Education – Page 12 – artdiamondblog.com

“Hamilton Constantly Educated Himself”

(p. 110) During the winter encampments, Hamilton constantly educated himself, as if equipping his mind for the larger tasks ahead. “Force of intellect and force of will were the sources of his success,” Henry Cabot Lodge later wrote. From his days as an artillery captain, Hamilton had kept a pay book with blank pages in the back; while on Washington’s staff, he filled up 112 pages with notes from his extracurricular reading. Hamilton fit the type of the self-improving autodidact, employing all his spare time to better himself. He aspired to the eighteenth-century aristocratic ideal of the versatile man conversant in every area of knowledge. Thanks to his pay book we know that he read a considerable amount of philosophy, including Bacon, Hobbes, Montaigne, and Cicero. He also perused histories of Greece, Prussia, and France.

Source:
Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

Hamilton Was an Autodidact

Others who might be considered autodidacts include Andrew Carnegie, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Guglielomo Marconi. When the self-taught can achieve so much, it raises the question of whether we over-emphasize formal education? (Chernow also mentions Hamilton being an autodidact on pages 110, 206, and 682.)

(p. 42) Hamilton’s early itinerary in America closely mirrored the connections of Hugh Knox. Through Knox, he came to know two of New York’s most eminent Presbyterian clergymen: Knox’s old mentor, Dr. John Rodgers– an imposing figure who strutted grandly down Wall Street en route to church, grasping a gold-headed cane and nodding to well-wishers–and the Reverend John M. Mason, whose son would end up attempting an authorized biography of Hamilton. Through another batch of Knox introductory letters, Hamilton ended up studying at a well-regarded preparatory school across the Hudson River, the Elizabethtown Academy. Like all autodidacts, Hamilton had some glaring deficiencies to correct and required cram courses in Latin, Greek, and advanced math to qualify for college.

Source:
Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

Conscientiousness and Openness Matter More than Intelligence

(p. 2) In a 2014 paper, the Australian psychology professor Arthur E. Poropat cites research showing that both conscientiousness (which he defines as a tendency to be “diligent, dutiful and hardworking”) and openness (characterized by qualities like creativity and curiosity) are more highly correlated with student performance than intelligence is. And, he notes, ratings of students’ personalities by outside observers — teachers, for instance — are even more strongly linked with academic success than the way students rate themselves. The strength of the personality-performance link is good news, he writes, because “personality has been demonstrated to change over time to a far greater extent than intelligence.”

For the full commentary, see:
ANNA NORTH. “Should Schools Teach Personality?” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., JANUARY 11, 2015): 2.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JANUARY 10, 2015.)

Relevant articles by Poropat are:
Poropat, Arthur E. “A Meta-Analysis of the Five-Factor Model of Personality and Academic Performance.” Psychological Bulletin 135, no. 2 (March 2009): 322-38.
Poropat, Arthur E. “Other-Rated Personality and Academic Performance: Evidence and Implications.” Learning and Individual Differences 34 (August 2014): 24-32.

Marxist Chinese Education Minister Bans “Western Values” from Textbooks and Lectures

(p. D8) This week [the week starting Sun. January 25, 2015], China’s ideological drive against Western liberal ideas broadened to take in a new target: foreign textbooks.
Meeting in Beijing with the leaders of several prominent universities, Education Minister Yuan Guiren laid out new rules restricting the use of Western textbooks and banning those sowing “Western values.”
“Strengthen management of the use of original Western teaching materials,” Mr. Yuan said at a meeting with university officials, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. “By no means allow teaching materials that disseminate Western values in our classrooms.”
The strictures on textbooks are the latest of a succession of measures to strengthen the Communist Party’s control of intellectual life and eradicate avenues for spreading ideas about rule of law, liberal democracy and civil society that it regards as dangerous contagions, which could undermine its hold on power.
On Jan. 19, the leadership issued guidelines demanding that universities make a priority of ideological loyalty to the party, Marxism and Mr. Xi’s ideas.
Mr. Yuan’s message this week spelled out how universities should do that.
“Never allow statements that attack and slander party leaders and malign socialism to be heard in classrooms,” he said, according to the Xinhua report. “Never allow teachers to grumble and vent in the classroom, passing on their unhealthy emotions to students.”

For the full story, see:
CHRIS BUCKLEY. “China Warns Against ‘Western Values’ in Imported Textbooks.” The New York Times (Sat., JAN. 31, 2015): A9.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed words, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 30, 2015.)

When Asked What He Took in College, Tackle Frank Hanley Replied: “Baths!”

