La familia y la felicidad personal, lo más importante para la "generación global"

Tienen entre 10 y 24 años, y se criaron en un mundo interconectado; qué piensan, qué valoran y cómo imaginan el futuro; acceda a la infografía animada y al video

Lunes 31 de enero de 2011 

La nueva generación valora las amistades de marcada maneraFoto: Archivo

 

Por José Di Bártolo
De la redacción de lanacion.com
jdibartolo@lanacion.com.ar

Se trata de los integrantes de la primera generación global de la historia. Son aquellos adolescentes y jóvenes argentinos que hoy tienen entre 10 y 24 años, y que son considerados de tal manera por tener la posibilidad de conectarse con todo el mundo a través de Internet. Un hijo, un hermano, un primo, un sobrino, un nieto, un amigo, por lo general, todos conocemos a alguien que esté dentro de esta franja de edades. ¿Qué es lo que realmente les importa?
Diversos estudios realizados por la consultora TNS y la Universidad de Palermo reflejan los rasgos que identifican de forma general a este franja etaria. Los cinco que más se destacan son: la pertenencia familiar, la búsqueda de la felicidad, la necesidad de ser autónomos, el rechazo por la política y sus hábitos culturales.
A pesar de lo mucho que se suele resaltar en la actualidad que la familia no significa lo mismo que décadas atrás, para la nueva generación es la institución más valorada con altos niveles de satisfacción, según los datos obtenidos. Un 99% de los encuestados asegura que es importante para la vida cotidiana.
Otro factor que se resalta sobre la media de las respuestas es la valoración por la autonomía individual. "Esto tiene que ver con la crianza de los chicos y como esta va evolucionando. Hoy todo pasa por lo que ellos deciden. Es un fenómeno que cada vez va tomando mayor preponderancia", aseguró a lanacion.com Gabriel Foglia, decano de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas de la Universidad de Palermo. Más del 90% de los consultados en los estudios responden afirmativamente a la frase: "Procuro ser yo mismo más que seguir a los demás" y un 84% a: "Decido por mí mismo los objetivos para mi vida".
Nueve de cada diez de ellos se ven a sí mismos como personas felices, observa el estudio y añade el alto grado de optimismo que tienen en diferentes áreas. "La mayoría piensa que, por ejemplo, los años venideros serán mejores que los anteriores", confió Constanza Cilley, directora de TNS. "Es una generación muy marcada por la crisis de 2001 y su concepción del corto, mediano y largo plazo es muy distinta a otras. Hoy se busca el resultado al instante", aseguró por su parte Foglia.
Apolíticos. A pesar de todas las nuevas manifestaciones de la participación de los jóvenes en la política, el interés que tiene esta generación es escaso. Según el informe, un 83% de los encuestados dice interesarle poco o nada. También un 87% asegura que no le atañe ningún partido o agrupación y la misma cantidad no se siente identificado por ningún líder político.


Hábitos culturales. ¿Qué hacen hoy los jóvenes argentinos en su tiempo libre? El informe revela que las actividades más populares que llevan adelante los integrantes de la "generación global" son: mirar televisión (96%), escuchar música (88%), escuchar radio (67%), usar Internet (39%) y hacer deportes (27%). Mientras las que generan menos atracción son ir al cine (2%), visitar exposiciones o museos (1%) y asistir a teatros (1%).
Para ésta generación, la televisión argentina es, en general, muy buena para el 55% de los encuestados, mientras que es regular para el 31% y muy mala para el 13%. El género preferido con el 39% son las telenovelas seguidos por los programas de entretenimiento o juegos con un 31% y deportes con 29%.
El uso de Internet se posiciona levemente sobre la preferencia de hacer deportes para los más jóvenes. Un 68% asegura utiliza la red para chatear, mientras que un 34% lo hace para realizar tareas del colegio o la facultad y un 33% para mirar videos.
Cómo se realizó la encuesta. Los estudios realizados por la Universidad de Palermo y TNS Gallup fueron llevados a cabos entre 2008 y 2010. Sobre un total de casi 900 casos de una población de 10 a 24 años en todo el país, en base a entrevistas personales domiciliarias. Estos son los principales resultados de los informes producidos:
- Lo que a ellos les importa
- Los adolescentes y la política
- Los adolescentes y los hábitos culturales
- Los jóvenes argentinos y su futuro económico
- La tecnología según los jóvenes argentinos
- Las empresas según los jóvenes argentinos

Scientific Literacy and Student Attitudes: Perspectives from PISA 2006 science

Please ensure that any spam filtering is set to accept emails from @informaworld.com to ensure our email alerts reach you. hide Please choose the type of alert you would like:     New Issue Alert - New issues of International Journal of Science Education will trigger an alert     iFirst Alert - New iFirst articles in International Journal of Science Education will trigger an alert Note: To be alerted to new content in all related publications, please click on one of the subject areas below and select create alert. [ hide ]

Authors: Rodger Bybeea; Barry McCraea Abstract International assessments provide important knowledge about science education and help inform decisions about policies, programmes, and practices in participating countries. In 2006, science was the primary domain for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), supported by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and conducted by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). Compared to the school curriculum orientation of Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), PISA provides a perspective that emphasises the application of knowledge to science and technology-related life situations. The orientation of PISA includes both knowledge and attitudes as these contribute to students' competencies that are central to scientific literacy. In addition to students' knowledge and competencies, the 2006 PISA survey gathered data on students' interest in science, support for scientific enquiry, and responsibility towards resources and environments. The survey used both a non-contextualised student questionnaire and contextualised questions. The latter is an innovative approach which embedded attitudinal questions at the conclusion of about two-thirds of the test units. The results presented in this article make connections between students' attitudes and interests in science and scientific literacy. International Journal of science education

The 'Fierce Urgency of Now': It's Time to Close the Gap:Narrowing Race and Culture Gaps Between Students and Teachers

