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Education
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PAGE CONTENTS:
Definitions
Education Tidbits
The Myth of Education
Rules for Female Teachers in 1915 in the U.S.
Education in the Middle Ages
The World's Greatest Library
A Brief History of the Encyclopedia
Mensa
Intelligence Tests
Definitions:
"Almost" is the longest word in the English language
with all the letters in alphabetical order.
Drowning: It is possible to drown and not die. Technically
the term "drowning" refers to the process of taking water into the lungs, not to death caused by that process.
Naked & nude: The words "naked" and "nude" are not the
same. Naked implies unprotected. Nude means unclothed.
"Rhythm" is the longest English word without a
vowel.
Set: Of all the words in the English language,
the word 'set' has the most definitions!
Education Tidbits
A perfect SAT score is 1600 combined. Bill Gates scored 1590 on his SAT. Paul
Allen, Bill's partner in Microsoft, scored a perfect 1600. Bill
Cosby scored less than 500 combined. Gothic was originally a term of criticism among the Italian
Renaissance artists who coined it. The term implied that, compared to superior classical buildings, the Gothic medieval cathedrals
were so crude that only a Goth could produce them. By indirectly condemning the Goths, the Italian architects revived an old
hatred. The southward migration of these warring, loathsome German barbarians in the fifth century A.D. had contributed to
the decline of ancient Rome. For a short time in 1967, the American Typers Association invented a new punctuation
mark that was a combination of the question mark and an exclamation point called an “interrobang.” It was intended
to be used to express incredulity or disbelief. It never caught on with the general public, and it faded away. The # symbols is often referred to as a "number sign" or "pound sign."Its actual
name is an octothorpe. The longest alphabet is Cambodian. It has 74 letters compared
with the26 in English. In 1638 John
Harvard, a wealthy Massachusetts settler, left half his estate $1480 to a two year old local bible college. It was the largest
gift to the new school at that point; the school repaid the favor by calling itself Harvard College. There is no synonym for thesaurus. The word is from Greek and
means "a treasure."
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All the world's main alphabets have developed from an alphabet
invented 3,600 years ago in the Middle East and known as the North Semitic Alphabet.
Why do we wear a Cap and Gown for graduation?
In
the often unheated buildings of the middle ages, long gowns were necessary for scholars to ward off the cold.
Academic dress for graduations started in the 12th and 13th centuries when
universities first began forming. Whether a student or a teacher, standard dress for scholars was clerical garb. Most medieval
scholars had made certain vows, and had at least taken minor orders with the church so clerical robes were their main form
of dress to begin with.
In 1321, the University of Coimbra mandated that all Doctors, Bachelors,
and Licentiates must wear gowns. In the latter half of the 14th century, excess in apparel was forbidden in some colleges
and prescribed wearing a long gown. By the time of England's Henry VIII, Oxford and Cambridge began using a standard form
of academic dress, which was controlled to the tiniest detail by the university.
Not until the late 1800s were colors assigned to signify certain areas
of study, but they were only standardized in the United States. European institutions have always had diversity in their academic
dress, but American institutions employ a definite system of dress thanks to Gardner Cotrell Leonard from Albany, New York.
After designing gowns for his 1887 class at Williams College, he took an interest in the subject and published an article
on academic dress in 1893. Soon after he was asked to work with an Intercollegiate Commission to form a system of academic
apparel.
The system Gardner Cotrell Leonard helped form was based on gown cut, style
and fabric; as well as designated colors to represent fields of study. For example green was the color of medieval herbs,
and was assigned to medical studies. Because olive is close to green, was designated for pharmaceutical studies.
In 1959, the American Council on Education had a Committee on Academic
Costumes and Ceremonies review the costume code and make changes. In 1986, the committee changed the code to clarify the use
of dark blue for a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Specifications: The shape and size of the hood and the sleeve design of
the gown show the degree a student pursued: a Bachelor's Degree gown has pointed sleeves and no hood, a Master's Degree gown
had long, closed sleeves with arm slits and a narrow hood, and a Doctor's Degree had bell-shaped sleeves and a draped, wide
hood.
