Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price
Savvy, practical insights on where our Education Establishment went wrong and how most schools can be improved.LET'S FIX EDUCATION explains the many dysfunctional theories and methods operating within our schools. This podcast is intended for parents, teachers, and community leaders who want education reform.
Each week, LET'S FIX EDUCATION examines another problem in our public schools, such as: Constructivism. Learning styles. Sight-words. No memorization. Cooperative learning. Prior knowledge. Reform math. The dilution of knowledge. Common Core. Project-based learning. Student-centered, etc. In fact, there are DOZENS of counterproductive learning and teaching theories, all made worse by ideological motives.
Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, and education reformer. He has analyzed the problems in education for more than 30 years. Price is the author of "Saving K-12: What happened to our public schools? How do we fix them?" (190 pages) His main education site is Improve-Education.org. For more information about book and author, visit Lit4u.com. Newest novels are "Frankie" (about a harmless robot) and "The Boy Who Saves The World" (about a boy who saves the world).
"Bruce Price’s SAVING K-12 is a MUST read! It is precise, concise and powerful. Action is required…for the sake of our children, our grandchildren and the future of the American Republic!” Robert W. Sweet, Jr., long-time President of The National Right to Read Foundation
Let's Fix Education / by Bruce Deitrick Price
Episode 162; Exploring through Typography Wed., Aug., 7, 2024
Episode 162; Exploring through Typography Wed., Aug., 7, 2024
BACK TO SCHOOL with better ways to do everything.
For example, use graphics and type design to teach reading, aesthetic judgment, marketing, in short, all the things that a savvy adult should know.
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Listen to PODCAST or read TRANSCRIPT.
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Here are two ways to help reform work…
Visit Education Reform
for a 2-page explanation
of what everyone can do.
When you need a smart gift,
give Saving K-12 .
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Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price
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Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, poet, and education reformer.
For a list of literary titles, visit::::: Lit4u.com.
Under construction but worth a look.
(THE BOY WHO SAVES THE WORLD is now an ebook )
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-boy-who-saves-the-world
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Let's Fix Education explains to Americans why their schools are so bad. The people in charge prefer mediocrity because they are socialists of one kind or another. If people work together to promote real education, we'll have it.
LET'S FIX EDUCATION by Bruce Deitrick Price
Episode 162 Wed., Aug. 7, 2024
Explore The World via Topography
I moved to Manhattan to be a writer. Inevitably, young writers do a lot of freelance work. At first I wrote business letters; after a while I was able to write and design whole brochures. In many careers you end up needing graphic design, layout, type spec’ing, topography, font selection, and all that.
It's a beautiful, exotic world, and I highly recommend it to every classroom and every student of every age.
In the beginning, I didn't know the difference between serif and sans serif. The most common type face in the world is Times Roman, which has little flanges (i.e., serifs) on every letter. (It’s called Roman because these letterforms were used all over Rome 2000 years ago!)
Modern designers often want a more functional look so they got rid of the serifs, so you have sans serif, which is French for without serifs.
Serif / Sans-serif is the fundamental divide in type setting. The only other categories are things like novelties, script, traditional. But guess what. There are more than 100,000 type faces or fonts, with different design and name. When you first grasp the immense variety, you realize you're in typography’s Amazon jungle.
And here's what's really amazing: people keep inventing new type faces. It's the most extraordinary thing to me. I thought a few hundred was enough. Then I thought, well, a few thousand has to be where it stops. No, it's a wide-open, hyper-creative, no-rules art and business arena.
Enourage your students to experience this world. It’s a wonderful way to teach many things, mainly aesthetics and reading but also the creative and design process you enter if you do anything with advertising, marketing, logos, brand development, etc.
I want to suggest the quickest way to teach all of this. Everybody is in love with their own name so start with student’s name or perhaps only one initial. Give them examples of five or 10 of the most popular type faces. Tell students to pick the look they like and create a new version of their own name in a similar style, with a pencil or pen.
One immediate benefit is that this reminds students of the advantages of cursive and knowing the shapes of the letters. People who already know cursive will be reinforced.. People who have never heard of cursive will have a quick start in judging the beauty and appropriateness of different designs. Don't worry where this goes. Just keep doing it.
You might show them a page from a newspaper where there are many type faces, and in particular maybe some script ones, holiday type faces, or hand- drawn originals.
The next day, tell them to pick a different name, family or otherwise. Pick a different type face. Render the name in still another original way.
You may already know that I think K-12 is a dead zone, a wasteland where very little is taught. That's why a typography project is both easy and vital. You can introduce students to a lot of new perspectives, so quickly, so cheaply.
Tell them there are accepted tendencies, you might say, but there are no actual rules or laws. They can design anything any way they want. Let the class vote on A versus B or C. Let the creator of A explain why A looks the way it looks.
If they are slow to learn, then you should take a position (i.e., preach a little). Or invite your local printer over and let them explain what they do. Or invite graphic designers over to explain their favorite ideas.
The goal is that people learn some of the basics, which is easy to do. The next goal is that each student has an epiphany where they think: oh this is so beautiful.
I am haunted by the sterility and emptiness of our school system. Topography is a low-rent way to fix this emptiness.
There are many major suppliers of high-level topography. Ask them to send you a catalog. Get on the mailing list of a company like myfonts.com.
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Note regarding my main site Improve-Education.org. The big hosting company NS effectively destroyed my site by losing the index page, or so they say. I'm still hoping that they will help me replace it. In any case I hope to see the site back some day. There are 60 wonderful articles on it, one about design. I would love to be able to link to it now.
So let me just mention the fundamental point here. A lot of our problems throughout the educational system is that the experts refuse to teach fundamental information, or they teach it in the wrong sequence. Refusing to teach phonics effectively destroys literacy for millions of children. Or in the case of basic design, they simply never touch on the topic. They never say to kids, OK you're going to have a party and each of you must design the invitation you want to send out. Immediately they will encounter the question, flush left, flush right, or centered???? Simply having to answer that question brings the child face-to-face with the fundamental question that the richest most successful art directors still have to deal with every day. It's easy if somebody makes you deal with it and from that point on, you will always understand twice as much as the person who didn't do that. To me.It's the most unforgivable thing of all that you leave children ignorant on purpose.==============