Sunday, December 7, 2008

More With the Education, Less With the Simulation

It sucks that there is poverty in the world, and there’s something to be said for promoting poverty awareness, but I’m not sure Princeton and Dartmouth are going about it in the most effective way. It’s probably possible to educate people about poverty, but I don’t think there’s a feasible way to simulate the [...]

It sucks that there is poverty in the world, and there’s something to be said for promoting poverty awareness, but I’m not sure Princeton and Dartmouth are going about it in the most effective way. It’s probably possible to educate people about poverty, but I don’t think there’s a feasible way to simulate the true poverty experience for college kids.

College kids are often lacking in disposable income, yes, but if they were actually living anywhere near enough to the edge to be capable of looking starvation in the eye, they would have bigger things to worry about than midterms and research topics and they would not currently be working to cross “College Degree” off of their To Do lists.

Dartmouth recently hosted the “Two Dollar-a-Day Challenge” and Princeton will host their own Princeton Poverty Simulation on Saturday, Nov. 22nd. Again, it’s excellent to be making people aware of how this lifetime is going down for a large portion of the human population, but I’m not on board with the attempt to simulate anything.

Nina Shield at IvyGate nails it superbly with this:

We had something like this once a year in elementary school gym class. It was called TRAFFIC and we all wheeled around on scooters and if we sped or veered off the roads or ran through the stop sign we were sent to traffic-jail, and when we went through the car wash Mr. Hennessey spritzed us with water. It was exactly like real driving.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

photo: maximolly

Read more ...

Pokémon Economics

Anyone needing an excellently oversimplified way to teach a kid about the economic crisis might want to use this Pokémon analogy from economist Kevin Nguyen: The following is an actual conversation I had with my younger sister, Olivia. She likes to draw, play World of Warcraft, and now, she’s the only fourteen-year-old girl who understands the [...]

Anyone needing an excellently oversimplified way to teach a kid about the economic crisis might want to use this Pokémon analogy from economist Kevin Nguyen:

The following is an actual conversation I had with my younger sister, Olivia. She likes to draw, play World of Warcraft, and now, she’s the only fourteen-year-old girl who understands the U.S. economic crisis.

Kevin: Have you been following the news?

Olivia: Yeah, I don’t really get it.

Kevin: Imagine that I let you borrow $50, but in exchange for my generosity, you promise to pay me back the $50 with an extra $10 in interest. To make sure you pay me back, I take your Charizard Pokémon card as collateral.

Olivia: Kevin, I don’t play Pokémon anymore.

Kevin: I’m getting to that. Let’s say that the Charizard is worth $50, so in case you decide to not return my money, at least I’ll have something that’s worth what I loaned out.

Olivia: Okay.

Kevin: But one day, people realize that Pokémon is stupid and everyone decides that the cards are overvalued. That’s right—everybody turned twelve on the same day! Now your Charizard is only worth, say, $25. More..

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Read the rest ...

Studying online is the practical way to earn an education

Studying online is the practical way to earn an education
St. Augustine is the most affordable compared to other Medical Assistant Schools program are designed and reviewed by professionals in the field to give you the best training possible. MedAssistant.org provides a great way for nurses and other to learn medical assistant studies online.

Education | Hempstead: No Debate on This: Hempstead School R

Education | Hempstead: No Debate on This: Hempstead School R
Efforts of students and teachers prevailed and a Long Island school was named after the president-elect, apparently the first such school.