Ideas within topic education,teachers: (click suns to rate or comment on ideas)
| 1 |
| Create a website with interviews of people who tried to enter various careers and failed or succeeded, with statistics on % who quit that track or got a job. Are they happy? Provide the site for all high school career guidance counselors worldwide. | |
| 2 |
| Murphy Analysis: Murphy's Law says whatever can go wrong will go wrong. When seeing whether some data fit your theory, erase your assumptions and brainstorm alternative theories the data could fit. Often one of those is right and your theory is wrong. | |
| 3 |
| I heard this: "I'm a historian, not a futurist." That's like a scientist saying, "I collect data. I don't make theories." The purpose of gathering data is to make theories to predict what will happen and improve the course of events. History should, too. | |
| 4 |
| Make an online activity for each citizen to assign spending and taxation categories of his national government. Experiencing the compromises needed to balance the budget will make people more realistic and will transmit that realism to their government. | |
| 5 |
| To replace time-consuming and rigid grant applications, pay scientists a fixed salary, from which they need to pay all their research expenses, including supplies, equipment, and staff, encouraging efficient use of money to produce the best results. | |
| 6 |
| Before starting to date, everyone should find and interview 10 married and 10 divorced people to learn how to avoid their mistakes and do what worked well. This is difficult for kids, thus high schools should arrange this as part of sex education. | |
| 7 |
| Applicants to universities should submit a business plan for their chosen career, showing their research into job prospects for their field. This may prevent some painful surprises on graduation and may steer people to better paths before it's too late. | |
| 8 |
| Teach kids reading with their bedtime storybook. Start by teaching 1-letter words, then 2-letter words, just one each night. If he can't remember a word, then tell him, and read the previous sentence again and ask him the word again. Use praise. | |
| 9 |
| To fight brain drain (poor countries losing precious funds teaching doctors, who then leave for more pay in rich countries), use education loans, to be forgiven by working in home country or repaid in cash earned from rich country. | |
| 10 |
| To ensure science graduates jobs, universities can have contracts to be executed collectively by its unemployed students of the past 5 years with the guidence of the Prof. & using university setups. This can reduce unemployment & impart on-job training. | |
| 11 |
| Use more retired and elderly people in daycare centers. Background checks could be used if necessary. A lot like the adopt-a-grandparent program a few years ago. | |
| 12 |
| University students could start their own online job service. This would publish a complete department-wide list of students with their profiles and academics. From the published lists any recruiter could contact the students for interviews. | |
| 13 |
| Teach estimation for real-life: Fermi quiz (power of 10 estimates), budgets, taxes, should I buy insurance, how likely are coincidences, how much food to make for a meal. (math,probability,statistics) | |
| 14 |
| Teach practical history. Don't memorize dates. Generalize how people behave in similar events around the world over time: culture clashes, democracy movements vs. dictators, economic booms/busts, ethnic wars, development. Apply to future. | |
| 15 |
| Teach how to handle money: calculate income taxes, how to set up an IRA, how to buy stocks, how to compare returns of various investments, life insurance, annuities, how to start a business, credit cards, loans, mortgage. (practical economics) | |
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| Teach practical behavior: top reasons people divorce or stay married, or have children. Causes of spouse abuse & child abuse. Parent/teen relations. Recognizing and treating psychiatric illness. | |
| 17 |
| To raise money needed by charities (such as schools) for specific needs, set up a website to allow recipients to post proposals and allow donors to choose which they will fund. DonorsChoose is an example. | |
| 18 |
| A world language: Finally, a possibility of understanding, real and direct, for more than 6 billion people speaking 6,700 languages. Adopt the state-of-the-art, planned international language Fasile as the 2nd language. | |
| 19 |
| To improve health, teach preventative measures at school: good fitness, sensible eating, weight control, non-smoking, moderate drinking, etc. Less visits to doctor = lower overall costs. | |
| 20 |
| Teach how to behave in the legal system: what to do when police stop you or arrest you or if you are summoned or sued, what is bail, what is it like in jail, what to do if you're a victim of crime, how to survive in a mugging or rape. | |
| 21 |
| Why are school buildings reminiscent of Gothic, Medieval, and Prison architecture? If you want kids to be bright and creative, let them learn and develop in unique and colorful buildings that combine technology with nature. Hire some new architects. | |
| 22 |
| To prevent further damage to our Earth, I think that we need to have education in our schools that teaches the consequences that our actions have on the Earth. | |
| 23 |
| Libraries could digitise all their books and put them on an online database. In doing so, they can offer paid online membership throughout the world. Well-known libraries would benefit from this kind of project to the maximum extent. | |
| 24 |
| Teach how to use government (civics): how to lobby for changes in laws, how to contact officials at each gov. level, how legislatures work, how to run for office. If you try this, please e-mail me to let me know how it goes. | |
