Month: September 2012

I found this on Kevin Kelly’s Technium:

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality states that, “the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.” In other words, if you try to build a simple thing such as a public bike shed, there will be endless town hall discussions wherein people argue over trivial details such as the color of the door. But if you want to build a nuclear power plant — a project so vast and complicated that most people can’t understand it — people will defer to expert opinion. — C. Northcote Parkinson, 1957, Parkinson’s Law.

I’m not saying public education is a nuclear power plant; it’s just that everyone seems to have an opinion.

 

Why don’t High Schools have cafe’s as separate areas, with their own bathrooms (and so on)?

Then students wouldn’t have to leave for lunch period, and the rest of the building could be isolated from the commotion of hundreds of students being fed and socializing.

When my car recently broke, I took it to my local butcher. He offered several reasons it might not be running. And then he went back to work cutting steaks. He also has no background whatsoever as a mechanic.

My actions above make about as much sense as allowing career politicians to make decisions about education.

 

The layout of a room is the first clue that a student has about what the focus of a room is going to be. When they walk in for the first time, where the desks are pointed says a lot about what they’ll be doing in that class.

If your desk is at the front of the room, does that mean you’re the focus of that class?