by andrew@learnedleadership.org | Aug 12, 2014 | Blog
A few weeks back I received a grade for a class in which I was enrolled for my doctorate. I received a B+ for 95%…that damn curve. At first I was upset. I thought “in what world is a 95% a B+” or “who curves grades anymore?, why is this happening to me?” or “why is the measurement of my learning affected by someone the grade of someone else?” And then it occurred to me: Grades are Dead! Sure they might not look dead, but they’re gasping for their final breath of importance. A hold over from a different time, like square school lunch pizza and overhead projectors, we will soon see the traditional A-F grading scale finally put out of its misery. I say good riddance. There are few things in this world that make less sense than the traditional model of grading. It’s really not surprising if you think about it, I mean how effective can any system be that is supposed to sum up weeks or months of learning into a symbol. Do we do this in other places? For example, later this month when the school year begins, the inevitable question will be asked “how was your summer?” That’s a hard question to answer, the summer is three months, filled with some great days, a few ok afternoons, and an occasional grumpy morning. Nowadays many of us seem to take a lot of photos with our phones, but I bet people would look at me kind of funny if I showed them a photo summarizing my summer. Now that you’ve viewed this picture do you feel like...
by andrew@learnedleadership.org | Aug 8, 2014 | Blog
The Stupid Tax | tha st•oo•pi•d taks | noun Definition: Money you end up paying because your inexperience, optimism, or naivety makes you really stupid. Have you ever paid the stupid tax before? After living in a few foreign countries my wife Lisa and I have paid our fair share of the stupid tax around the world. There was the time we booked tickets on two different airlines arriving and departing through Singapore with only a 30 minute layover only to learn on arrival that the airlines operated out of different airports…can you say “missed connection.” Or the time we ended up paying for a 5 minute $50 cab ride in Kuala Lumpur (although it was in a Mercedes). My “favorite” stupid tax story happened when we lived in the Philippines. After living in South Korea for a year without a car and only seeing a tiny bit of beautiful Jeju, the “honeymoon island” that we were living on, we made buying a car one of our first orders of business once we arrived in the Philippines. When looking around at other foreigners it seemed that everybody owned horrifically beaten down and expensive used cars, and we figured it must just be common to own a crappy car. One day when discussing where to get a car, a funny looking American with a broad-brimmed hat came over and introduced himself to us after over hearing our conversation (stupid tax red flag). Sensing our lack of wisdom, the next day he stopped by with what looked like the van the Libyan terrorists used from the original Back to the Future,...
by andrew@learnedleadership.org | Aug 7, 2014 | Blog
The other week my wife Lisa and I went out on a group date with my older brother and sister and their spouses. Since we all live far from each other this was uncommon, in fact I think it was the first time we’d ever done something like this. At dinner, as you might expect, we started to reminisce about our childhood, doing things that most kids don’t get a chance to do these days, like bike across town without a helmet to the outdoor swimming pool when we were only 6-years-old. However, since I spent the first 10 years of my life on a farm we had a list of adventures most parents (including myself) would have a hard time letting their kids do these days. There was jumping from the 3rd story barn rafters into the hay loft below, climbing around the 10 story silos, using the electric bandsaw in the basement unsupervised, blowing up the power line transformer with a perfectly placed kick from a basketball to the power line, and my favorite, flipping over the handle bars of a trail bike (basically a motorcycle) going 25 mph after getting shot in the neck by a BB gun. To say the least, life doesn’t seem as dangerous these days for kids. I recently listened to a TED talk by Gever Tulley titled: 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do. They include: play with fire, own a pocket knife, throw a spear, deconstruct appliances, and drive a car. Tulley is the founder of the Tinkering School, a summer camp outside of San Francisco that gives...
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