The color of the hood's lining tells which college or university the degree
was given by. For example: Harvard is crimson, Temple is cherry and white, and Cornell is purple and white. However, other
than the lining, the hood must be black.
The field of study is designated by the color of the hood's facing. For
example: Theology is scarlet, Arts Letters and Humanities are white, and Music is pink.
Caps should only be made of black cotton poplin, broadcloth, rayon, or
silk, to match gown they are to be used with. Velvet may only be used for a doctor's degree.
Tassels should be fastened to the middle of the cap's top and allowed to
lie where it will. It should be black, or the color of field of study, unless it is for a doctor's degree in which case is
may be gold.
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What's so "liberal" about the liberal arts?
"Liberal" in this context means free as opposed to the servile, or practical arts. The latter are "servile"
because they deal with necessity, work and the everyday, rather than the finer things. The concept of the seven liberal arts
goes back to ancient times. By the Middle Ages, they had become codified: arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, grammar, logic,
music and rhetoric
Although the early Church Fathers held them suspect because they could
lead people to secular pursuits, they eventually became part of the curriculum in church schools. Their function was to develop
a whole person, more "human" than just someone who works like a beast of burden.
Source: DO PENGUINS HAVE KNEES? By David Feldman
Do educated people really live longer?
More education
means longer life. Research shows that college graduates live longer than people who did not complete high school.
Is vocabulary related to income?
On average, clergymen, lawyers, and doctors each have 15,000 words in their vocabulary.
Skilled workers who haven't had a college education know between 5,000 and 7,000 words. Farm laborers, about 1,600.
The Myth of Education
Recent polls report that Americans believe our children are poorly educated.
Some reflect on a golden age of education that assimilated non-English speaking immigrants into American culture. Schools
were supposedly so effective that it didn't matter what ethnic background they were from, or what their native language was,
the school would teach them. People are somewhat vague about when this enlightened period existed, but most concede it was
in the early part of the 20th century. When my grandfather came to this country he didn't speak any English, but he managed
without the inclusion programs they have today. Did this golden age ever really exist? What were our schools like during this
period?
In the early part of the century, the school system was divided into the public and private sectors. The private
sector provided education for the elite and the public schools were meant for the rest of us. Well, what was left for the
rest of us was not good. In fact, it was awful. Studies show that most students attending schools in Chicago, New York, Boston,
Detroit, and Philadelphia could not read, write or do arithmetic in spite of what some people claim. The schools that existed
were largely ineffective.
One example of the schools utter failure was the drop out rate. In the 1920s and 1930s, a
federal study showed that only 56% graduated high school. In New York, where these mythic schools passed people along a generation
to the American dream, only 40% finished high school. Philadelphia was worse. Here, only 19% of those who entered high school
graduated. Keeping those dismal figures in mind, lets go back to those days and examine what a classroom in New York City
might look like. Is it the classroom of neatly scrubbed children sitting behind their wooden desks in a tidy row?
Hardly.
What
we would really find is squalor that would be equal to the conditions that the young immigrants came from. First, it would
be difficult to keep them in school due to the financial strains that forced many to find jobs. This robbed many of their
youth, their lives, and their future. Next, we would find the schools to be tremendously overcrowded with standard essentials
in short supply. The stench would be overpowering. The schools, like the neighborhood , were infested with rats. It would
be quite common to see a rat run across the room. Furthermore, the schools were so dimly lit, that it would be difficult to
read the textbooks, even if enough of them could be found. This is why reformers of the period, John Dewey, Jacob Riis, and
many others made public education such a priority. The schools were grossly substandard or didn't exist. In the 1890s, the
federal government reported, that only about half of the children even entered school. So the next time you hear some politician
lament about the golden era, remember it never existed.
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Rules for Female Teachers
in 1915 in the US
1. You will not marry during the term of your contract.
2. You are not to keep company with men.
3. You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless
attending a school function.
4. You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.
5. You may not travel beyond city limits unless you have the permission
of the chairman of the board.
6. You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless
he is your father or brother.
7. You may not smoke cigarettes.
8. You may not dress in bright colors.
9. You may under no circumstances dye your hair.
10. You must wear at least two petticoats.
11. Your dresses must not be any shorter than two inches above the
ankle.
