“In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.

“[Indiana University professor Jonathan] Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing. He was amazed by a boy who, for a class science project, rigged a tracking device for his moped with parts from a cell phone. When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’”

(Full story)

It turned out that I was somewhat adept at deconstructing poems — and just plain awful at writing them. The person who helped me figure that out, and who gently urged me to apply what I’d learned in class to endeavors outside of poetry, was my professor — an extraordinary poet named Dennis Brutus. He died today at the age of 85.

Brutus cut an imposing figure in the seminar room. He had a rich voice, a sprawling beard, and a thick mane of hair. But what gave him a stature that I’d never encountered, as well as a certain ethereal quality, was his story. He had come to the U.S. as a political refugee after having been one of South Africa’s leading anti-apartheid activists. He pioneered the idea of using sports as political lever to persuade the all-white government. And for his writing and rabble-rousing, he spent a couple of years at Robben Island with Nelson Mandela.

One of Brutus’s poems, “Somehow We Survive,” is among the few poems that remain stuck in my head after all these years. I offer this long snippet in his memory.

Somehow we survive
and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither.

Investigating searchlights rake
our naked unprotected contours. . . .
boots club the peeling door.

But somehow we survive
severance, deprivation, loss.

Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark
hissing their menace to our lives,

most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,
rendered unlovely and unlovable;
sundered are we and all our passionate surrender

but somehow tenderness survives.

As Real Clear Arts reports, “Instead of reading a common book, to be discussed on campus, freshmen have been asked to study and be ready to discuss a painting, The Gross Clinic, by Thomas Eakins.

“The goal, according to Penn’s site, is to “introduce students from the start to the critical skill of interpreting visual material. This choice also reflects a celebration of art in Philadelphia and cultural activism on the part of our citizens, and underscores the importance of the arts in civic life.”

It’s a cool idea, one I could see spreading to other campuses.

P.S. Let the record show that I took calculus in college, got an A, used it a bit in microeconomics, and have rarely thought about it again. But nearly every day I encounter an issue involving statistics or probability. I’m just saying.

“I applied to and was accepted to the The Ohio State University’s graduate school for Visual Communication and Design Development. I have worked as a freelance graphic designer since I was 15 but have never had the validation of a ‘degree’ to aid me that sacred search for a ‘design’ job.

So, I pose the question: Is getting an MFA in design worth the debt?”

With Allen’s permission, I now pose that question to you, loyal readers. Should Allen pursue an MFA? Offer your answers in the Comments section below.

In school, problems almost always are clearly defined, confined to a single discipline, and have one right answer.

But in the workplace, they’re practically the opposite. Problems are usually poorly defined, multi-disciplinary, and have several possible answers, none of them perfect.

Are timed, standardized tests the way to ready youngsters for real-world problem-solving?

Business leaders seem to think otherwise. Look at the chart below, drawn from research done by the AASA and Americans for the Arts, about how employers and school superintendents (who might have the hardest jobs in America –Ed.) define “creativity.” There’s a fair bit of alignment — but employers seem more concerned with how employees can frame problems and whether they’re comfortable with the absence of a “right” answer.

• “The self-employed tend to have slightly lower grade point averages (GPAs) than their wage-and-salary peers.” The students with the best grades were more likely to seek work in the not-for-profit or government sector.
• Business and management majors were among the least likely to become self-employed.  The most likely folks to go it alone: Social science and “other” majors.
• “Race, ethinicity and gender did not play a significant role in determining who would eventually become self-employed.” 

Read the full report here.  

(HT: National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship)

 “A new study concludes that social skills can be a better predictor of future earnings than test scores are.  Christy Lleras, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sociologist, analyzed data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, tracking 11,000 students from 10th grade until 10 years after their high school graduation. Her work, published in September’s Social Science Research, found that pupils described by teachers as conscientious, motivated, and able to relate well to peers and adults earned an average $3200 more yearly than those with equally good test scores but poorer social skills. Lleras says many socially adept students were helped by joining in team sports or other activities. It makes sense, she says, that in a service economy, ‘people with social skills will be much better equipped to navigate.’” 

– John Maeda, incoming president of the Rhode Island School of Design

The quote is from a great WSJ profile of the super-innovative Maeda. Check out the WSJ writer’s description of what Maeda is doing for his presidential inauguration:

“On the day I visit, an assistant in his office is folding hundreds of 15-inch squares of creamy muslin and stuffing them into envelopes to send to students, faculty, alumni and staff, who are being asked to return them with any sort of creative expression — written, drawn, cut, torn, or painted. They will be strung like Tibetan prayer flags across the streets of Providence and through the First Baptist Church for the ceremony.”

Watch this guy.