If you’re new here and like what you read, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.
Thank you for visiting!

Yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Magazine had an article on educational reform in China. Whereas the United States is moving toward an educational model that displays characteristics of traditional Chinese education (especially an emphasis on testing), the Chinese are moving toward an educational model that is, in their view, more Western. This means integrating liberal education into curricula otherwise dominated by the “left-brained” fields of the sciences and mathematics.

As China moves to a whole mind approach to education, where will this leave the U.S. and other nations that aggressively pursue partial-mind education only?

Arthur Harkins and I yesterday released “version 5.0” of our Building a “Leapfrog” University series. The document provides recommendations gathered from the University of Minnesota community on steps the University may take to transform into one of the top universities in the world. The recommendations generated by this activity run parallel to and complement the University’s own strategic repositioning process.

Future development of this memo series and its leapfrog concepts will now be conducted entirely online at the University’s community Wiki in “open source” tradition: https://wiki.umn.edu/twiki/bin/view/Leapfrog/WebHome

We invite your comments, corrections and additions to what we have written as well as direct input to the Leapfrog Wiki. We especially request your thoughts on the application of innovative and dynamic design principles to the University’s future

For your reference, previous release versions are available online at http://www.educationfutures.com/leapfrog

Contact:

• Arthur Harkins, University of MN, harki001@umn.edu, 612/743-7528
• John Moravec, University of MN, moravec@umn.edu, 612/325-5992

(Read more …)