 January 26, 2011

By Eric Cooper & Yvette Jackson

The recent national conversation about our K-12 schools has done a remarkable job of reducing complex issues to simple choices: Failed traditional public schools or successful charter schools? Ineffective union teachers or excellent nonunion teachers?
And the list goes on—though not for very long.
The truth is that these conversations are the easy ones and not the ones that will solve the real challenges in underperforming schools. Just below the surface are far more perplexing issues of race and culture that continue to leave students of color behind academically and economically.
To be sure, the nation has made the performance of students of color a priority, at least in terms of tracking and documenting student achievement so that schools can’t hide behind top performers. But the focus on accountability that made closing academic achievement gaps a national priority has revealed another chasm that is harder to measure and equally pervasive.
Teachers in urban classrooms often feel unable to connect with students of color or students from cultures different from their own. This cultural and relationship gap is one of the biggest barriers to helping students of color reach their intellectual and academic potential. The teacher’s role is especially important for students who face daunting family circumstances and primarily depend on school for their intellectual and character development.
We know this because for 20 years teachers have been telling us so, asking for our help, and thanking us when they connect with students in ways that promote student growth and confidence. Students also know this. In survey after survey, students say they want caring adult relationships and teachers who understand them and their communities.
Nearly a decade ago, the No Child Left Behind Act offered hope for pushing through such barriers by pressuring states to revamp teacher preparation, define quality teaching, and put a high-quality teacher in every classroom. But today, just as surely as NCLB remains on the books, its goals for teaching are more an aspiration than a reality—particularly for African-American and Latino students. That is because neither NCLB nor resulting professional development has focused sufficiently on systemic ways to help teachers fully respond to the needs and identify the strengths of culturally and racially diverse students.
Today, far too many students of color sit in classrooms waiting for opportunities that will elicit and nurture their attention, creativity, and intellectual potential. They long to excel beyond the potential that their schools, teachers, and other adults see in them. But while they wait, many will see their skills atrophy, perpetuating the serious issues of underachievement by students of color.

Today, far too many students of color sit in classrooms waiting for opportunities that will elicit and nurture their attention, creativity, and intellectual potential.

We can end their waiting by acknowledging that teachers often do not feel qualified to bridge gaps in experience and background with students in ways that draw out students’ strengths, make connections with them, and maximize their potential. This doesn’t mean that these teachers are “bad” or can’t succeed with some students, but instead that these educators need new strategies and ways of thinking.
There is a lot we can do right away, starting with how we as a nation approach professional development. We must:
• Shift the perspective of teachers and schools so they no longer see students primarily as test scores and put too much focus on their weaknesses. Teachers need practices that help identify, affirm, and build on student strengths, using “dynamic” assessments and observations on how learners approach rigorous content. When students and teachers learn that a relentless focus on increasingly complex content is ultimately more important than the grades students receive, the more successful students become.
• Help teachers who feel unprepared to meet the needs of students of color or economically disadvantaged students. Classroom relationships are especially challenging for many of these teachers. Not knowing what is meaningful and relevant to students and misunderstanding reasons for their underperformance intensifies these challenges.
• Give teachers strategies that connect learning with the lives of their students. This will help students understand concepts and other classroom material and, just as importantly, allow them to demonstrate understanding and build their confidence.
• Design professional development that is part of long-term learning objectives that are embedded in curriculum, creates high expectations on a daily basis, engages students in the professional development with their teachers, and provides strategies and accountability measures to meet these expectations.
• Provide greater leadership. Too few principals are adequately involved in professional development, and the result is a gap between leadership, support, and lasting momentum.
We must be realistic about the challenges teachers face. It is not easy to believe that a 5th grader who is reading at the 2nd grade level and inattentive is going to be at grade level any time soon without extensive support. But the wrong assumption is that the student doesn’t care or doesn’t want to participate or learn. Instead, it may take a structured conversation with that student, a survey of personal interests, or a connection between learning and the real world. The barriers can be broken down.
If a teacher finds that the student was rarely read to outside of school, then someone should read to him. If that student loves exploration, then someone can read to him about exploration and the academics embedded in the texts. But don’t stop there. Once he’s interested, get him to talk about his interest and then expose him to virtual field trips to prepare a presentation on exploration using multimedia resources.
The next part of this journey unfolds when the students are assigned increasingly complex projects in which they mentor others. In this way, the goal is not the grade or a test score, but sustained effort. This kind of effort helps students and teachers get beyond “stereotype threats”—the destructive forces that encourage students to play down to lowest expectations, particularly widely held beliefs about their intelligence.
Re-evaluating how we address the needs of students of color is not an option. Today, on average, 55 percent of black and brown Americans graduate from high school, while the graduation rate for white Americans is approximately 78 percent. Sadly, many of those students who drop out end up going to prison. Nearly two-thirds of America’s inmates are people of color.
We can do better if we recognize that wide-scale improvement cannot be boiled down to simple choices between options that promise pockets of excellence. There are some 3.5 million teachers in the United States. Real change will mean engaging all of them—and especially those in urban centers who are seeking help.
Only then will we begin to break down barriers to high intellectual achievement that otherwise will condemn another generation of brown and black children to poverty or worse. Unfortunately, for these children, society has created circumstances where failure is an option. This will continue if that is the option we adults allow. We can do more, though we must do it now. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us of this when he spoke of the “fierce urgency of now.” Collectively we can do it. We must do it.

Eric Cooper is the president and founder of the nonprofit National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, in Syosset, N.Y. Yvette Jackson is the organization’s chief executive officer.

Wanted: Ways to Assess the Majority of Teachers

 February 2, 2011

By Stephen Sawchuk

The debate about “value added” measures of teaching may be the most divisive topic in teacher-quality policy today. It has generated sharp-tongued exchanges in public forums, in news stories, and on editorial pages. And it has produced enough policy briefs to fell whole forests.

But for most of the nation’s teachers, who do not teach subjects or grades in which value-added data are available, that debate is also largely irrelevant.

Now, teachers’ unions, content-area experts, and administrators in many states and communities are hard at work examining measures that could be used to weigh teachers’ contributions to learning in subjects ranging from career and technical education to art, music, and history—the subjects, in other words, that are far less frequently tested.
The work, which has taken place quietly, in contrast to the larger value-added conversation, is renewing interest in alternative sources of achievement information.
“A standardized test is very useful to take a snapshot of the inventory of knowledge and skills that a student has, but it’s not as useful to change teacher practice and improve strategies and determine what needs to happen next,” said Laura Goe, a principal investigator for the federally financed National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, who has worked with several states on teacher evaluations.
Such work is also giving way to questions about how to make sure that alternative measures—such as projects, portfolios scored according to guidelines, and classroom-based assessments—are both rich sources of data and provide comparable information about teachers and their impact on student learning.
“I would say this has been a very challenging area because it’s so high-risk in a sense,” said Lawrence T. Waite, the program manager of a teacher-evaluation initiative housed at the New York State United Teachers, or NYSUT. “Using growth is new. Certainly, teachers look at student learning every day, but we’re now doing this to look at teachers’ impact on student learning, which raises the stakes on the use of that assessment instrument.”

