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Chairman Mario: Impressive textbook doodles from Asia
08.22.2013
06:10 pm
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Depending on the subject, and my (lack of) interest in it, I spent whole timetables of my schooldays illustrating classroom textbooks with ink-stained superheroes wrestling parallelograms, isosceles triangles, and the redundant gerund. I considered myself as a fraternal pen-pal to Nigel Molesworth of the Lower Third, filling in the gaps of my education the teachers seemed determined to leave out.

Some of these doodles are wonderful, others less so. But where I’ve always thought of the abandoned doodle as something to be drawn and then left for another generation to discover, erase, amend, and (hopefully) enjoy, today’s doodles are preserved by smart ‘phone and shared on-line. Personally, I prefer the anonymity, transience, and even the surprise of finding smudged, thumbnail sketches carefully hidden in the pages of old textbooks.
 
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More textbook drawings, after the jump…
 
Via hamusoku
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.22.2013
06:10 pm
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Angry student schools lazy teacher on how to do her job
05.08.2013
05:52 pm
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This kid deserves a medal for sticking up for what’s right and what’s wrong with America’s educational system. Good for you, dude with the nice hair.

According to an alleged fellow student in the YouTube comments, the young man in the video was seen getting high-fives after school.

 
Via reddit

Posted by Tara McGinley
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05.08.2013
05:52 pm
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Winona Ryder in High School
04.10.2013
08:54 am
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Winona Ryder in high school.

“I was wearing an old Salvation Army shop boy’s suit. As I went to the bathroom I heard people saying, ‘Hey, faggot’. They slammed my head into a locker. I fell to the ground and they started to kick the shit out of me. I had to have stitches. The school kicked me out, not the bullies.

“Years later, I went to a coffee shop and I ran into one of the girls who’d kicked me, and she said, ‘Winona, Winona, can I have your autograph?’ And I said, ‘Do you remember me? Remember in seventh grade you beat up that kid?’ And she said, ‘Kind of’. And I said, ‘That was me. Go fuck yourself.’”

 
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Via Call Me Walter Gripp and Non-Blonde
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.10.2013
08:54 am
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There’s no homework in Finland
03.17.2013
11:19 am
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No homework in Finland. Apparently.
 
Via On-line Classes
 
More homework, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.17.2013
11:19 am
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A stark reminder of why we must pay our teachers more
02.04.2013
02:35 pm
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“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”—George Bush

Redditor ClaraRinker uploaded this image with the subject: “My 5-year-old came home with this assignment on Friday. Nearly stroked out trying to read it.”

ClaraRinker then wrote in the thread, “Dad brought it in this morning and showed it to the director, who wouldn’t tell him who wrote it but did say that the person responsible has a Bachelor’s in Education. Ahem.”

Oh dear…

Via reddit

Posted by Tara McGinley
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02.04.2013
02:35 pm
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Do Anything You Want To Do: England’s Beat School, from 1961

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Established by James East in the 1950s, Burgess Hill School (aka the Beat School) in Hertfordshire, England, allowed its pupils to do what they wanted, in the belief this was the best way for youngsters to learn. Rules were frowned upon, and “Tradition,” it was claimed, “was clinging to the dead past.” Even smoking in class was tolerated, for as Headmaster East explained to Time Magazine in 1962:

“Kids always smoke, and I’d rather know about it than have it done in secret.”

Such openness encouraged the young uns to fulfill their potential, and find happiness in doing so, which is how it should be.

Like the best of the British Pathe clips, this short clip on Burgess Hill Beat School leaves you wanting to know more. What happened to the school? Did the experiment of a Beat School work? What did these children grow up to do? Where are they now? It would make for an interesting documentary on BBC 4, and one hopes a dozen researchers are penning such a proposal right now.

A longer 4 minutes clip is viewable here.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.20.2012
07:59 pm
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I-Spy Books
07.09.2011
05:40 pm
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I started off with the Famous Five, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Gerry Anderson, Edith Piaf, Spiderman, Geoff Love and Big Chief I-Spy.

Big Chief I-Spy was Charles Warrell, a retired headmaster who started a series of spotter’s guides in the mid-1950’s called I-Spy. There were some forty volumes, which were intended to encourage young British children to take an interest in the outside world.

Each book focussed on one subject - I-Spy Creepy Crawlies, I-Spy Birds, I-Spy Working Vehicles, I-Spy Trees, I-Spy Wild Flowers, you get the picture, pocket books with various things to “spy”, with pictures, information and a few dotted lines to be filled with where you saw them. 

Once all the contents had been marked up, the book was returned to the Big Chief (c/o his address at “Wigwam by the River”), who then sent you a feather and an order of merit. The I-Spy books lasted from the 1950s-1980s, and hundreds of thousands were sold to enquiring youngsters. In 1991 they were relaunched by Michelin, and again in 2009.

I’ve always thought it probable that the I-Spy books led to a generation of youngster taking greater interest in their environment, who then went on to become involved in various ecological or political groups. Charles Warrell died in 1995, at the age of 106, which suggests an active mind keeps you young.

The publisher and writer, Callum James uploaded these original I-Spy covers onto his website Front Free Endpaper, which is worth dipping into for its interesting book collections.
 
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Via Front Free Endpaper
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.09.2011
05:40 pm
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‘Dating Do’s and Don’ts’ from 1949
06.03.2011
06:19 pm
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Dating Do’s and Don’ts is a classic educational film on dating etiquette from the 1940s, which looks rather like a series of Norman Rockwell paintings interpreted by David Lynch.

The film follows teenage-virgin-about-town, Woody, who after receiving an invite for “one couple” to the Hi Teen Carnival, has to decide through a series of multi-choice options, who ask out, how to ask them out, and finally, how to say goodnight. I flunked on all three questions, see if you can do better.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.03.2011
06:19 pm
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GOOD: How the Web Liberalized Liberal Arts Education
11.19.2009
04:43 pm
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As a companion to the story about the UCLA near-riots, here’s a DIY education chaser courtesy of GOOD magazine.

We live with an economy and country where education is increasingly becoming either priced out of availability or a lifelong financial ball-and-chain turning students into indentured servants to the state that has paid for their education?

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.19.2009
04:43 pm
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