Pedagogical atmospherics

A few education-related links for your enjoyment and edification.

Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker review of Jerome Karabel's The Chosen highlights the social aspects of Ivy-League admission:

When the Office of Civil Rights at the federal education department investigated Harvard in the nineteen-eighties, they found handwritten notes scribbled in the margins of various candidates’ files. "This young woman could be one of the brightest applicants in the pool but there are several references to shyness," read one. Another comment reads, "Seems a tad frothy." One application -- and at this point you can almost hear it going to the bottom of the pile -- was notated, "Short with big ears."

In Orion, Lowell Monke argues that classroom computers are "Faustian bargain."

In Common-place, Thomas Augst reflects on the implications of an online resuscitation of P. T. Barnum's American Museum.

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Henry Farrell argues that "the blogosphere represents the closest equivalent to the Republic of Letters that we have today" -- an opportunity for academics to rekindle the romance.

Via A&LD and Ralph Luker.

| Posted by Wilson at 23:59 Central | TrackBack
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