. students as 14th in reading, 25th in math, and 17th in science compared to students in other industrialized countries. One cause of this underperformance is that the system is inflexible. Students move through grade levels in standardized batches and monolithic curricula, regardless of how each child learns best. School leaders often think technology will help. They add bling with electronic whiteboards, iPads, and digital lesson plans, but none of these on its own transforms the factory structure. The attraction of blending online learning into schools is that online learning allows for modularity. It can customize around the learning pathway each student follows, who teaches them, and how fast they master each concept. Several schools are already delivering highly customized blended-learning environments, and the results are promising.

Michael, what challenges do you see with blended learning systems?

I think one challenge is executing it well.  I think the changing role of the teacher is profoundly challenging.  It is unfair that a huge percentage of what teachers have been taught is irrelevant in this learning environment.  The beauty of this system is that computers are able to do what computers do well.  Humans are freed up to do what humans do best.

I also think the assessment system that we have in place in schools is a problem for this learning system going forward.  Assessment needs to be based on where each individual child started and then grew to and finally ended up in a particular year, versus a snapshot once a year view of an entire school.

For more information on the Innosight Institute: http://www.innosightinstitute.org/

Michael Horn, C.M. Rubin, Heather Staker

Photos courtesy of Silicon Valley Flex Academy and Stern + Associates.

In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Professor Clay Christensen (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld

The post The Global Search for Education: More Technology Please! appeared first on Education News.

Scholarship ceremony at Peking University

During the course of a visit to Yale University, I had the pleasure of meeting up with Yale student Lun Pei Ng.

Lun Pei is a 1st year graduate student at Yale School of Public Health, concentrating in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. She graduated from Peking University Health Science Center as a medical student in 2011. Her interests lie in infectious disease control as well as health care management. As a Hong Kong resident, she is passionate about applying her knowledge in medicine and public health to promote health and wellness in Hong Kong and China after graduation.

I invited Lun Pei, with her China/US education perspectives, to contribute to this week’s edition of The Global Search for Education.

What did you find to be the best parts of your Chinese secondary school in your preparation to pursue your life goals?  What would you like to have seen more or less of?

We have a high standard for quantitative subjects like math, physics and chemistry. We go deeply into each question and try to understand the origin of the most important formulas before using it in different settings. These practices help us view problems in a more detailed and logical way, even for those who later pursue a career in arts. Moreover, since we go deeply into these subjects and students have the chance to participate in the Nationwide Olympic Games for Science (which requires knowledge comparable to university level), this overall approach is a good platform for students to see if they really have interest in these areas.

However, I think we could do more to integrate the things we learn into solving practical problems, for instance, using theories in physics and chemistry to explain real life problems and encourage students to think on their own.

Also, I think it would be better if we had fewer requirements of formula memorization, and were allowed to use calculators for complex calculations in tests. In this way, learning would be more efficient and more focus could be put on methods instead of results.

Graduation from Peking University

What are your views about standardized testing in high school? How much reliance should be placed upon it to measure the effectiveness of teachers and the capabilities of students?

Personally I think it’s fair to use a uniform system to test all students in a single subject, especially for a country with as big a population as China. The tests also serve as a guide for teachers to find where their emphasis should be.  Although the result for a single exam may not fully represent your capabilities, the long-term record does help explain the difference in students’ abilities. In terms of measuring the effectiveness of teachers, I think it’s somewhat useful if we look at the trend of the whole class instead of just comparing the mean score of different classes.

I think it is important for universities to set benchmarks for test scores for admission. But once a person passes the benchmark, more emphasis should be put into evaluating a person’s experience, and whether he/she would be a good fit for the field.

Based on your personal experience, how would you compare your first tier Chinese university experience at Peking University with your first tier university education in the US at Yale University?

