Archive for December, 2008
Laws for Publishing Companies
Dear President Obama,
I see a large portion of district money going towards textbooks as part of curriculum adoption. In September 2006, an advisory committee to the U.S. Education Department issued a lengthy analysis of the economic forces that lead to high textbook prices. They included inelastic demand (school districts have to buy the books); an oligopolistic supply market in which only a handful of publishers (including Thomson, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, and Houghton-Mifflin) dominate; high production costs that create barriers to entry by possible competitors with the Big Four.
I am wondering if you could pass a law that would stop the publishing companies from raising their textbook prices (if school districts [Read more...]
More Foundational Courses
Dear President-Elect:
Congratulations on your historic opportunity. Your campaign indicated a desire to get students back to the fundamentals of education and student development.
I see this need as an educator to reestablish basic life skills such as business etiquette, work ethics, soft skills, international educational awareness, all of which I include in all my course instruction.
These life skills start early; my wife and I own a Montessori Pre-school and we include these life skills in our programing as well. I invite you to visit our school in MN at some point.
Thanks again for allowing input.
Dan Creed
Business Instructor
Normandale Community College
This post was submitted by Dan Creed.
Really Fundamental Change
A few months ago I was invited to make a presentation to the Kettering Foundation staff in Dayton, Ohio. The Foundation asks and tries to answer the question, “What does it take to make democracy work as it should?”
It surely goes without saying that education is critically important. But little has been written directly connecting education as a means and democracy as an end. Here, as concisely as I’m able to state it, is an answer to the Kettering question:
Q: What does it take to make democracy work as it should?
A: A population that understands itself and its situation in the deepest possible sense.
Q: What particular knowledge is most [Read more...]
