May, 2019 When Financier Robert Smith spoke at the Morehouse College graduation this weekend (May 19, 2019), he told the 400 graduating students that he intended to pay off all of their student loans, to the tune of roughly $40 million dollars. The surprise news rolled through the room like a tsunami. Smith hadn’t even…
Category: Education
Intimidation and humiliation as pedagogical tools
June 2018 I recently attended an alumni lunch with the new (2017) headmaster of Boston Latin School. It is the oldest school in America, founded in 1635, one year before Harvard. It is a Boston public school with an active alumni group who have created an endowment of $43 million. It is also a college…
How efficient is your school system?
May, 2018 We all want our kids and grandkids to have the best education possible, but it is very hard to measure the effectiveness of a school system. We can look at per-pupil spending but there’s no shortage of inefficient systems that spend a lot of money. Student-teacher ratio is easy to measure, but…