12. To keep the school room neat and clean, you must: * sweep the
floor at least once daily * scrub the floor at least once a week with hot, soapy water * clean the blackboards at least once
a day * start the fire at 7 a.m. so the room will be warm by 8 a.m. |
Education in the Middle Ages
Back to school--time to hit the books and get some new
learnin'. Today, back to school is a yearly ritual. In the Middle Ages, it was a change in thinking over the course of centuries,
when European schoolmen rediscovered the classics and opened new worlds of knowledge for the West.
In Europe before the 12th century, education was mostly
a church matter, and most schools were attached to monasteries or cathedrals. Most students were bound to be priests or monks,
who needed to be able to read the Bible, copy manuscripts, and sing in the choir. Nobles' sons sat in on classes, but the
school system was Catholic all the way.
Modern "universities," which began to develop in the 12th
century, grew out of the cathedral schools. Two in particular served as models: the University of Bologna, renowned as the
preeminent place to study law, and the University of Paris, which pumped out popes and theologians.
Welcoming churchmen and rich men alike, the new universities
lived or died by their faculty's reputation. Famous teachers attracted thousands of students to their lectures and disputations--rhetorical
showdowns in which one schoolman would "prove" a thesis, then answer objections put to him by another. All the arguments were
in Latin, as was pretty much everything else. The students read Latin texts, listened to Latin lectures, and even chatted
about the last night's (or knight's) adventures in Latin.
Students generally started when they were 15 or 16. After
arranging for lodging--there were no dormitories--freshmen had to find masters to study with. Education was like an apprenticeship.
Students would attach themselves to a teacher, who often lectured out of his home. The students' fees paid the teacher's expenses.
The apprenticeship focused on the liberal arts. First came
the "trivium" of grammar (including Latin literature), rhetoric (with an emphasis on letter writing), and dialectic (logic
and reasoning). Then came the "quadrivium" of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy (mixed with astrology), and music.
After four or five years, a student could take oral exams
to become a bachelor (Latin baccalaureus), or "novice." At this point, he was qualified to teach at one of the smaller
schools. A doctorate could take several more years--10 in the case of theology, Paris's most difficult doctoral program.
The course of study could be arduous. The first lecture
of the day was often at 5:00 a.m., and the last wouldn't end until 12 or 13 hours later. A number of students evidently grew
impatient toward the end of the day. A law on the books in Padua prohibited students from pounding on their desks to force
the teacher to dismiss class early.
Despite the rigors, thousands of students flocked to the
new universities. Education was exciting, thanks partly to the recent recovery of texts by Greek greats like Galen, Hippocrates,
and--especially--Aristotle (preserved by Islamic scholars). This classical influx transformed European philosophy and theology,
planting seeds that flourished in the centuries to come as the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. The western
world went back to school.
Mark Diller
Updated August 28, 2006
Copright 2006, KnowledgeNews. All rights reserved.
The World's Greatest Library
We're going to go to the library. But not just any library--we're
going to the great, lost Library of Alexandria. It took passion to make the world's greatest library, along with vision,
drive, and lots of money. Ambitious? Love to read and learn? Here's how it's done.
Ptolemy I, the ruler of Alexandria first hatched the idea
of founding a library around 300 BC. He wanted it to be the best, the biggest, the most comprehensive library in the world.
Unfortunately, in those days, every manuscript had to be copied by hand, so acquiring the library of Ptolemy's dreams would
be slow--and extremely expensive.
No problem. Ptolemy was one of Alexander the Great's generals
and, after Alexander's death in 323 BC, had grabbed Egypt as his personal fiefdom. Egypt was the richest region in the world,
and it had a virtual monopoly on papyrus, the raw material that any library would need. Papyrus, a plant that was dried into
a sort of proto-paper, was the dominant writing medium for centuries.
Even better, Ptolemy had already founded the Museum, an
ancient think tank in which leading scholars of the day were paid to do nothing but be smart and think about interesting things.
With money to burn and a staff of the best minds in the western world, Ptolemy and his descendants set out to build a library
for the ages.
Agents set out from Alexandria and covered the known world.