Gauging Evaluations

Charged with using multiple measures for evaluating teachers, states and district are mulling over methods for estimating the impact of teachers on student learning.
STUDENT-LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Individual teachers, or sometimes teams, set goals for student growth, subject to certain parameters, with their principals. The goals are approved by principals and audited using agreed-upon assessments.
Used for bonus-pay systems in:
• Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C.
• Austin, Texas
• Denver
Used for professional development by:
• Teach For America (goals set with program directors)
Used for teacher evaluation in:
• Rhode Island
COMMON GROWTH MEASURES
Committees of teachers review a variety of measures of student growth and make recommendations to either the district or state, which approves a list for each subject and grade. Measures have comparability across classrooms and/or districts.
• Albany City, Hempstead, Marlboro, North Syracuse, and Plattsburgh school districts, N.Y.
• Delaware
STANDARDS-BASED TESTS
Pre- and post-course tests aligned to standards are developed in most subjects and grades. Results are comparable across the district.
• Hillsborough County, Fla.
• District of Columbia (planned)
SCHOOLWIDE STUDENT GROWTH
Under this system, teachers in nontested grades and subjects have their student-growth targets based on schoolwide growth on state standardized tests or on another schoolwide index.
• Teacher Advancement Program
• Tennessee (interim recommendation)

SOURCE: Education Week

If the debate seems wonkish and academic, the consequences are anything but. In a wave of legislative action last year, nearly a dozen states took steps to require teacher-evaluation systems to consider evidence of students’ academic growth.
Value-added measures rely on state standardized tests to generate the individual teacher estimates and are typically available only in reading and mathematics in grades 4-8.
One widely cited statistic puts the proportion of those who teach in nontested grades and subjects at about 70 percent, but technical issues can push the figure much higher. Under the District of Columbia’s IMPACT teacher-evaluation system, just 15 percent of teachers have individual value-added data, according to school district officials.
And because legislation in several states, including New York, Rhode Island, and Tennessee, requires evaluations to weigh multiple measures of a teacher’s contribution to student learning, all teachers in those states will need more than just value-added statistics to show that they are effective.

Bringing Teams Together

In New York and Rhode Island, the American Federation of Teachers has played a role in helping shape all aspects of 10 districts’ teacher-evaluation frameworks.
Through a $5 million federal Investing in Innovation grant, as well as a cut of the AFT’s own Innovation Fund program, the union has brought together teams of education leaders from participating districts. Each team consisted of the superintendent, teachers’ union president, and other representatives, including classroom teachers.
“Our group was excited and exhilarated and scared to death, all at once,” said Cathy Corbo, the president of the local teachers’ union in Albany, one of the districts participating in the work. “The process has been pretty intense.”
NYSUT, the state affiliate overseeing the grant, brought in 20 additional content-area teachers to help guide the work of developing measures for non-tested grades and subjects. The teachers discussed textbook units, teacher-made assessments, district exams, and New York state’s Regents exams, among other things.
In some subjects, tools now used for other purposes could potentially be adapted. History teachers, for instance, could gauge students’ progress at making connections between primary- and secondary-source documents, using Advancement Placement materials.
Officials have found that such examples often come with a catch. “What we found is that many of those assessments were measuring the endpoint and not the beginning point [of student learning],” said Mr. Waite of NYSUT. “Then the teachers had to grapple with, if the Regents exam is going to be the final test, what would be the pretest?”

Devising Frameworks

Certain subjects, like physical education, writing, art, and career-tech fields are more performance-based and would likely require performance assessments to become part of the mix of measures.
In the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district in North Carolina, a performance-pay program in 20 schools helps teachers, in consultation with their principals, set a rigorous achievement goal for their students and select or craft a variety of assessments to determine if they’ve met that goal, including performance measures.
At West Mecklenburg High School, for instance, Christine E. Kapakos, a teacher of culinary arts and family and consumer sciences, has developed a yardstick to gauge students’ knife skills. It measures aspects like knife safety, technique, and whether students can perform a variety of cuts from julienne to rondel with uniformity.
“They are such an important part of what we do in culinary,” Ms. Kapakos said. “I feel I’m trying to train students to get a job, so what do employers look for? They look at how well they handle knives, at their speed.”
Teachers in the district can use evidence of student progress on such measures to fulfill aspects of the state’s teacher evaluation, though there is as yet no formal link between the two.
Student learning objectives are among the more heavily studied options for measuring teacher impact on learning. Studies have shown a correlation between teachers’ crafting of rigorous learning objectives—pioneered as part of Denver’s ProComp system—and higher performance by their students.
“They’re a very precise process, intended to evoke critical and evidence-based thought about a teacher’s students and lead to objectives for student growth,” said William J. Slotnik, the executive director of the Community Assistance and Training Center, which helped in the development of ProComp and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg pay plan. “It’s trying to bring a higher level of science to a practice—goal-setting—that’s existed in districts for a long time.”
Rhode Island, which is adopting student-learning objectives as part of its teacher-evaluation system, will be among the first states to use them formally for teacher accountability.

Comparability at Issue

One of the thornier issues the states and districts are confronting has to do with vetting the measures for wide-scale use.
Rules in states like New York and guidelines for the federal Race to the Top competition, which is also helping to pay for much of the teacher-evaluation work around the nation, stress the comparability of measures across classrooms. That could be a harder goal to achieve with individually set student-learning objectives than measures that are adopted districtwide or statewide.
For New York districts involved in the AFT grant, the recommended measures will go through several more reviews by NYSUT teachers before they are made available to the districts to use in their teacher-evaluation systems, said Mr. Waite. Presumably, the agreed-upon measures will be identical for all teachers who share a course or grade.
State officials in Delaware have taken a similar approach to vetting measures. A work group of teachers there is evaluating and will make recommendations on measures to the state, which will approve a selection. Then, groups of teachers in the relevant subjects will take the lead in ensuring that the measures are implemented consistently across classrooms.
The importance of comparability from classroom to classroom is one of the reasons that leaders in the Hillsborough County, Fla., district are relying on end-of-course tests, first developed in the 1980s, to supply most of the teacher-growth information for use in the district’s teacher-evaluation system. The district recently added pre- and post-test measures to the courses to accord with a state performance-pay plan.

“It’s important to have that consistency,” said MaryEllen Elia, the superintendent of the 191,000-student district, about the end-of-course tests. “If we determine this is the level of excellence in our district, it’s important to know exactly where you are. It provides a context to see how you’re doing relative to others in similar classrooms.”

Challenges Await

Some areas remain a challenge to address.
Ms. Corbo of Albany said that among her union’s members, finding appropriate techniques for assessing teachers of students with disabilities remains a key concern, as does ensuring teachers aren’t penalized for the demographic makeup of their classes.
Finally, the officials say that collecting information on the validity and reliability of the measures will be especially important, given that many of them haven’t been used for teacher evaluation.
“You have to spend time looking at the properties of the measure,” said Ms. Goe of the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality. “Is it something that is going to give us useful information, or is it going to be another ‘widget effect,’ where everyone comes out looking good?”
Education Week

Estimating the Returns to Urban Boarding Schools: Evidence from SEED

Use a mirror    (809 K)

Vilsa E. Curto, Roland G. Fryer, Jr. NBER Working Paper No. 16746 Issued in January 2011 The SEED schools, which combine a "No Excuses'' charter model with a five-day-a-week boarding program, are America's only urban public boarding schools for the poor. We provide the first causal estimate of the impact of attending SEED schools on academic achievement, with the goal of understanding whether changing a student's environment through boarding is a cost-effective strategy to increase achievement among the poor. Using admission lotteries, we show that attending a SEED school increases achievement by 0.198 standard deviations in reading and 0.230 standard deviations in math, per year of attendance. Despite these relatively large impacts, the return on investment in SEED is less than five percent due to the substantial costs of boarding. Similar "No Excuses'' charter schools -- without a boarding option -- have a return on investment of over eighteen percent. This paper is available as PDF (809 K) or via email.