(p. A9) College football fans have a tendency to view the unsavory aspects of the game as a modern phenomenon. Dave Revsine’s “The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation” knocks this myth flat in its first few pages. The book is a stirring survey of malfeasance, meticulously documented and brought to life by Mr. Revsine, a former ESPN anchor who is now a host for the Big Ten Network. Excessive violence? Yup. Eligibility scams? Sure. Wanton profiteering? You bet.
. . .
In the fervent pursuit of ticket sales and publicity, schools routinely recruited players whom they made little pretense about educating. The hulking Notre Dame tackle Frank Hanley, asked by Harper’s Weekly what he took at college, offered this cheerful rejoinder: “Baths!”
. . .
Yet for the devoted fan “The Opening Kickoff” is a first-class account of football’s turbulent origins, one that helps explain how a collision sport became the most conspicuous part of American higher education and a de facto developmental league for the pros in which unpaid “student-athletes” generate billions of dollars of revenue.
The marriage of academics and athletics, Mr. Revsine ruefully reminds us, was never going to be especially innocent. As Harvard President Charles Eliot put it back in 1905, “Deaths and injuries are not the strongest argument against football. That cheating and brutality are profitable is the main evil.”

For the full review, see:
STEVE ALMOND. “BOOKSHELF; Collegiate Collisions; The hulking Notre Dame tackle Frank Hanley, asked what he took at college, offered this cheerful rejoinder: ‘Baths!’.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Aug. 27, 2014): C5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 26, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Bookshelf: ‘The Opening Kickoff’ by Dave Revsine; The hulking Notre Dame tackle Frank Hanley, asked what he took at college, offered this cheerful rejoinder: ‘Baths!’.”)

The book under review is:
Revsine, Dave. The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2014.

How “the Credentials Arms-Race” Now “Defines Young Adulthood”

(p. A11) . . . “Excellent Sheep” is a cri de coeur against the credentials arms-race that now defines young adulthood–and even childhood–for many Americans. But you don’t have to take his word for it: The book features interviews and correspondence with students and recent graduates of elite institutions. Beyond their glowing transcripts and the fact that they have become “accomplished adult-wranglers,” these students are anxious, depressed and searching for some deeper meaning in their lives. “For many students, rising to the absolute top means being consumed by the system. I’ve seen my peers sacrifice health, relationships, exploration, activities that can’t be quantified and are essential for developing souls and hearts, for grades and resume building,” one Stanford student told the author. A Yalie put it more succinctly: “I might be miserable, but were I not miserable, I wouldn’t be at Yale.”

For the full review, see:
EMILY ESFAHANI SMITH. “BOOKSHELF; The Credentials Arms-Race; Students sacrifice all to grades and resume building–‘I might be miserable,’ a Yalie noted, ‘but were I not miserable, I wouldn’t be at Yale.’.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Aug. 21, 2014): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 20, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite’ by William Deresiewicz; Students sacrifice all to grades and resume building–‘I might be miserable,’ a Yalie noted, ‘but were I not miserable, I wouldn’t be at Yale.’.”)

The book under review is:
Deresiewicz, William. Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. New York, NY: Free Press, 2014.

Apprenticeships as an Alternative to Education Credentials

(p. R3) College degrees and internships don’t produce the same quality of worker as intensive, on-the-job apprenticeships, says Brad Neese, director of Apprenticeship Carolina, a program of the South Carolina Technical College System. Employers are seeing “a real lack of applicability in terms of skill level” from college graduates, Mr. Neese says. “Interns do grunt work, generally.” In contrast, he says, “an apprenticeship is a real job.”
. . .
“The apprenticeship model helps us show people there’s a career path within this company,” says Robby Hill, owner of HillSouth, a Florence, S.C., technology consulting firm taking advantage of South Carolina’s on-the-job training program. New employees see the opportunities ahead, along with a clearly delineated ladder of skill acquisition and salary increases, says Mr. Hill, whose 22-person firm offers apprenticeships for IT and administrative-support employees. The company also asks employees to sign noncompete agreements as they get accredited for new skills.

For the full story, see:
LAUREN WEBER. “JOURNAL REPORTS: LEADERSHIP IN HR; Here’s One Way to Solve the Skills Gap. Apprenticeships Can Help Give Companies the Employees They Need. So Why Aren’t There More of Them.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., April 28, 2014): R3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 27, 2014, and has the title “JOURNAL REPORTS: LEADERSHIP; Apprenticeships Help Close the Skills Gap. So Why Are They in Decline? Some States Try Extending the Practice to More Professions.”)

Future Pope Showed an Interest in the “Higher Forms of Piracy”

(p. 158) A decade older than his apostolic secretary Poggio, Baldassare Cossa had been born on the small volcanic island of Procida, near Naples. His noble family held the island as its personal possession, the hidden coves and well-defended fortress evidently well suited to the principal family occupation, piracy. The occupation was a dangerous one: two of his brothers were eventually captured and condemned to death. Their sentence was commuted, after much pulling of strings, to imprisonment. It was said by his enemies that the young Cossa participated in the family business, owed to it his lifelong habit of wakefulness at night, and learned from it his basic assumptions about the world.
Procida was far too small a stage for Baldassare’s talents. Energetic and astute, he early displayed an interest in what we might call higher forms of piracy. He studied jurisprudence at the University of Bologna–in Italy it was legal studies rather than theology that best prepared one for a career in the Church–where he obtained doctorates in both civil and canon law. At his graduation ceremony, a colorful affair in which the successful candidate was conducted in triumph through the town, Cossa was asked what he was going to do now. He answered,” To be Pope.”