Their instructions were to buy every scroll they could find, regardless of the topic. The older the scroll, the better--because
copies were more likely to contain scribes' errors.
When good copies were hard to come by, the Ptolemys resorted
to ruthlessness. Any scrolls found on ships docking in Alexandria were confiscated; their owners had to make do with copies.
Meanwhile, Athens had carefully preserved the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Ptolemy III asked to borrow
these scrolls, and when Athens agreed, he kept the originals and sent back copies in their place.
Scrolls poured in from every corner of the globe. As many
as half a million scrolls might have been housed in the library at its height, while a daughter library, set up in a temple
dedicated to the god Serapis, contained perhaps another 40,000. Greek translations of foreign texts were also commissioned,
which is how we got the Septuagint, or Greek Old Testament. The name, from the Greek for "seventy," refers to the number of
translators employed on the project.
Soon Alexandria had the best climate for intellectual inquiry
in the world, which scholars found irresistible. Among the famous thinkers who worked in the Library of Alexandria were the
Athenian geometer Euclid, the Syracusan inventor Archimedes, and the geographer Eratosthenes, who devised a system of latitude
and longitude and calculated the Earth's circumference with considerable accuracy.
A library is a fragile place, though, full of things that
will easily burn. The first fire at Alexandria might have been a mistake. While the Roman general Julius Caesar was dallying
in Alexandria with Cleopatra in 48 BC, he found himself surrounded by his enemies, and in the ensuing battle part of the city
was set ablaze. Many scrolls perished.
Subsequent burnings were more catastrophic. In AD 270,
the Emperor Aurelian burned the Library of Alexandria to the ground. He was in town putting down a local rebellion against
Roman rule, and in the process destroyed the city's palace district. Since that's where the Museum and main library were located,
they met the same fate.
The daughter library in Serapis's temple survived another
century. But after Alexandria converted to Christianity, the fact that the library was housed in a pagan temple meant its
days were numbered. In 391, Alexandria's Bishop Theophilus, trying to stamp out vestiges of the old religion, had the temple
sacked and burned.
With that, the Library of Alexandria passed into legend,
where its fame was secure. Having disappeared completely, its memory remains immaculate, its collections comprehensive, and
its librarians forever ageless as they make "shushing" noises down the halls of eternity.
--Mark Diller
KnowledgeNews is brought to you by Every Learner, Inc., an independent
small business dedicated to supporting lifelong learners. Copyright © 2007, Every Learner, Inc. All rights reserved.
A Brief History of the Encyclopedia
Who would be so bold as to try to compile a book covering absolutely
everything--the entire circle of human knowledge? These brave souls were.
Pliny the Elder Compiles . . .Rome's Bathroom Reader
During the Roman Empire, a hard-working government official
named Pliny the Elder summarized every text he could get his hands on. He then compiled his notes into a 37-book work, Historia
naturalis ("Natural History"). Published in AD 77, the Historia contained some 20,000 extracts, covering everything
from astronomy to zoology.
Pliny's nephew--Pliny the Younger--described how his uncle
would take notes during meals and in the baths, as books were read aloud to him: "He made extracts of everything he read,
and always said that there was no book so bad that some good could not be got out of it."
Sadly, Pliny's all-encompassing curiosity led to his demise.
In AD 79, he went to investigate a mysterious cloud hanging over the towns of Pompeii, Stabiae, and Herculaneum and was killed
in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. But his Historia survived and was combed for knowledge for 1,500 years.
Vincent of Beauvais Makes . . .A Great Mirror
Across the globe in the centuries that followed, other
would-be know-it-alls assembled their own texts--from a Muslim compilation of the medieval world's learning called the Mafatih
al-'Ulum ("Key to the Sciences") to a vast, 1,000-book Chinese anthology of readings called the Taiping yulan ("Emperor's
Mirror").
In the West, a 13th-century Dominican friar named Vincent
of Beauvais toiled for decades to put all the knowledge he could find into 32 Latin volumes labeled the Speculum majus
("The Great Mirror"). Working in France, he divided his effort into three parts: a "Mirror of Nature," a "Mirror of Doctrine,"
and a "Mirror of History."
