Hi, James, thanks for pointing out the publication bias in scientific research. Most of the research indicates a significant relation, but there is thousand others unpublished indicating a non-significant relation. But because such result is hard to publish, we end up only see the significant ones. Besides this significant issue, researchers even turned to create the illusion of importance. For example, when the result is small, researchers turned to multiply the number by 100 or 1000, to make the figure appeared in table seems bigger. I don’t know about other major, such tricks is used a lot in my field. As an audience, I have to pay special attention to the footnote to find out the real impact of the result. Right now, in my own research, I am request to do the same. Honestly, I am not sure whether it is for good or bad…

I definitely can relate to your concern about innovation in graduate school. I also have a hard time to come up with authentic idea without any help from my adviser. You are right about the importance of interest and motivation, otherwise we won’t survive this procedure. However, as Aaron mentioned, there is trade-offs in learner-centered learning and lectures due to current mass amount of students. Godin’s idea is a big innovation, but we can work on some small innovations like how to improve learning under current university environment. Rome is not built in one day. We can make small progress every single day.

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Hi, Kristen, you may find this website useful:
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Degree=Doctorate_(PhD)/Salary

Both you and Ken are right that we shouldn’t use salary as the only measurement on the return of education.

Hi ping, thanks for the post. I definitely can relate to this. Right now, I still have classmates complaining that they should have chosen Art instead of Science back then. The dominating idea of Science is so pressing that as 14- or 15-year-old kids, some don’t even have the courage to say no. I do see the importance of Art in all-round education. My major, Economics, requires a lot quantitative skills, however, it is a more and more important skill to tell a good story, which the math doesn’t really help. Only people with solid quantitative skill and inspiring way of telling a story can succeed in selling the paper to journals and also in teaching in class.

Hi, Ken, I guess the only reason most of the research done on salary is because the accessibility of the data. And, yes, you are right that education is not just about salary. There are other non-monetary rewards associated to that.

Yesim, This’s not my blog. But I like this blog as much as you do. It highlights the issues right now concerns parents, teachers and the governments. But my view on technology is that it is a tool, the key question lays on human, how we use these tools. If we use it wisely, we can benefit from it. Take E-commerce for example. It is huge in China. Several of the top E-commerce platform companies (Alibaba and Ctrip) were just listed in NASDAQ. Internet has been the savior of China’s economy.

Also, Yesim. I like your link about “China’s Web Junkies’. I personally know people who were there before. But the main reason of addiction is there is no other fun and engaging alternatives. Schools are boring. No teacher is concerned about inspiring students like we do in this class. Some kids who play video game are really talented. I believe, if we can care about more of students needs, make teaching as inspiring as the games, the kids can use their talent on to more creative things.

In response to your last meaningful wisdom “everything in moderation”, I cannot agree with your mom more! In Eastern culture, it is all about balance and moderation. It is definitely impossible to chuck technology out of the window. But we can use it comparative advantage and combine it with human advantage. Like the chess example. Man and machine won’t be good alone, but the combination of these two makes a different. So in this sense, this moderation is, in fact, a win-win situation.
BTW, a lot of us are really impressed by the number of tabs you have in your browser!

A really great post. Thanks for sharing！
Yanliang

I really like your post! The survey is initially counter-intuitive, but finally makes sense. That’s really interesting. I like the second comparison that students who know they don’t know actually show more interest in this Ethic topic. This is exactly how teaching inspires learning.

Besides, I also like your figure indicating how consciousness play in different stage of learning. There are always obstacles in learning. The most common one from the first stage to the second stage is that people don’t know they don’t know thus don’t pay enough attention to the subject. A real teaching is to help students remove such obstacles to realize their limitations and then explore it with eagerness.

Hi, Ashish, Thanks for your reply. You really have a lot of back up plans But here is one problem I find with direct response in class: some students may be too sky (or it takes more time for them) to come up the answer on the spot. So generally they may get discouraged by that. But I think, it also depends on the class size. We can pay special attention to them if its a small size. I am curious how it works in large class size, like 50+ students.

You post, like the reading of this week about Paulo Freire, raises teaching into another level of nurturing people. Teaching is not only about the knowledge, but also about the personality. Tolerance is one of the virtues that young generation seems have tossed to the wind. Tolerance is the key to move this r-evolution forward constructively. Otherwise, there would be too much conflict and fight.