Since I was studying medicine at Peking University and changed to Public Health at Yale, it’s not a direct comparison with regard to curricula. But based on my personal experience and information from my classmates, I think the courses at Yale are more practical and applicable to real life, and the curriculum content is updated much faster (e.g. new articles on the effectiveness of HPV vaccine were introduced while we were learning the topic). The homework, case studies and projects require a combination of different skills rather than text memorization, designed to give us the chance to apply theories to practice. Also, this provides a good platform for idea sharing and group assignments. I think my abilities in creative and critical thinking have significantly improved at Yale.

The courses are well connected to each other. More resources are given to the individual, e.g. everyone has an advisor to help answer academic questions and guide his career choices. Professors are very accessible and encourage different ideas from students. The program gives you the basic skills you need in your future work and helps you figure out what your real interest is.

Interaction among different schools and majors is highly encouraged; for example, there are joint courses provided to Public Health and Law School students, and you can select courses from different schools. One thing that impressed me a lot is the efficient use of different media tools (like email and facebook) in spreading academic news, and you can get almost all the information you need from the Internet.

However, I think sometimes the atmosphere of classes in the US is too loose and random. Students are encouraged to raise questions but in my opinion this is excessive. Students in China tend to think twice before raising a question. Maybe that’s due to the cultural difference but this actually helped improve the efficiency of a class.

Yale 2012 healthcare conference

What do you think can be done to better address the emotional well-being and intellectual potential of the individual, which appear to be suffering under current secondary school education systems in China?

First of all, I think professional career offices are needed in schools to help students figure out what their real interests are and provide more information on relevant programs in different universities. Students would have strong motivation to study if they realized the things they are learning were useful for their future goals, and maybe the learning process itself would be less stressful. Many high school students in China apply for a program in the university with little information about it.

Also, it’s important to gradually change the admission evaluation system for higher education in China to have a more comprehensive view of an applicant. This would include taking into account achievements in sports, arts and community service in addition to test scores. However, the system should be clearly communicated and documented to avoid being abused by some institutes or individuals. It may also be a good idea to put more weight on the test score of subjects related to the future interests of the applicant instead of just looking at the score as a simple result.

What advantages and disadvantages does a US university degree have compared with a Chinese university degree for a Chinese person?

If you plan to stay in the US, a US university degree would help you better adapt to the environment and culture, and also build up your network of contacts.

If you are planning to pursue your career in China, a degree in a Chinese university will give you a deeper understanding of the country’s political, economic, and other systems and a better network of contacts. Since there are increasing opportunities for Chinese students to study in the US today, if the university in US is not well known in China, people might think that you have chosen to study abroad only because you cannot get into a first tier university in China.

I think that in the first one or two years of university, you will gain knowledge in more areas in the US universities and then you can focus on one or two majors. In China, you will get involved in a specific area at the very beginning. So it may be good for people still searching for their interest to begin their journey in a university with a US like system, but if you already have a clear goal in mind, you may save some time studying in the Chinese universities (for instance, you can save 4-5 years to get a medical degree in China.)

Yale Repertory Theater

From a broader perspective, does your country’s definition of educational excellence take into account the quality of life of individuals and of society?

I think educational excellence has a different definition and emphasis for the different stages of education. Before university, more focus is placed on a student’s ability to get higher scores, which may lower the quality of an individual’s life since he may need to sacrifice his interests in the arts or social work to make room for study. The test result is the main concern in terms of educational excellence.

In higher education, the general perception of successful education is that what you learn will equip you to find a good job or get into a lucrative industry. I feel that the quality of life, which includes the balance between one’s interest and job pay, is a broader concept related to a society’s standard of success and not just educational excellence. In a developing country like China, the scale tilts to the side of payment.

The quality of society, in my opinion, must always be considered in educational excellence. If one can use his knowledge and creativity to better serve the community, help address social problems, and improve public health, this should be viewed as representative of an excellent educational system.

However, China’s definition of educational excellence has changed a lot and more attention is also placed on whether one is enjoying his job rather than just on his productivity. But still there’s a gap in the definition between secondary and higher-level education, which could be a barrier in preparing our future generations to achieve their goals.