For Vincent, such "mirrors" merely reflected the order
of God's creation and truth. So his "Mirror of Nature" adhered to the creation account in Genesis, moving from God and the
angels, to light and time, to the sea and earth, to the stars and planets, to all the animals, and finally to human beings.
Denis Diderot Discovers . . .The Golden Age of Encyclopedias
Encyclopedic efforts came into their own during the European
Enlightenment. In 1728, a former globemaker's apprentice in England, Ephraim Chambers, produced what many call "the father
of the modern encyclopedia." Titled Cyclopaedia, the 2-volume, cross-referenced, alphabetically arranged work began
a golden age of knowing it all.
Chambers certainly inspired Denis Diderot, when what started
as a French translation of his English work became its own enormous project instead. Beginning in 1746, Diderot spent 26 years
creating 28 volumes of a new French Encyclopédie. It was intentionally provocative, emphasizing science and reason
over church and religion.
Articles by philosophers such as Voltaire and Rousseau
outraged the authorities. So did Diderot's taxonomy of knowledge, which had just three parts: "Memory/History," "Reason/Philosophy,"
and "Imagination/Poetry"--with theology under philosophy. The Encyclopédie was soon banned, but a determined Diderot
worked in secret to finish.
William Smellie Raises His Glass to . . .Encyclopaedia
Britannica
The golden age of encyclopedias didn't stop with the Encyclopédie.
Before Diderot's last volume came out in 1772, three Scotsmen had published their 3-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Beginning in 1768, it strove--more than anything else--to be useful, and its mix of longer treatises interspersed with dictionary-type
entries proved popular.
The editor was brilliant scholar, master printer, and notorious
drinker William Smellie. Smellie wanted a work not just for scholars, but also for ordinary people with curious minds. He
said, "Any man of ordinary parts, may, if he chooses, learn the principles of Agriculture, of Astronomy, of Botany, of Chemistry,
etc., etc., from the Encyclopaedia Britannica."
Utility was the word. "Utility," he wrote, "ought to be
the principal intention of every publication. Wherever this intention does not plainly appear, neither the books nor their
authors have the smallest claim to the approbation of mankind." Smellie used his encyclopedic mind many ways. People say his
repertoire of bawdy drinking songs was vast.
Today's Encyclopedic Minds Are . . .Still Compiling
No human can know it all. But people keep right on trying
to know as much as they can, and to gather as much of that knowledge as they can into one place. Today's efforts have moved
beyond the limits of a single mind, or even the limits of a scholarly staff. Today, efforts like the online Wikipedia try
to tap the knowledge of the entire planet.
Of course, the biggest collection of knowledge in history
might just be the internet itself, with Google as an index. But if you're ever tempted to compile your own encyclopedia from
it, we suggest you work one email at a time.
Colleen Kelly
Copyright © 2007, Every Learner, Inc. All rights reserved.
Mensa
Mensa was founded in England in 1946 by Roland Berrill, a barrister,
and Dr Lance Ware, a scientist and lawyer. They had the idea of forming a society for bright people, the only qualification
for membership of which was a high IQ. The original aims were, as they are today, to create a society that is non-political
and free from all racial or religious distinctions. The society welcomes people from every walk of life whose IQ is in the
top 2% of the population, with the objective of enjoying each other's company and participating in a wide range of social
and cultural activities.
The word "Mensa" means "table" in Latin. The name stands for a round-table society, where
race, color, creed, national origin, age, politics, educational or social background are irrelevant.
A normal intelligence
quotient (IQ) ranges from 85 to 115 (according to the Stanford-Binet scale). Only approximately 1% of the people in the world
have an IQ of 135 or over.
While the intelligence quotient in theory has no upper limit for children,
it is often considered as unmeasurable for adults if it exceeds 200. (Normally, it is never set above 210. Highest possible
scores to date should lie in the interval 210-220 with decreasing probability). This is caused by the different measuring
methods used. According to the definition of intelligence quotient for a child, the mental age is divided by the chronological
age. The quotient is then multiplied by 100. This implies that you cannot use the same method for adults as for children.
Instead you use a statistical mean value of 100 for the average number of correct answers for a representative adult group
of people.
