Why Having Safe Spaces for Girls Works
Naja’atu Muhammed is a 16-year-old girl from the Anguwan Malamai community of Kaduna State in Nigeria. Naja’atu was forced into early marriage by her father and was eventually cut off from both Islamic and Western education due to poverty. Naja’atu’s meals were rationed and her financial demise resulted in starvation and depression. Stories such as […]
Making Deaf Education Accessible and Inclusive
Deaf education is a fundamental right for every deaf child. In Pakistan, there are over one million deaf children but less than 5% of those children have access to education. Availability of and access to sign language – the native language of the Deaf community – is a critical component of every deaf person’s cognitive, […]
How Should Schools Incorporate Happiness Into Curricula?
In a previous piece, I discussed the role of happiness as one of the purposes of education and argued that we can learn how to improve our well being. Even though it is not possible to teach how to be happy in a prescriptive way, research has found patterns that show the influence on how we […]
Should Happiness be the Aim of Education?
If you ask education experts what the purpose of education is, three main goals tend to stand out: 1) to prepare individuals to be active citizens in their communities and foster social cohesion; 2) to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge and skills necessary for the economy and, ultimately, to a society’s development; 3) to […]
How Museums can Contribute to a Journey of Discovery and Learning
If men were angels, wrote James Madison, no government would be necessary. To which I would add: If schools were perfect, no museums would be necessary. Regrettably, our educational system is less than perfect, and museums play a crucial role in the education of the communities they serve. As you read this, construction continues […]
Imagine a World where Students are Taught to be Citizens First
lbert Einstein wrote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” In the early 1970’s, I joined my fellow Chicago educators in establishing a co-op school called Ujima for our children. The term ‘Ujima’ is a key principle of Kwanzaa, […]
Can Innovations Help Leapfrog Progress in Education?
Innovative is the new normal. Every sector, from banking to transportation is seeing rapid change as new technologies, connections, and ideas modernize and revolutionize our day-to-day lives. Education is no exception: the way we learn is changing, from collaborative multi-grade projects in elementary school to vocational training in high schools to online tutorial videos for […]
Imagine if Learning Were Creating — Computational Thinking in Primary School
Imagine a learning environment designed to prepare our children, from their first introduction to school, to be inventors, designers and creative thinkers using all the tools at their disposal, including computers. How do we create such an environment? What ideas, models and tools would promote this type of learning? For students, but also for […]
Preparing Today’s Youth for Today’s Challenges
Please, stop telling young people they are the future. The scene could have been any school assembly at any school in the world. A group of restless young people listening to a suited speaker explaining how they are the future. How some day, they will “change the world.” If they just work hard enough, […]
Power Skills: Preparing Students for the Future of Work
\ In a global study carried out by McKinsey & Company, 72% of deans and university leaders said they prepare their graduates for the workforce. In contrast, only 42% of employers and 44% of students thought the same (Mourshed et al. 2013). The mismatch between universities and the world of work is real and it […]