Andrew Ordover's Blog: Scenes from a Broken Hand, page 13

Is Our Room the Room Where it Happens?

"If you want to
build a ship...teach [people] to yearn for the vast and endless sea." 

Antoine
de Saint-Exupéry



There was a joke I used to hear quite often, growing up. In
the joke, a Jewish synagogue (Reform, like the one I went to) is plagued by an infestation
of rats, and the congregation can’t seem to get rid of the pests, no matter
what they do. They try poison, they try traps, they try

Music to Read by...

Friends;

If you're reading my new mystery novel, "The Cat Came Back," you'll notice some jazz tunes spoken about and quoted throughout the text. Here are some versions of the tunes, to give you some music to read by...


Little Brown Jug 



You Don't Know Me



Why Don't You Do Right?




Struttin' With Some Barbecue



Enjoy!

Asking Instead of Knowing

The modern idea of Democracy is rooted in the 18th
century European Enlightenment and its belief in reason, rationality, and empirical
evidence. The founders believed that if sound arguments were placed in front of
people, people could figure out the right course of action. We would read or
hear the opposing arguments, laid out cleanly and clearly. We would debate and
discuss them, like

How Do You Know?

Experience hath shewn,
that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and
by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most
effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable,
the minds of the people at large.

Thomas Jefferson, 1778



Our nation was founded on the idea that power is vested in the
people

The Most Important Things

The most important things to teach children are critical
thinking and problem solving skills, so that children
can learn how to think.





No—the most important thing to teach children is academic content across the subject
areas, so that children can have something concrete to think about.



No—the most important thing to teach children is how to take
tests strategically and effectively,

Teach the Tension

Two recent topics of discussion around my house have been the
presidential election (obviously) and the challenges of teaching critical
thinking (just as obviously, if you know my family). You will perhaps not be
shocked to learn that I think the two topics are related.



There used to be a saying in politics that if you tried to
fly a plane with only one wing, all you’d do is go in circles.

Show Your Work

When I was in high school, there was nothing I hated more
than math. And in math class, there was nothing I hated more than showing my
work. It felt like a tedious chore with for no real purpose—a hoop somebody
wanted me to jump through. Math was not open to poetic interpretation; the
answer was either right or wrong. And no one ever offered me partial credit for
getting an answer partially

Cultivating Student Curiosity

I performed a magic trick at a recent workshop. I was working
with a set of elementary-school teachers in Indianapolis: two workshops per
day, over two days. With each of the four groups, I asked the teachers to show
me what their students would draw if they were asked to picture a house, with a
family and tree out front and the sun up in the sky. When they were finished, I
said, “Now here’s my

NAEP Results: Less “Bang for Our Buck” (But Plenty of Whimpers)

“Between the idea and the reality . . . falls the shadow.”      —T.S. Eliot

A new report from our friends at the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” provides data on student performance in reading and mathematics across multiple grade levels across the country. This latest report shows us how well American twelfth graders performed in

The View from SXSW: Finding Innovation, Optimism, and Passion in Education

“I had been my whole
life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”

Annie Dillard



The South by Southwest Education conference just wrapped up,
and I thought I’d take a moment to share some notes and thoughts for anyone who
might be interested. Before registering, I hadn’t even been aware that SXSW had an education conference. What did I
know?



Education