Unknown author and/or copyright. Used without permission,
but with the best of intentions.
Intelligence Tests
The SAT doesn't purport to be an intelligence test. Its
makers don't even call it an "aptitude" test anymore (SAT used to stand for "Scholastic Aptitude Test," but the letters no
longer stand for anything.) Still, the test is clearly supposed to measure some form of intellectual wattage. And that got
us thinking about the whole business of intelligence testing. Who started it? And why?
Mention efforts to measure intelligence, and most people
immediately think of two letters--IQ. Yet the "intelligence quotient" wasn't the first attempt to measure brain power.
Scientific efforts to measure intelligence actually date
to the late 19th century, when Charles Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton, set out to determine the extent to which "genius"
was hereditary (and helped launch the eugenics movement). Galton created a battery of tests measuring things like sensitivity
to the smell of roses, ability to hear high-pitched whistles, and skill in identifying slight weight differences.
Such abilities, Galton suggested, were signs of a keen
mind. He even opened a lab at a museum in London, where he charged interested parties a few bucks to have their wits measured.
An American colleague, James Cattell, transplanted Galton's project to the United States in the 1890s, but in 1901 the entire
endeavor took a serious blow when a follow-up study found no correlation between the results of Cattell's tests and actual
academic achievement.
A few years later, a prominent French psychologist, Alfred
Binet, launched a more successful effort to measure intelligence--or at least scholastic aptitude. At the time, French teachers
faced a problem familiar to educators everywhere: they needed an efficient and objective means to determine which kids had
actual learning problems and which were just behind or "behaviorally challenged."
In 1904, the French Ministry of Public Instructions asked
Binet and others to develop such a means. A year later, Binet and his colleague, Theodore Simon, published the test that launched
intelligence measurement as we know it. Unlike Galton and Cattell, Binet and Simon built their test around faculties like
memory, reasoning, problem solving, and vocabulary--abilities that today's intelligence tests continue to measure. The proof
was in the pudding: Binet and Simon's test successfully predicted (to a reasonable degree) how students did in school.
Binet and Simon's test didn't produce an IQ score. Rather,
each child who took it was assigned a "mental age" based on the average test score for children of a particular chronological
age. For example, a 10-year-old who did as well on the test as the average 12-year-old was said to have a "mental age" of
12.
Then, in 1916, Lewis Terman, an American psychologist affiliated
with Stanford University, published an adapted version of Binet and Simon's test known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence
Scale (a revised version is still widely used today). Terman added questions appropriate for adults and reported performance
on his version of the test with a single score--the "intelligence quotient," or IQ.
Terman borrowed the idea for IQ from German psychologist
William Stern, who computed the figure simply by dividing mental age by chronological age, then multiplying by 100. So a 10-year-old
who did as well as the average 12-year-old would receive an IQ of 120 (12/10 x 100).
For obvious reasons, "mental age" scoring never worked
well for adults (an 80-year-old scoring as well as the average 40-year-old gets an IQ of 50), and the entire concept of "mental
age" has since fallen out of vogue. Today, many intelligence tests still produce overall IQ scores, but most compute them
according to test-takers' statistical variation from the average performance of others their age, starting from an average
score of 100. Essentially, everyone is graded on a curve, where 100 is average for their "class."
The vast majority of people--95 percent--have IQs between
70 and 130. Two-thirds land in an even narrower IQ range, between 85 and 115. But what do these numbers really mean? The evidence
suggests that they correlate fairly well with school grades, though they leave something like three-fourths of the variation
in student performance unexplained. Their correlation with measures like job performance or salary is weaker.
What's more, many experts now agree that standardized intelligence
tests don't really sample all forms of intelligence. They don't measure creativity, common sense, social skills, or wisdom,
to name a few. Some psychologists and educators want to discard them entirely. Others want to improve them, or use new tests.
Whatever the solution, it's clear that a high IQ alone probably won't get you very far in life--unless you find a job taking
intelligence tests.
Steve Sampson
KnowledgeNews is brought to you by Every Learner, Inc., an independent small business dedicated to supporting lifelong
learners. Copyright © 2008, Every Learner, Inc. All rights reserved.
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