Under Pressure: Job Security, Resource Allocation, and Productivity in Schools Under no child left behind

Use a mirror    (241 K)

Randall Reback, Jonah Rockoff, Heather L. Schwartz NBER Working Paper No. 16745 Issued in January 2011 NBER Program(s):   ED The most sweeping federal education law in decades, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, requires states to administer standardized exams and to punish schools that do not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the fraction of students passing these exams. While the literature on school accountability is well-established, there exists no nationwide study of the strong short-term incentives created by NCLB for schools on the margin of failing AYP. We assemble the first comprehensive, national, school-level dataset concerning detailed performance measures used to calculate AYP, and demonstrate that idiosyncrasies in state policies create numerous cases where schools near the margin for satisfying their own state’s AYP requirements would have almost certainly failed or almost certainly made AYP if they were located in other states. Using this variation as a means of identification, we examine the impact of NCLB on the behavior of school personnel and students’ academic achievement in nationally representative samples. We find that accountability pressure from NCLB lowers teachers’ perceptions of job security and causes untenured teachers in high-stakes grades to work longer hours than their peers. We also find that NCLB pressure has either neutral or positive effects on students’ enjoyment of learning and their achievement gains on low-stakes exams in reading, math, and science. This paper is available as PDF (241 K) or via email.

Non-Production Benefits of Education: Crime, Health, and Good Citizenship

Use a mirror    (504 K)

Lance Lochner NBER Working Paper No. 16722 Issued in January 2011 gests that education offers a wide-range of benefits that extend beyond increases in labor market productivity. Improvements in education can lower crime, improve health, and increase voting and democratic participation. This chapter reviews recent developments on these ‘non-production’ benefits of education with an emphasis on contributions made by economists. This paper is available as PDF (504 K) or via email.

Para estudiar es mejor hacer tests que repasar

Practicar lo aprendido con pruebas cortas refuerza la memoria, según los expertos

MALEN R. DE ELVIRA - Madrid - 30/01/2011

 El tiempo que los estudiantes invierten en releer o revisar sus notas y material de enseñanza para aprender estaría mejor invertido en hacer tests periódicamente, según un experimento reciente. Los estudiantes que leyeron un texto sobre un tema científico y luego se hicieron una prueba para recuperar de la memoria lo que habían leído recordaron una semana después un 50% más que los que utilizaron cualquiera de otros dos métodos distintos.

Con el texto delante los alumnos creen que saben más de lo que retienen

En dos estudios distintos, participó un total de 200 estudiantes. Se utilizaron tres métodos: la lectura simple o repetida de un texto, la lectura con el complemento de elaborar mapas de concepto (un método de codificación que consiste en hacer diagramas de las conexiones de lo que se estudia) y la lectura y posterior práctica de la recuperación de los conceptos estudiados. Esto último consistió en que, sin el texto delante, los estudiantes escribieron lo que recordaban de este de forma libre en 10 minutos. A la semana se les hizo a todos un corto test para comprobar lo que recordaban.
Los dos primeros métodos son muy populares y hacen creer a los estudiantes que aprenden mejor de lo que lo hacen en realidad, creen estos expertos. "Cuando los estudiantes tienen el material delante, creen que lo conocen mejor de lo que lo conocen de verdad", explica Jeffrey Karpicke, psicólogo de la Universidad Purdue (EE UU), que ha dirigido el trabajo, publicado en la revista Science. "Muchos estudiantes no se dan cuenta de que guardar el material y practicar el recuerdo es una estrategia de estudio muy potente".
"Este trabajo es interesante en la medida en que revela que mucha riqueza en la adquisición de información no es algo necesariamente positivo, aunque estuvo de moda en educación. De hecho, centrarse en cómo recordar la información relevante parece claramente mejor para afianzar el aprendizaje, al menos a medio plazo", opina Roberto Colom, catedrático de Psicología de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Sin embargo, este experto encuentra un problema en este trabajo: "El test de conocimientos se produce con una semana de separación del evento de aprendizaje, por lo que se abre la posibilidad de que a más largo plazo los efectos de los métodos utilizados se inviertan, algo que puede ocurrir fácilmente".
Karpicke reconoce que el estudio elaborado (con codificación) es bueno para aprender, pero cree que la recuperación es aún mejor. Sin embargo, reconoce que están viendo la forma de combinar ambos métodos.
Colom cree que sería lo mejor, porque "contraponer los procesos de codificación y de recuperación es bastante poco inteligente". "Sería mucho más relevante probar el efecto combinado de ambos", dice.

Educação: a hora e a vez das crianças, Isaac Roitman

» ISAAC ROITMAN Professor aposentado da Universidade de Brasília, coordenador do Grupo de Trabalho de Educação da Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência e membro titular da Academia Brasileira de Ciências

