Tag: education Archives

For a site that has been putting a lot of emphasis on the importance of education, hearing news about the kind of money Brazil is spending on the recently-opened FIFA World Cup can be quite disappointing. According to Education News, Brazil is spending almost as much on World Cup-related upgrades and facelifts as it does on its public educational system.

Word Cup spending costs more than 60% of education budget

You see, it’s galling enough for a country considered as one of the poorest in the world to spend Brazilian Real (R) $25.6 billion or $11.5 billion USD to host the World Cup. What makes it worse is that the figure represents more than sixty percent of the country’s R$44.2 billion budget for education in 2014. It just gives off the impression that improving sports stadiums and airports take precedence over the construction of school buildings, or better salaries for teachers.

We understand how crazy the entire nation is for football, but education should always be more important than any sporting event that only happens every four years.

Read the full article here.

Hard skills such as language skills, basic computer skills and of course, math or numeracy skills are very important in today’s world for any one person to practice his or her profession successfully. However, soft skills like critical thinking, problem solving, being motivated, effective communication and social skills are just as important, and these days, there is concern that today’s graduates lack these skills that will help make them good workers.

In any case, schools are now looking closely at how important these soft skills are for success, according to an article by Mirabel Shanny for Education News.

For as long as I could remember, the word ‘excellence’ has always been associated with education. If you’re in school, you must do your best to excel. It’s the way many people of my generation have been raised, and it’s still the way many parents raise their kids today. That shouldn’t really be the case, according to an article written by Gina Barreca, Ph.D for Psychology Today.

We’ve always believed that we can achieve anything with hard work. While that may be true in a certain sense, it’s not the only ingredient for success, as this article written by Jim Taylor, Ph.D for Psychology Today is telling us.

We parents have always wondered what’s in store for our children as far as their education and individual learning are concerned. To give us an idea, Leah Hunter, in an article for FastCoexist.com, shares with us a prediction made by Dr. Bernard Meyerson, IBM Fellow and Vice President of Innovation, about what the classroom would be like in 5 years.

I came across this piece written by Carl Hooker for Edudemic. Actually, Hooker presents it as an obituary for classroom desks, which, according to him, have already outlived its usefulness in classrooms, thanks to modern technology. It’s a rather amusing but thought-provoking take on the history of student desks and how they are unnecessary in the classroom.