Lun Pei Ng and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of Lun Pei Ng

In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Professor Clay Christensen (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld

The post The Global Search For Education: A Student’s View appeared first on Education News.

What was the relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell?

Let’s talk facts.

What was the relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell?

That is one of the first questions people asked my co-author and me during the process of publication and marketing of our factual pictorial biography, The Real Alice In Wonderland, based on our distant relative, Alice Liddell.  Critics of Lewis Carroll have claimed there was a darker side to the man who preferred the company of little girls to adults.  They have accused him of perverse desires.

The facts!  During his lifetime Lewis Carroll supported numerous charities with a focus on helping poor children and young women.  He believed passionately in the importance of educating girls beyond domestic duties.  The idea of abusing women or children disgusted him.

To write about Victorian times one needs to understand the rules relating to women and children in Victorian society.  It was not unusual for men like Lewis Carroll to have close platonic relationships with young girls like Alice.  It was not uncommon for young girls like Alice to be photographed scantily clad.  Carroll (a talented amateur photographer) did both these things, but first he asked permission of Alice’s parents and (perhaps even more important to Carroll) of Alice.   It was also not unusual for close platonic relationships to end at the age Victorian parents started looking for suitable husbands for their daughter.  Alice’s parents did not consider Carroll a prospective husband and so their friendship ended.

Throughout her life, Alice Liddell refers to Lewis Carroll as “the kindest friend a child could have.”  Had it been allowed to continue, could their friendship have gone on to become anything else?  It was without a doubt a very special friendship. It made Alice Liddell possibly the greatest inspiration of all time as a character behind a children’s book, but not before she made the brilliant, eccentric Carroll the most famous children’s author of all time.  Our conclusion to the question?  The relationship between Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll will continue to fascinate and inspire writers (as it has since the book’s first publication nearly 150 years ago) to create all kinds of new fiction.

The latest fictional work inspired by this friendship is called After Such Kindness, by the talented author Gaynor Arnold (Booker Prize and Orange prize nominee for her fictional treatment of Charles Dickens’ marriage in Girl In a Blue Dress).  Writer, Oxford scholar and photographer, John Jameson, visits the home of his friend, Daniel Baxter, and is entranced with Baxter’s youngest daughter – Daisy. Jameson charms her with his wit and child-like imagination, teasing her with riddles and inventing humorous stories as they enjoy afternoons alone by the river and in his rooms. Years later the impact of this friendship is brought to light when Daisy, unsettled in her marriage, rediscovers her childhood diaries in an old toy chest.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Gaynor Arnold.

After Such Kindness by Gaynor Arnold and The Real Alice in Wonderland by C. M. Rubin with Gabriella Rose Rubin

What inspired you to write your novel, After Such Kindness?

A chance encounter with something written about Lewis Carroll (no idea what) made me wonder what it would be like to write about the Alice/Dodgson relationship from the point of view of the child. The novel expanded away from that, but I think that was the starting point.

Why do you believe the relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell is still so controversial today?

In our post-Freudian world, such an adult/child relationship is fraught with sinister connotations, especially in connection with the nude photography of little girls. It is hard for us to see this as innocent on his part; at worst it smacks of grooming for sexual abuse, and at best it seems to reveal an unhealthy obsession with the pre-pubescent body.

How do you see the actual Carroll – Liddell relationship?

From the point of view of the historical Alice, it seems to have been a pleasant interlude of childhood with an amusing uncle figure. From the point of view of Charles Dodgson, I think it was much the same: an opportunity to do what he liked best – to retreat into a childish world of puns and poems and where he could have fun with the contradictions of Victorian Society.  What it meant to him in his own heart, I can’t say. It doesn’t seem to have been an exclusive relationship, though, as he went on to have many more ‘child friends’. Alice is iconic because she was one of the first (if not the first) child-friend and because the story which bears her name was written with her in mind.

