Carnival Of Education - Week 16

Welcome to the Carnival of Education . Every now and then, the carnival leaves the midway and is hosted by someone else. It is my honor and pleasure to be the host this week.

Carnival of Education is one of those rare blog carnivals that immediately took off and quickly became big, good and popular. Apparently, many educators are blogging or perhaps many bloggers are concerned with education - is it something about the personality of a person that makes one want to be both a teacher AND a blogger? Actually, my other blog was conceived as a teaching tool, while this one is much more "lose" and meant for miscellaneous ranting (please look around while you're here).

Let's jump straight into it, as there are so many posts, demonstrating the vast diversity of topics, angles and viewpoints that characterize this carnival so well. I was hoping that some obvious taxonomical pattern would emerge that would help me organize the entries in some coherent way, but as the diversity is so great, I just decided to link them in the order they arrived in my mailbox. Here they are:

Adam Gurri of Sophistpundit: An Educated Jury. There's Sex Ed, so why not Juror's Ed? Democracy requires educated and informed citizens, in courts, as well as everywhere else.

The Science Goddess of What It's Like on the Inside: The Red Queen Finally Catches a Break. Ah, the many meanings of the phrase "The Red Queen"!

From Eduwonk comes NCLB Special Ed Policy...Don't Blame The Disabled Kids.... "Though disabled kids are being fingered as the reason for a lot of schools not making AYP, the fact is that with the achievement gaps that now exist in all kinds of communities they're being scapegoated."

Ben DeGrow of Mount Virtus: No Surprises Here: A Can't-Do Reaction to First Class Education. Where does the education money go?

Victoria of HomeSchoolMomTips: More Schools Needed, and earlier? Or, how to get the parents more involved.

Dan of Polski3's View from Here sends his latest Teacher to Teacher piece: Test/Quiz Versions and End of Year Rush.

Clarence of Remote Access sent Virtual Worlds about a wonderful teaching moment, starting with Middle-Earth and spreading all over the real Earth. This led to a question about what is school really for, in Disposable Information.

Michael Kantor of Half Sigma: Advice for getting into an elite college: be a leader. Some advice for young people applying to college.

Editor's Choice: PZ Myers of Pharyngula: What I'm Doing Today. A wise and inspiring Welcome speech to the incoming biology freshmen.

Andrew of The Daily Grind is in a bind about what the 9th graders are supposed to know, in Testing the Testing Waters.

Joe Knippenberg of No Left Turns writes on religious expression in a school talent show: here: distinction between public and private expression is apparently lost on some people.

Ginny of A Series of Inconsequential Events writes about warring factions at her School: Oh, no she di-ENT! It's parents out of control, this time...

Mark Lerner sent a post about the Earth School. "The Earth School tries to be diffe rent in that it focuses on providing its students a rigorous academic curriculum while focusing on the natural sciences and the arts." I wish I could send one of my kids there!

Steve Pavlina wrote about the ways of Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking. Steve begins: "One way to overcome fear of public speaking is to be afraid and speak anyway" and follows with The Matrix, flying airplanes and Toastmasters, with valuable advice through out.

Bill Gram-Reefer of Halfway to Concord: A modest proposal to save our schools - this post was written by California Sen. Tom McClintock.

Alun of Archaeoastronomy writes an exercise in Critical Thinking, or rather the lack of it. He wondered how out of touch with reality an essay could be and still be accepted by an essay bank. "I thought it might be interesting to show that even if you don't get caught you'll be handing in something poor." The essay is online both in the Cheathouse essay bank and on his blog, and he follows up with some more commentary here.

Greg of Rhymes With Right, in Saying What Needs To Be Said argues for the return of vocational education.

Warren Meyer of Coyote Blog: The Teacher Salary Myth: "I like most every teach I have met, and respect the job that they do. However, I am tired of their unions succesfully crea ting the myth that teachers are paid worse than ditch diggers." Warren provides some hard data and an incisive commentary.

The founder of this carnival, EdWonk, writes about Censorchimps: The California Sub-Species. "Student journalists sued their Bakersfield high school district Thursday in an effort to keep the school's pr incipal from censoring student newspaper articles on homosexuality." EdWonk comments.

Joanne Jacobs has two football-related items that are fun: Football frenzy about misapplied (financial) math, and Misapplied math about football (testing) frenzy. It took reading several Letters To The Editor in Raleigh News and Observer for me to figure out what the problem was in the second one: it was an arithmetic problem posing as a math problem, and it has something to do with rules of football with which I am unfamiliar - thus I would have done the arithmetic correctly but the math wrong!

Jenny D: AP revisited. Are AP courses really what they are touted to be, or should be?

Steve of Outside The Cave : Reflections On Responsible Blogging Lesson. Important for all of us.

Mike of Interested-Participant: Teaching Too Much Blamed for Dropout Rate. "One could say that Ontario is spearheading toward education by osmosis. All that's necessary is to reduce course content to a low-enough level whereby a half-asleep student can still absorb enough knowledge to pass the final exam".

Matt of Going to The Mat: Writing—The Most Important Skill Not Taught Today. The title says it all.

Kimberly wrote about a Comprehensive Review at UC-Berkeley.

Dave Foster of Photon Courier: Penny in the Fusebox. It's about the factors leading to uncontrollable student behavior in classrooms, with particular reference to the recent arrest of a kindergarten student.

Janet of The Art of Getting By: If You Can't Be An Athlete, Be An Athletic Supporter.

And to finish with a touch of humor, another Editor's Choice In Which Ms. Frazzled is Made Highly Uncomfortable in Public.

Next week, the carnival returns home. Submissions for Week 17 of The Carnival Of Education should be sent to owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net. Send your contributions no later than 10:00 PM (Pacific) Tuesday, May 31st. The midway should open Wednesday morning.

Thank you all for coming. Also, as this carnival is so large and I am currently operating on a very primitive old computer, please let me know ASAP if a link is bad, or an entry missing ASAP, so I can promptly fix any error that I may have made. Thanks.