| 25 |
| Idea contest for kids in school. Teachers may divide kids into teams to brainstorm and compete against other teams for greatest number of ideas or best ideas (as judged by other students). | |
| 26 |
| Transit rest homes (day care centers) in regions and countries where they are not yet common. They would help nuclear families by keeping their children for one or more days or even hours in safety so that parents can do their work in peace. | |
| 27 |
| Examples of group violence are constantly reported in the news, but little is done to prevent them. Group loyalty/hatred should be studied scientifically like other illness to find the psychological/social causes and, most importantly, preventions. | |
| 28 |
| To save paper, trees, energy, and money, try to make your workplace paperless. Instead of printing documents, read and store them on your computer. Use e-mail instead of paper memos, faxes, or letters. | |
| 29 |
| Teach practical health: vaccines, sex ed. & STDs, how to prevent colds (wash your hands), how to recognize commonly undiagnosed diseases (depression, heart attack, stroke) & what to do, first aid, CPR, exercise, car safety, diet. | |
| 30 |
| For curricula that require learning by small group work, try "jigsawing"--pairing up groups that understand the material with those that don't, so that the former can 'teach' the concept to the latter. | |
| 31 |
| Teach more statistics and probability for real-life. Use examples from the news: polls, scientific studies, lottery, insurance, relative risks from different activities (living near a coal power plant vs. a nuclear plant). | |
| 32 |
| To deal with school bullying: show confidence, stay in groups, avoid the bully, and ignore the bully (this is hard, so have friends or parents help you practice at home). If that doesn't work, tell teachers and parents and take self-defense lessons. | |
| 33 |
| Universities should allow their text books and reference books to be read at their web sites. This will facilitate inquisitive minds to quench their thirst for reading and create a well read society. MIT does. | |
| 34 |
| Teach basic science facts: light things fall as fast as heavy ones (besides drag), drugs short-circuit pleasure circuits in brain, suntan is from nuclear radiation, a liter of water is a kilo, a liter of any gas has ~same # of molecules. (chemistry) | |
| 35 |
| Teach geography: rough locations of biggest 100 countries, big religions, big languages, income by region, lifespan by region, government (democracy, dictatorship, theocracy, anarchy) by country, cities over 5 million. Not state capitals. | |
| 36 |
| Require all high school students in "developed countries" to study a lesser developed country for two courses, or do some large project. Most students will retain lifelong interest in this country. | |
| 37 |
| Try to reduce global DALYs (disability-adjusted life years lost) as the main goal of your charity, politics, & work. Top causes will soon be perinatal conditions, pneumonia, heart disease, & stroke. | |
| 38 |
| Have a "prosthetic leg" day at your school. Have everybody bring in a dollar that goes towards buying a prosthetic leg for a child to walk again in Vietnam (through thechildhealthsite.com). $100 will buy a leg. | |
| 39 |
| College teachers could check out having the textbooks they use be available online instead of students having to buy $100 books and lug them to class. | |
| 40 |
| "New Face in the Crowd" program: Counselors could team up student aids with selected freshmen to help them get adjusted to high school, make friends, join activities, etc. | |
| 41 |
| A course in personal typing is required in many schools in U.S. Should be required for all. Course should also include Word Processing, Spread Sheets, "Power Point" presentations, and basic Internet searching. | |
| 42 |
| Reorganize education so that levels would open the eyes of the student to social responsibility. First municipal education, then provincial, then national, and later (university) international. | |
| 43 |
| College teachers, instead of writing their own lectures, can share them to save time. Example. (supercourse,teaching,university,professor,instructor) | |
| 44 |
| For history to be more useful, it must not only gather data (the past), but also generalize from it to form hypotheses and make testable predictions. History could then be used to improve our world. Example | |
| 45 |
| Rather than having college graduates earn a degree with no professional experience, open a government-funded, university-related, charity business. Within this charity business, all aspects of professional work will be considered. | |
| 46 |
| Maximum illiteracy is found in slum areas. Governments should require that all established schools have to open small branches in slum areas, providing free education by their teachers on weekends. | |
| 47 |
| There are so many people who are still suffering from depression, even very young people. Why can't schools offer seminars to give practical help to young people in this area? It would help them their whole lives! | |
| 48 |
| Teach children in school that if they ever need to quickly leave a crowded place, due to a fire for example, they should walk calmly and not push, otherwise a stampede would create a jam from which few would escape. Practice it several times. | |
| 49 |
| To develop schools for engineering, E-Learning will be suitable. This idea will yield a good return because the colleges won't have to keep repeating the writing and performance of lectures. | |
| 50 |
| Encourage each of us to listen more to the views and ideas of others. Too much emphasis is placed on selfish assertive skills. Instead provide good listening skills to hear how others may be hurting and how we all can help each other. | |