In your fictional take, how do you portray the character of John Jameson?

I certainly see him as a man of contradictions: an innate conservative with a rebel streak; a prissy moralist with a taste for the theatre; and a strictly religious man who is trying to come to terms with the great challenges of Darwinian science. Above all I see him as a man who is aesthetically and intellectually advanced but emotionally immature, bedeviled by sexual feelings he cannot acknowledge.

How do you portray the character of Daisy the child and Margaret the adult?

Daisy Baxter has a very different life from Alice Liddell, and the grown-up Margaret owes nothing at all to the historical Alice. I wanted to take from the Carroll books the perplexing notions of what is real and what, a dream; how we tell who we are and who we are not; whether we are mad or sane – and apply them to Margaret’s attempts to make sense of the past.

How do you see the personal relationship between John Jameson and Daisy (from both perspectives)?

I see it as something that was important – even seminal – for both of them. I see it as a relationship of love, even if it is of a very peculiar kind. Daisy finds solace in John when her family life falls apart and she loses the person she loves most. He finds a delight in her character and her physical presence, which takes him almost to ecstasy.

The authors will be discussing their books at Waterstone's in Oxford on Alice's Day, July 7

What similarities do you see between the Jameson/Daisy relationship and the Dodgson/Liddell relationship?

Only the setting in the Oxford of the 1860’s and the fact that there was a similar befriending in both cases. And that a child’s story came out of it – a story whose contents I use to color my own novel.

What was your inspiration for the character of Daniel Baxter?  Is Daniel modeled on Henry Liddell in any respect?

No. Daisy’s family is not the Liddell family in any respect, except that Daisy has two older sisters. I had some aspects of Charles Kingsley in mind when I wrote the character of Baxter, although again he is not based on the historical Kingsley.

How do you portray the relationship between Daisy and her parents, Daniel and Evelina Baxter?

This is an area which is completely fictional, but grows out of the manners and morality that Carroll satirizes so well in “Alice” – the fact that children were ‘seen and not heard’ and that no one attempted to explain things to them, even when those things had a devastating effect on their lives. But I suggest another current running along under the apparently happy family life. Religious doubts and sexual frustration stalk the Baxter household and Daisy is the unwitting cause and battleground for her parents’ quarrels over John Jameson.

Describe how you portray the relationship between Daniel and Evelina Baxter?

I thought it would be interesting to go against the grain of what we think about prudish Victorian sexuality, especially amongst middle-class churchgoers. I based some of the relationship of Daniel and Evelina on the very frank and erotic letters the young Charles Kingsley wrote to his wife-to-be.

Finally, do you think many Carroll historians or Alice in Wonderland fans will be disturbed by your story albeit fictional?

I daresay there will be some who don’t understand – or don’t like – the use of historical figures in fiction, and will be annoyed by any departure from the known facts or any imagined slur on Dodgson’s name. But I feel my portrayal of John Jameson is essentially sympathetic, and that of Daisy even more so. One of the reasons that I have given them different names and altered their backgrounds is because I am not making any attempt to pretend these people are Lewis Carroll or Alice Liddell. Indeed, anyone who knows anything about Carroll or the Liddells will realize that. Instead, I’m just speculating about a similar child/adult situation and how it looks from our standpoint today.

Gaynor Arnold (After Such Kindness, Tindal Street Press, July 5, 2012), and C. M. and Gabriella Rubin (The Real Alice in Wonderland) will be discussing and signing copies of their respective books on Alice’s Day, July 7, 2012 at Waterstones bookstore in Oxford.  For more information:  http://www.storymuseum.org.uk/the-story-museum/alice/Alice2012/waterstones-2

Gaynor Arnold and C. M. Rubin

Photos courtesy of Waterstones, Gaynor Arnold, and Henmead Enterprises, Inc.

Alice Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld

The post Alice – True or Not True? appeared first on Education News.