ummm, Stanford is simply doing something which is fairly trendy, cheap and makes people "feel good." In my mind, Stanford wants to market its brand instead of letting "teach for america" and similar programs take center stage.

as I've watched "education reforms," most of them seem pretty boring and I'd almost prefer to see the current school system dismantled so we can return to some sort of tutored apprentice system.

I was recently a student at the U of M, and the classes seemed fairly average since there wasn't time to do things right: you're given 2 minutes to make presentations, strict time limits to think about details and homework problems which were often concerned with the trivial, boring and gradeable.

studies show that you only remember 10% of what you hear but up to 90% of what you teach someone else or yourself. thus, it's time to stop having teachers decide what, when, how much and how important each and every detail is as well as how to break something down into bite size pieces.

studies show that even "A students" forget most of what they know a year later-- even if they take the same tests again-- because, I suppose, they're good at memorizing things without needing to internalize things. a study I have shows that few students actually learn how to apply the scientific method to problems and, in my opinion, that's because teachers, across the board, do all the packaging and delivery of what the students supposedly learn-- even in grad school.

I didn't realize how awful math classes were: the majority of teachers teach and test procedure only and skip stuff like math sense and math theory-- the things that real problem solvers, in my opinion, use to solve problems. i didn't start enjoying math until I started focusing on math sense... things like sets (what are the bounds, what's in the set, what solutions don't make sense, etc...).

MIT has released "Open Courseware" and I think that is where things should go-- to make me happy. It makes sense to seperate teaching and testing whereby the teaching methods (ways to study) are more diverse.

It amazes me that fairly educated families send their kids to preschool "to be taught" instead of learning as a family.

the current experience reminds me of the matrix, where they download programs, and not like the human experience where a bunch of "a ha" moments combine together into something special.

if standford really wants to make a difference, they should let their students talk to the "next generation" about dreams and where we need to go-- stoke the human connection and help each of us find our gifts.

as it stands now, the system feels like a jail: everything you do is about penalties instead of about learning from our mistakes; it's about trying to enjoy a homogenized experience; and surving in a system that may or may not resonate with your strenghts.

as I look back at my favorite teachers, they were the ones that resonated with what I did best and, thus, I experienced real growth and knew how to use them as a resource. as I get older, I have less faith in a liberal arts curriculum because all those extra classes were forgotten but the debt wasn't and I was left wondering if I was used to "prop up" useless courses.

I took the time to rant because IBM, for example, did a similar thing and helped their retirees go into teaching.

This is all good but IBM also doesn't like paying taxes and the company has cut back on jobs and wages in the US. As far as I can tell, this economic loss isn't something that they seem to feel guilty about because they'd rather put bucks into their bottom line. when we lose good jobs, the passing of knowledge, from one generation to the next, gets broken.

I also rant about a democrat, county commissioner McLaughlin here in Minneapolis, because he told us (tax payers) that the libraries would stay closed unless we paid for a Twins' stadium first! I learned a lot about about the power of "wedge issues" that day.

As far as I can tell, our kids will have to survive despite our misplaced priorities and our egos!

If the Twins' venture is that desireable to you and you think that it's actually "profitable," then why not get an investorment group together? Didn't studies show that the roof was only needed a few days a year-- a situation that made adding a roof pointless?

I stand against the project because I know that, in Minnesota, less than 7% of our youth want to go into math or science and, in my opinion, our children would benefit more from building them ballparks and other "hands on facilities" to use rather than incarcerating them in front of TV sets to watch a "handful of elites" play in an overbuilt stadium.

The Twins' fiasco emphasizes the situation that investors prefer richdad/poordad rules and don't really want to put their money in play.

And, getting back on topic, Stanford is a perfect example of this:

"The majority of the University’s endowment assets are invested through the Merged Endowment Pool (MEP) , which is a diversified portfolio of actively managed financial and real estate assets valued at approximately $10.0 billion as of June 30, 2004."

Standford Endowment

Another example of this is the Mayo Clinic which is currently putting together a billion dollar endowment.

My point: I have to laugh when people suggest that these organizations, like Standford or Mayo, aim for affordability or care that much about the community.

They eat huge servings first and then throw the public a few crumbs.