Source:
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

Harvard Rejects Christensen’s Advice to Try Disruptive MOOCs

“Harvard Business School faced a choice between different models of online instruction. Prof. Michael Porter favored the development of online courses that would reflect the school’s existing strategy.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 1) Universities across the country are wrestling with the same question — call it the educator’s quandary — of whether to plunge into the rapidly growing realm of online teaching, at the risk of devaluing the on-campus education for which students pay tens of thousands of dollars, or to stand pat at the risk of being left behind.

At Harvard Business School, the pros and cons of the argument were personified by two of its most famous faculty members. For Michael Porter, widely considered the father of modern business strategy, the answer is yes — create online courses, but not in a way that undermines the school’s existing strategy. “A company must stay the course,” Professor Porter has written, “even in times of upheaval, while constantly improving and extending its distinctive positioning.”
For Clayton Christensen, whose 1997 book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” propelled him to academic stardom, the only way that market leaders like Harvard (p. 4) Business School survive “disruptive innovation” is by disrupting their existing businesses themselves. This is arguably what rival business schools like Stanford and the Wharton School have been doing by having professors stand in front of cameras and teach MOOCs, or massive open online courses, free of charge to anyone, anywhere in the world. For a modest investment by the school — about $20,000 to $30,000 a course — a professor can reach a million students, says Karl Ulrich, vice dean for innovation at Wharton, part of the University of Pennsylvania.
“Do it cheap and simple,” Professor Christensen says. “Get it out there.”
But Harvard Business School’s online education program is not cheap, simple, or open. It could be said that the school opted for the Porter theory.
. . .
“Harvard is going to make a lot of money,” Mr. Ulrich predicted. “They will sell a lot of seats at those courses. But those seats are very carefully designed to be off to the side. It’s designed to be not at all threatening to what they’re doing at the core of the business school.”
Exactly, warned Professor Christensen, who said he was not consulted about the project. “What they’re doing is, in my language, a sustaining innovation,” akin to Kodak introducing better film, circa 2005. “It’s not truly disruptive.”
. . .
One morning, [Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria] sat down for one of his regular breakfasts with students. “Three of them had just been in Clay’s course,” which had included a case study on the future of Harvard Business School, Mr. Nohria said. “So I asked them, ‘What was the debate like, and how would you think about this?’ They, too, split very deeply.”
Some took Professor Christensen’s view that the school was a potential Blockbuster Video: a high-cost incumbent — students put the total cost of the two-year M.B.A. at around $100,0000 — that would be upended by cheaper technology if it didn’t act quickly to make its own model obsolete. At least one suggested putting the entire first-year curriculum online.
Others weren’t so sure. ” ‘This disruption is going to happen,’ ” is how Mr. Nohria described their thinking, ” ‘but it’s going to happen to a very different segment of business education, not to us.’ ” The power of Harvard’s brand, networking opportunities and classroom experience would protect it from the fate of second- and third-tier schools, a view that even Professor Christensen endorses — up to a point.
“We’re at the very high end of the market, and disruption always hits the high end last,” said Professor Christensen, who recently predicted that half of the United States’ universities could face bankruptcy within 15 years.

For the full story, see:
JERRY USEEM. “B-School, Disrupted.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., June 1, 2014): 1 & 4.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed name, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 31, 2014, and has the title “Business School, Disrupted.”)

Some of Christensen’s thoughts on higher education can be found in:
Christensen, Clayton M., and Henry J. Eyring. The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the inside Out. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2011.

“On the topic of online instruction, Prof. Clayton Christensen said: ‘Do it cheap and simple. Get it out there.”” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Rickenbacker Wasn’t the Best Pilot or the Best Shot “but He Could Put More Holes in a Target that Was Shooting Back”

Source of book image: http://jacketupload.macmillanusa.com/jackets/high_res/jpgs/9781250033772.jpg

(p. C6) With his unpolished manners, Rickenbacker encountered a good deal of arrogance from the privileged sons of Harvard and Yale, but after he had downed his first five enemies, criticism ceased. About Rickenbacker’s killer instinct his colleague Reed McKinley Chambers had this to say: “Eddie wasn’t the best pilot in the world. He could not put as many holes in a target that was being towed as I could, but he could put more holes in a target that was shooting back at him than I could.”

For the full review, see:
HENRIK BERING. “Daring Done Deliberately.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 31, 2014): C6.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 30, 2014, and has the title “Book Review: ‘Enduring Courage’ by John F. Ross.”)

The book under review is:
Ross, John F. Enduring Courage: Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2014.