Curriculum

Teach Like Vladimir Vernadsky: Education as a Holistic & Dynamic System

June 15, 2013

I started going to the Soviet Union when it was the USSR in 1981, and for the next 20 years collaborated with teachers and researchers, particularly Julie Weisberg, Phil Gang and Jennie Springer in the US, Sergey Tolstikov, Galina Manke, and Anatoly Zaklebny in Russia in a mutually designed and developed program, the Global Thinking Project (GTP). The GTP is about how citizen diplomacy among American and Russian educators and psychologists emerged into a youth and teacher activism project.… Read more

Defunding the Common Core: Back to the Future

By Jack Hassard

April 26, 2013

Charles Grassley, the Republican Senator from Iowa, has begun the process of removing funding from the Federal Budget that would be used by districts to carry out the Common Core State Standards. The Common Core State Standards have raised the ire of not only Republicans and right leaning groups such as the Heartland Institute, but also left leaning bloggers and educators and researchers who question the relationship between high-stakes testing and national standards.… Read more

The Power of School Music Programs

By Jack Hassard

January 2, 2013

Guest Post

By Melissa Walker, Executive Director of JazzHouseKids, and Peter Smagorinsky, Distinguished Research Professor of English Education at the University of Georgia. This article appeared on Maureen Downey’s Get Schooled Blog, Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Public schools, in general, have become incriminated in the public mind for having failed society. They must be re-envisioned, restructured, reassessed, and refinanced if they are to serve the public good, according to commentators ranging from folks waiting in line at the post office to governors and national policymakers.… Read more

The Cooperative-Communal Classroom–>Insights from Nature

By Jack Hassard

January 1, 2013

Cooperative-communal classrooms are aligned with fundamental ideas that have been formulated from nature. Cooperation, empathy, mutual aid, and the interdisciplinary nature of the biosphere are fundamental concepts that are implicit in cooperative-communal classrooms. Each has its origin in nature.

The rationale for establishing cooperative-communal classrooms can be linked to the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin and the work of two Russian scientists of the 19th and early 20th Century, Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945), and Peter Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842-1921).… Read more

Students to Spend More Time in School: Is this a Sentence?

By Jack Hassard

December 5, 2012

The Associated Press reported that five states will add at least 300 hours of time to the school year in program that will involve about 40 schools. Is a longer day in school a good thing? Will it be more of the same, that is teaching to the test, or will we see students set free to explore important questions and inquiries?… Read more

¿Is it Not Possible to Charter Teachers for a Change?

By Jack Hassard

August 30, 2012

¿Is it not possible that if teachers were chartered to design curriculum and assessment methods geared to their own students they might provide an education that is closer to the lived experiences of their student? ¿Is is possible that by enabling teachers to carry out their work as professionals the way most of them are prepared, school would be a better place?… Read more

Evolution as Design

By Jack Hassard

August 10, 2012

The world is flat; astronauts did not go to the moon; and the Earth is 10,000 years old.

A recent poll reported that very few people in the US accept the theory of evolution as a valid explanation for the creation of life on Earth. According to the National Center for Science Education, in a 24-country poll, 41% of the respondents identified themselves as “evolutionists” and 28% as “creationists”, and 31% indicating they don’t know what to believe.… Read more