Durante a campanha, o governador do Distrito Federal, Agnelo Queiroz, afirmou: "A primeira infância será prioridade absoluta do meu governo". Eleito, tomou uma decisão pioneira no país, criando a Secretaria da Criança, nomeando como seu titular Dioclécio Campos Junior, ex-presidente da Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria. O atual presidente dessa entidade, Eduardo da Silva Vaz, enviou carta ao governador apoiando a iniciativa dizendo: "2011 já chega trazendo uma ótima notícia para as crianças da capital, que certamente repercutirá em todo o país. Receba os entusiamados parabéns dos pediatras do Brasil. Conte conosco e com os nossos projetos na jornada que ora se inicia".
Essa será uma oportunidade para que o Distrito Federal possa ser o paradigma do Programa Nacional de Educação Infantil (Pronei), que é destinado à expansão rápida e ao funcionamento de creches e pré-escolas. O programa pretende garantir desde a nutrição saudável como a prática de atividades educativas apropriadas. Essa será a base da democracia no país - a oportunidade de uma educação de qualidade para todas as crianças brasileiras.
Os trabalhos conduzidos pelo professor James Heckman, Prêmio Nobel de Economia, e pelo professor Flávio Cunha, da Fundação Getulio Vargas, permitem afirmar que não há investimento mais seguro, nem de retorno econômico mais garantido para a sociedade, do que aquele realizado em saúde e educação da primeira infância. Em dezembro de 2009 Heckman, participou do seminário internacional Educação na Primeira Infância, promovido pela Academia Brasileira de Ciências e pela Fundação Getulio Vargas. Segundo Heckman, cada dólar investido na educação da primeira infância dará retorno de nove doláres para a sociedade. Sobre o sistema educacional brasileiro ele assim se manifestou: "Colocar mais crianças na escola, como tem feito o Brasil, é bom. Melhorar a qualidade do ensino é ainda melhor. Mas essas duas iniciativas, por mais bem executadas que sejam, não chegarão a fazer muita diferença se não for tomado um cuidado extra: investir também nas crianças de até 3 anos de idade, a chamada primeira infância. Um programa de primeira infância de qualidade para a população carente é uma condição necessária para avançarmos em direção a uma sociedade mais educada, igualitária e, sobretudo, menos violenta".
O professor Aloísio Araújo, da Fundação Getulio Vargas, coordenador do seminário, defende a prioridade da educação para crianças de até 3 anos, baseado nos estudos de neurociência que mostram que o cérebro se forma muito cedo. Segundo ele, se a criança não recebe certos estímulos nessa fase em que se estabelecem as conexões neurais, ela dificilmente vai recuperar isso depois. Atividades apropriadas podem ser conduzidas no ambiente familiar, transformando os pais no primeiro e no professor favorito. Esses deverão receber orientação adequada independentemente da classe social.
Na educação das crianças menores de 6 anos em creches e pré-escolas, as relações culturais, sociais e familiares devem ser valorizadas, grantindo os direitos das crianças ao bem-estar, à expressão, ao movimento, à segurança e à brincadeira. A orientação pedagógica para essas crianças devem ter origem nelas mesmas, conhecendo o que produzem e ouvindo-as.
A nova Secretaria da Criança no Distrito Federal poderá desempenhar papel importante no estabelecimento de políticas públicas para a educação da primeira infância. Os resultados positivos que, certamente, serão obtidos, após criteriosa avaliação poderão ser expandidos para todo o Brasil. As futuras gerações de brasileiros serão os beneficiados dos acertos que temos a oportunidade de fazer agora pelas crianças do Distrito Federal. Boa sorte e longa vida para a recém-criada Secretaria da Criança.
Correio Brasiliense

Teacher seniority rule in New York

Bloomberg Presses Cuomo on

Teacher Seniority Rule

By MICHAEL BARBARO and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

 January 30, 2011

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Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg set up his first major confrontation with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Sunday, publicly demanding that he use his coming state budget to reverse a rule that protects long-serving teachers from layoffs, regardless of merit.

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Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wants Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to use the state budget to change seniority rules for teachers.

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Pool photo by Shannon Decelle

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is to release his budget proposal on Tuesday.

In a bluntly worded speech delivered at a politically influential black church, Mr. Bloomberg said current state law could force him to fire every teacher hired by the city over the last five years, 15,000 in all.
The mayor said that if, as widely expected, the governor’s office proposes deep cuts to the city’s education spending this week, it must give the city flexibility in determining which teachers to lay off. Right now, it must fire new teachers first.
“I say enough with Albany rules,” Mr. Bloomberg said at the church, the Christian Cultural Center in Flatlands, Brooklyn. “You just cannot do this. If the governor’s budget contains education cuts, it must also contain changes to the law so that we can take merit into account when making these difficult decisions.”
Aides to Mr. Cuomo said he opposed scrapping the teacher seniority rules in his budget, to be released on Tuesday, because it was not a fiscal issue. They added that the budget was unlikely to make teacher cuts necessary.
Predicting deep cuts at this stage of a marathon budget process may be premature: Mr. Bloomberg, among other politicians, frequently warns of massive layoffs that never materialize.
Yet his remarks may have been more significant in what they revealed about the relationship between the mayor and the new governor. Mr. Bloomberg endorsed Mr. Cuomo during the governor’s race last fall, has spoken warmly about him since, and emphasized Sunday that he considered him a friend. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, often cited the endorsement by Mr. Bloomberg as evidence of the bipartisan character of his campaign. And both have agendas that bring them into conflict with New York’s public-sector unions, including the teachers’ unions.
But Mr. Bloomberg has made overhauling education a top priority and has made little secret of his disdain for what he portrays as archaic, union-backed rules that impinge on his ability to control the school system.
Mr. Cuomo, however, may not wish to further inflame teachers’ unions, which have long supported the seniority rules. He is already seeking to impose a cap on local property taxes, a priority that teachers fiercely oppose because it could deprive schools of revenue.
Many have viewed a clash between Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Cuomo as inevitable: the mayor, a billionaire and national figure who has entertained presidential aspirations, is one of the few people in the state who can seriously rival Mr. Cuomo for power and influence.
The mayor’s bargaining power may be limited, though. Mr. Cuomo’s popularity is very high, and aides say he has an unmistakable mandate from voters to reduce spending.
Mr. Bloomberg’s poll numbers, by contrast, are the lowest in years. And when it comes to education, he has suffered politically because of his choice of Cathleen P. Black as schools chancellor.
The timing and location of Mr. Bloomberg’s speech seemed deliberate and symbolic: He spoke to a mostly black audience led by the Rev. A. R. Bernard, whose political endorsement is highly coveted in New York.
The mayor told the congregation that state cuts to New York City’s education budget, cuts he has said could reach $1 billion, would disproportionately hurt poor neighborhoods, where schools tend to have the newest teachers because of high turnover.
“So we have to really do something about this,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Across this city, layoffs would send exactly the wrong message to our kids. You know, we tell them, ‘Work hard, play by the rules, you can rise as far as your talents can take you.’ And yet Albany rules say that when it comes to teaching, talent doesn’t matter, results don’t matter.”
Mr. Cuomo has signaled his openness to overhauling the seniority rule, known as “last in, first out” — but not within the budget.
Under the State Constitution, if Mr. Cuomo includes the provision in his executive budget proposal, the Legislature cannot remove it unless Mr. Cuomo consents to resubmitting his entire budget later this year.
As a result, Mr. Cuomo, a politician known to dislike being backed into a corner, would be far more formally committed to defending the change in seniority rules and have less ability to use it as a bargaining chip later.
A senior official in the Cuomo administration said that if the seniority rule were changed, its replacement would have to be “fair, rational criteria that will be the new rules of the road if layoffs are necessary.”
“We will be working on this issue through the budget process,” the official said, insisting on anonymity because the negotiations are confidential.
Aides to Mr. Bloomberg said he wanted the change in the governor’s budget to speed its adoption and emphasize its importance. “We believe that the budget is the one piece of legislation that is guaranteed to pass in Albany,” Howard Wolfson, a deputy mayor said. Asked why the city was pushing for the change now, he said the seniority rule had “significant implications for our budgeting process.”

