For many, and I would agree with this perspective too, the most important dimension of art education is always the opportunity students have actually to be artists themselves, which means drawing, painting, sculpting, assembling, creating in their own right. That said, learning about art from more distance also has value. “I
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Leaving one’s “comfort zone” is not always easy, but doing so lies squarely at the heart of learning. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the notion of comfort zone can be defined as “1. the temperature range within which one is comfortable; 2. the level at which one functions with ease and
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The Music Lesson, by Charles West Cope (1869). Every so often, I will have a hallway conversation like the one I had this past week. Someone will mention that his or her daughter or son, typically in the upper grades of primary school or the lower grades of middle school, has been
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“Selfie” is a word from the 21st century which leaves few people indifferent. For some, including a few of the sharpest social commentators on either side of the Atlantic, it encapsulates what they consider to be the particular individualism, not to say selfishness of young people born circa or since the
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Last June, several educators from the Lycée Français de New York, including myself, attended the annual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). In addition to participating in many sessions related to ISTE’s mission of “advancing excellence in learning and teaching through the innovative and effective uses of
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There is little doubt that any educator would have responded in the same way. Upon reading the following sentence in a New York Times book review, one’s curiosity is piqued and one wants to know more: “In the wrong hands, A Path Appears is a dangerous book: you wouldn’t want
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Elementary students trying to figure out how a salad spinner works. It is not every day that one encounters three aspiring scientists sitting side by side in the school cafeteria, but that is exactly what happened to me the week before vacation. Overhearing a group of sixth graders talking about “sciences de
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Anyone who has ever lived in France will probably have encountered an avenue, a school, a square or some other municipal space that has been named after one of the great French writers of the twentieth century, someone who also served for ten years as the most influential Minister of
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Now that spring has arrived, it is time to speak of love, no? I am not certain that such was the intention of New York Times columnist David Brooks last week when he penned his wonderful article about a 1945 encounter between the British intellectual Isaiah Berlin and the Russian poet
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There is some debate as to who coined the terms “digital native”, but I can recall where I myself first came across them. It was some ten years ago, in an article by educational technology thinker Marc Prensky, entitled “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” “Today’s students”, affirmed the author, “have not just
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