Education

In an address that otherwise reprised many of the noblest principles from this country's history, President Obama's remarks on education offered only a bleak vision of schools as training grounds for employers. Neither the principle that a good education is an essential requisite for developing active citizens nor the idea that education has intrinsic value independent of its utility in the job market made it into the speech.

The New York Times just documented the continuing existence of an intense level of racial segregation in schools in New York City. But scant attention was paid to the still-entrenched pattern of housing segregation that afflicts New York and many other metropolitan areas, a pattern that is a critical driver of segregation in schools.

Economics departments: limited range of courses at the advanced level; reliance on "chalk-and-talk" pedagogy.

Our re-imagining economics education series turns to the questions of how to broaden advanced course offerings and how to go beyond "chalk-and-talk" teaching methods. Could Marx have a place in a traditional Labor Economics course? One TCU professor thinks so. Another suggestion: have students play "math charades" on the first day of class to convey the strengths and weaknesses of a modeling approach.