Gender Gap in Wikipedia's contributor list

Define Gender Gap? Look Up

Wikipedia’s Contributor List

By NOAM COHEN

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In 10 short years, Wikipedia has accomplished some remarkable goals. More than 3.5 million articles in English? Done. More than 250 languages? Sure.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, with an assistant, James Owen.

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• Times Topic: Wikipedia

But another number has proved to be an intractable obstacle for the online encyclopedia: surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of its hundreds of thousands of contributors are women.
About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University.
Sue Gardner, the executive director of the foundation, has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015, but she is running up against the traditions of the computer world and an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women.
Her effort is not diversity for diversity’s sake, she says. “This is about wanting to ensure that the encyclopedia is as good as it could be,” Ms. Gardner said in an interview on Thursday. “The difference between Wikipedia and other editorially created products is that Wikipedians are not professionals, they are only asked to bring what they know.”
“Everyone brings their crumb of information to the table,” she said. “If they are not at the table, we don’t benefit from their crumb.”
With so many subjects represented — most everything has an article on Wikipedia — the gender disparity often shows up in terms of emphasis. A topic generally restricted to teenage girls, like friendship bracelets, can seem short at four paragraphs when compared with lengthy articles on something boys might favor, like, toy soldiers or baseball cards, whose voluminous entry includes a detailed chronological history of the subject.
Even the most famous fashion designers — Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo — get but a handful of paragraphs. And consider the disparity between two popular series on HBO: The entry on “Sex and the City” includes only a brief summary of every episode, sometimes two or three sentences; the one on “The Sopranos” includes lengthy, detailed articles on each episode.
Is a category with five Mexican feminist writers impressive, or embarrassing when compared with the 45 articles on characters in “The Simpsons”?
The notion that a collaborative, written project open to all is so skewed to men may be surprising. After all, there is no male-dominated executive team favoring men over women, as there can be in the corporate world; Wikipedia is not a software project, but more a writing experiment — an “exquisite corpse,” or game where each player adds to a larger work.
But because of its early contributors Wikipedia shares many characteristics with the hard-driving hacker crowd, says Joseph Reagle, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. This includes an ideology that resists any efforts to impose rules or even goals like diversity, as well as a culture that may discourage women.
“It is ironic,” he said, “because I like these things — freedom, openness, egalitarian ideas — but I think to some extent they are compounding and hiding problems you might find in the real world.”
Adopting openness means being “open to very difficult, high-conflict people, even misogynists,” he said, “so you have to have a huge argument about whether there is the problem.” Mr. Reagle is also the author of “Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia.”
Ms. Gardner, citing an example that resonates with her personally, pointed to the Wikipedia entry for one of her favorite authors, Pat Barker, which was a mere three paragraphs when she came across it. Ms. Barker is an acclaimed writer of psychologically nuanced novels, many set during World War I. She is 67 and lives in England.
By contrast, Niko Bellic had an article about five times as long as Ms. Barker’s at the time. It’s a question of demographics: Mr. Bellic is a character in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV; he is 30 and a former soldier.
The public is increasingly going to Wikipedia as a research source: According to a recent Pew survey, the percentage of all American adults who use the site to look for information increased to 42 percent in May 2010, from 25 percent in February 2007. This translates to 53 percent of adults who regularly use the Internet.
Jane Margolis, co-author of a book on sexism in computer science, “Unlocking the Clubhouse,” argues that Wikipedia is experiencing the same problems of the offline world, where women are less willing to assert their opinions in public. “In almost every space, who are the authorities, the politicians, writers for op-ed pages?” said Ms. Margolis, a senior researcher at the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the University of California, Los Angeles.
According to the OpEd Project, an organization based in New York that monitors the gender breakdown of contributors to “public thought-leadership forums,” a participation rate of roughly 85-to-15 percent, men to women, is common — whether members of Congress, or writers on The New York Times and Washington Post Op-Ed pages.
It would seem to be an irony that Wikipedia, where the amateur contributor is celebrated, is experiencing the same problem as forums that require expertise. But Catherine Orenstein, the founder and director of the OpEd Project, said many women lacked the confidence to put forth their views. “When you are a minority voice, you begin to doubt your own competencies,” she said.
She said her group had persuaded women to express themselves by urging them to shift the focus “away from oneself — ‘do I know enough, am I bragging?’ — and turn the focus outward, thinking about the value of your knowledge.”
Ms. Margolis said she was an advocate of recruiting women as a group to fields or forums where they are under-represented. That way, a solitary woman does not face the burden alone.
Ms. Gardner said that for now she was trying to use subtle persuasion and outreach through her foundation to welcome all newcomers to Wikipedia, rather than advocate for women-specific remedies like recruitment or quotas.
“Gender is a huge hot-button issue for lots of people who feel strongly about it,” she said. “I am not interested in triggering those strong feelings.”
Kat Walsh, a policy analyst and longtime Wikipedia contributor who was elected to the Wikimedia board, agreed that indirect initiatives would cause less unease in the Wikipedia community than more overt efforts.
But she acknowledged the hurdles: “The big problem is that the current Wikipedia community is what came about by letting things develop naturally — trying to influence it in another direction is no longer the easiest path, and requires conscious effort to change.”
Sometimes, conscious effort works. After seeing the short entry on Ms. Barker, Ms. Gardner added a substantial amount of background. During the same time, Niko Bellic’s page has grown by only a few sentences.

Scopes Weeps: Evolution Still Struggling in Public Schools

• By Lisa Grossman
• January 28, 2011  

Despite 80 years of court battles ousting creationism from public classrooms, most public high school biology teachers are not strong advocates for evolution.
While vocal advocates of intelligent design and similar non-scientific alternatives to evolution are a minority, more than half the teachers in a nationwide poll avoided taking a strong stance for evolution.
Such teachers “may play a far more important role in hindering scientific literacy in the United States than the smaller number of explicit creationists,” wrote Penn State political scientists Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, the poll’s architects, in a Jan. 28 Science paper.

Berkman and Plutzer, the authors of Evolution, Creationism and the Battle to Control America’s Classrooms, examined data from the National Survey of High School Biology Teachers, a representative sample of 926 biology teachers from across the country. They estimate that only 28 percent of those teachers consistently and “unabashedly” introduce evidence that evolution has happened, and build lesson plans with evolution as a unifying theme linking different topics in biology.
At the opposite extreme, 13 percent of teachers explicitly endorse creationism or intelligent design, and spend at least on hour of class time presenting it in a positive light. An additional 5 percent reported that they support creationism in passing or when answering students’ questions.

The remaining fraction of teachers, who Berkman and Plutzer dub the “cautious 60 percent,” avoids choosing sides. Often these teachers have not taken courses in evolutionary biology and lack confidence in their ability to answer questions from skeptical or hostile students and parents.
There are three popular strategies for evading controversy in the biology classroom, Berkman and Plutzer say. Some teachers focus on evolution at the molecular level, ignoring the idea that whole species of animals can evolve.
Some hide behind rigid state science tests, telling students “it does not matter if they actually ‘believe’ in evolution, so long as they know it for the test,” Berkman and Plutzer wrote.
Others present both sides and let students decide for themselves. This strategy respects high schoolers’ critical reasoning skills, but undervalues the scientific method.
“These teachers fail to explain the nature of scientific inquiry, undermine the authority of established experts, and legitimize creationist arguments, even if unintentionally,” Berkman and Plutzer wrote.
The researchers offer one major solution: Focus on teacher training. Teachers who have had a course in evolution are statistically far more likely to advocate for evolution in their classrooms. Making such a course mandatory for all incoming teachers could make those teachers more likely to accept and teach evolution.
An evolution requirement could have the spinoff benefit of driving out the avowed creationists, the researchers write.
“Programs directed at preservice teachers can therefore both reduce the number of evolution deniers in the nation’s classrooms, [and] increase the number who would gladly accept help in teaching evolution,” they wrote. “Combined with continued successes in courtrooms and the halls of state government, this approach offers our best chance of increasing the scientific literacy of future generations.”

Education in the US:Mr. Duncan’s Smart Lesson Plan

Budget crises have their benefits.

John B. Simmons / Charlotte Observer-MCT-Getty Images

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at an elementary school in Charlotte, North Carolina in September 2010.

Arne Duncan, 46, a 6-foot-5 former basketball player (he played professionally in Australia), was on the Harvard team that set the NCAA record for highest free-throw percentage. He and his teammates, he jokes, shot well only when no one was guarding them. As secretary of education, he has grades K through 12 in a full-court press. Duncan says No Child Left Behind got things “exactly wrong” by being “loose on goals but prescriptive about how to get to them,” which marks him as a friend of federalism.

Some of the $4 billion in Race to the Top funding—incentives for innovations—has been used to prod states to repeal laws that prohibited linking teacher evaluations to students’ achievements. The family is the smallest school, but as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Children don’t think up algebra on their own.” It is, Duncan acknowledges, inequitable for teachers to be held accountable for test scores of students from poor or broken homes, but it can be fair to link teachers’ evaluations to students’ improvements, controlling for poverty and other socioeconomic conditions.

Duncan says it is “easier to move the bottom than the top”—easier to make marked improvements in failing schools than in proficient ones. Hence the need for incentives to get good teachers to go to the worst schools.

Children can meet many states’ standards for proficiency, Duncan says, and yet have no realistic hope of flourishing in college. Indeed, he says, “most” U.S. high-school graduates are “unprepared” for college. Duncan believes more rigorous state standards are necessary “to get higher education out of the remediation business.”

Funding for grades K through 12 comes in large measure from property taxes, and the housing crash depressed property valuations. But budget problems confronting municipalities can, Duncan thinks, have benefits because “when you’re flush, you keep doing the same things.”

America’s per-pupil spending is higher than that of the 34 OECD nations except for Luxembourg. “Students in Estonia and Poland,” Duncan says, “perform at roughly the same level as those in the U.S., even though Estonia and Poland spend less than half as much per student.” But many higher-performing countries emphasize higher teacher salaries rather than smaller class sizes.

Although teachers’ unions are eager to shrink class sizes, thereby increasing the demand for more dues-paying teachers, Duncan knows there is no strong correlation between smaller class sizes and increased learning—other than when teaching reading in grades K through three. Money follows pupils in school funding, so Duncan says: Suppose a principal could tell excellent teachers that if they will accept a class size of 25 rather than 23, they will receive half the money attached to those two places. Or suppose that by using technology, particularly the Internet, a superior teacher of an Advanced Placement class can teach it in four schools simultaneously.

The Economist recently reported that in Singapore (ranked second internationally in math performance by 15-year-olds; America ranks 25th), applicants to the teacher-training program must be in the top 30 percent of their academic class. In South Korea, teachers are drawn from the top 10 percent of college graduates. In America, only 23 percent of new teachers come from the top third. According to a National Academy of Sciences study, “the average student intending to major in education in United States universities ranks in the 42nd percentile of all students taking the college boards in Critical Reading, in the 41st in mathematics and in the 46th in writing.”

More than half of America’s 3.2 million teachers and principals are baby boomers nearing retirement. A source of excellent replacements is Teach for America, which Duncan says has “broken the monopoly” of education schools and departments over the supply of teachers. Although the latter still produce 60 percent of teachers, Duncan says “many if not most” of those schools and departments are “doing a mediocre job.”

Founded in 1990 by Princeton’s 22-year-old Wendy Kopp, Teach for America last year received applications from 12 percent of Ivy League seniors. When Duncan was Chicago’s school superintendent, one third of the principals hired at innovative new schools, charters, and others were Teach for America alumni. There are 95,000 schools in America, and, Duncan says, “if we had 95,000 good principals, we’d be done.” Done, that is, worrying about K-through-12 education.
George Will is also the author of One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation and With a Happy Eye But . . .: America and the World, 1997—2002.
Newswek

Quinze milhões de alunos estudam em escolas sem biblioteca no país, e 70% dos estudantes não têm laboratorio de ciência

Segundo Censo Escolar, 70% dos estudantes não têm laboratório de ciência

  Demétrio Weber

BRASÍLIA. Na volta às aulas, milhões de alunos de todo o país vão estudar este ano em escolas onde não há laboratório de ciências, biblioteca, laboratório de informática ou quadra de esportes. O Censo Escolar do Ministério da Educação (MEC) mostra que, no ano passado, 27 milhões de estudantes de ensino fundamental e médio (70% do total) frequentavam estabelecimentos sem laboratório de ciências. A inexistência de bibliotecas era realidade para 15 milhões (39%), enquanto 9,5 milhões (24%) estavam matriculados em escolas sem laboratório de informática, e 14 milhões (35%), em unidades sem quadra esportiva.
Os dados foram divulgados pelo MEC em dezembro e consideram tanto a rede pública quanto a privada. No ensino médio, menos da metade das escolas tinha laboratório de ciências. Nas séries finais do ensino fundamental, a situação era mais grave: só 23% delas estavam equipadas. Nas séries iniciais do fundamental, apenas 7% dos estabelecimentos tinham laboratório de ciências.
"Os alunos possivelmente terão prejuízo na formação"
Falando em nome do Conselho Nacional de Secretários de Educação (Consed), a secretária de Mato Grosso, Rosa Neide Sandes de Almeida, diz que as deficiências na infraestrutura prejudicam a aprendizagem. Ela culpa a falta de investimentos em governos anteriores, tanto em nível federal quanto estadual e municipal, mas ressalva que a situação começou a mudar na última década:
- Os alunos possivelmente terão um prejuízo significativo na sua formação. Isso com certeza tem consequências para o nível de escolaridade que a gente oferece à nossa população. O Brasil ainda está fazendo o dever de casa em aspectos primários da escola - diz Rosa Neide.
A falta de infraestrutura preocupa a Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência (SBPC). O coordenador do Grupo de Trabalho de Educação da SBPC, Isaac Roitman, considera a situação vergonhosa e defende o lançamento de um Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC) específico para recuperar escolas e formar professores. Até hoje, nenhum brasileiro foi agraciado com o prêmio Nobel.
- Deveria ser prioridade para quem pensa no futuro do Brasil - disse Roitman, por e-mail.
O consultor do movimento Todos pela Educação e membro do Conselho Nacional de Educação (CNE), Mozart Neves Ramos, critica a falta de padrões mínimos para o funcionamento de escolas. Segundo ele, o poder público deveria estabelecer critérios e fazer a certificação das escolas.
Em maio, o CNE aprovou parecer definindo padrões de qualidade para a rede pública, o que exigiria aumentar investimentos em educação. O parecer só vale se for homologado pelo ministro Fernando Haddad, o que ainda não ocorreu. Segundo o MEC, o texto permanece em análise.
- A gente não pode oferecer escola de qualquer jeito. É preciso dizer quais são os insumos que se espera que uma escola tenha - diz Mozart.
Ele chama a atenção para outro ponto: não basta ter laboratórios e bibliotecas, é preciso que professores e alunos utilizem os recursos:
- O pior de tudo é que, mesmo nas escolas que têm laboratórios, eles são pouco usados - diz Mozart.
Em escola no DF, computadores sem uso
O Distrito Federal, unidade da Federação que lidera rankings de avaliação do MEC, não foge à realidade revelada pelo censo. O Centro de Ensino Fundamental Fercal, na cidade-satélite de Sobradinho, não tem biblioteca nem laboratório de informática. A escola recebeu 20 computadores do MEC no ano passado, mas dez máquinas permanecem nas caixas, e as demais não são usadas.
O vice-diretor Samuel Wvilde diz que a rede elétrica não suporta o funcionamento simultâneo dos computadores. Há um projeto de reconstrução da escola. Os livros de literatura ficam guardados junto com o material esportivo. O resto do acervo foi transferido para outra escola, onde está sem uso. O centro atende a 1,1 mil alunos de ensino médio e dos anos finais do fundamental.
A Escola Classe Engenho Velho, com 420 alunos, não tem biblioteca nem laboratório de informática. A vice-diretora Susan Fernandes conta que o MEC já ofereceu computadores três vezes, mas a doação foi recusada porque o prédio não tem sala disponível. Os livros de literatura ficam guardados em caixas, que são levadas pelos professores para as salas de aulas.
O MEC informa que investiu R$774 milhões na compra e distribuição de computadores capazes de beneficiar 30 milhões de alunos, entre 2004 e 2010.
oglobo.com.br/pais

Información, ciencia y sabiduría

Por Guillermo Jaim Etcheverry

Domingo 30 de enero de 2011 

Son muy conocidos los premonitorios versos de La roca , el poema en que T.S. Eliot se pregunta: "¿Dónde está la sabiduría que hemos perdido en conocimiento? ¿Dónde el conocimiento que hemos perdido en información?" Ya en 1934 el poeta advertía un hecho fundamental: vivimos inundados de información al tiempo que aumenta lo que conocemos. En cambio, nuestra sabiduría es muy similar a la de hace más de 30 siglos. Analizando esta idea, en un agudo ensayo del que está tomado el título de estas líneas, el sociólogo español Emilio Lamo de Espinosa concluye: "Información, conocimiento y sabiduría responden a tres preguntas muy distintas: ¿qué hay?, ¿qué puedo hacer?, ¿qué debo hacer?"
Efectivamente, la información, que hoy rige nuestras vidas, está vinculada con los datos que nos indican lo que es y cómo es lo que es. Toda la información, hasta la que se suponía secreta como hoy vemos, es ya accesible al instante por todos.
El conocimiento es algo muy distinto: es un tipo de saber que, en base a numerosos datos sometidos por el ser humano a un proceso de inducción y deducción, nos dice qué es posible hacer con lo que es. El conocimiento, la ciencia, no es sino información pensada. Hoy lo importante es distinguir entre la información relevante de la que no lo es, una suerte de separación de la paja del trigo, tarea que depende del desarrollo educado del intelecto humano. Como dice Lamo: "A medida que el bit de información baja de precio, sube el valor del conocimiento".
La ciencia, conocimiento que nos indica qué es posible hacer, nada dice sobre qué se debe hacer, es decir, también reconoce límites. Ingresamos al ámbito de los valores, que no son analizables mediante el método científico. Es la sabiduría la que se encarga de ayudarnos a decidir lo que se debe o no hacer, qué es bueno o malo. En una acertada síntesis de Lamo: "La sabiduría es una forma de saber que, superior a la ciencia y, por supuesto, a la información, trata de enseñarme a vivir y me muestra, de entre todo lo mucho que puedo hacer, lo que merece ser hecho. De modo que, sin sabiduría, la ciencia no pasa de ser un archivo o panoplia de instrumentos que no sabría cómo utilizar".
Podemos medir el crecimiento exponencial de la información -día a día aumentan los datos de los que disponemos-, pero resulta más difícil determinar el avance del conocimiento. Algunos estiman que se duplica cada 15 años, lo que confirma el progreso en este campo. Es evidente que hoy conocemos mucho más que hace un siglo, explosión científica y tecnológica que ha determinado el devenir histórico.
Sin embargo, la sabiduría con la que hoy contamos no supera en mucho a la que disponían Sócrates, Jesús o Buda, puesto que nos ha resultado muy difícil descubrir cómo generarla. Dado que la sabiduría ha variado poco con el transcurrir de los siglos, las grandes creaciones del pasado tienen tanto valor como cuando aparecieron: leemos a Platón, Aristóteles o Kant. Por su parte, la ciencia progresa olvidando a los que fueron sus clásicos: nadie la estudia en los tratados de los grandes científicos del pasado.
Esa ciencia, que difiere de la sabiduría, se autodefine hoy como única forma de saber válido. Es posible que lo sea. Pero no responde, ni se puede esperar que lo haga, a las preguntas más importantes. Si la aceptamos como único saber válido, quedan excluidos posibles saberes alternativos, inclusive el relacionado con los fines. En otras palabras, esta concepción tiende a inutilizar la escasa sabiduría de la que disponemos: sabemos más acerca de qué podemos hacer, pero relativamente menos sobre qué debemos hacer. Eliot intuyó nuestra incapacidad de generar sabiduría al mismo ritmo con que multiplicamos la información y producimos conocimiento. Inundados de datos, manejando sólidos y eficaces conocimientos científicos, vivimos casi huérfanos de sabiduría.
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