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Harvard Graduate School of Education

The Askwith Education Forum, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is endowed through the generosity of Patricia Askwith Kenner and other members of the Askwith family, and acts as a galvanizing force for debate and conversation about education in its narrowest and broadest perspectives. Each year, the Forum welcomes a number of prominent people from diverse fields to speak about issues relevant to education and children. Recent topics have included immigration, values, affirmative action, education reform, and the arts. All of these events are free and open to the public.break

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/askwith

Becoming Literate: Baltimore Early Childhood Project

Tue, Mar 8, 2005

Robert Serpell, vice chancellor at the University of Zambia, discusses the results of his five-year study tracing literacy development in pre-kindergarten through third-grade children from low- and middle- income families of European and African heritage in Baltimore. His presentation centers on how the concept of intimate family culture can assist in moving the discussion of educational disadvantage beyond stereotyped accounts of various social addresses. Catherine Snow, the Henry Lee Shattuck professor of Education, will provide an introduction.

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Framing Education as Art: The Octopus Has a Good Day

Tue, Mar 22, 2005

Lecturing from her book Framing Education as Art: The Octopus Has a Good Day, Jessica Hoffmann Davis, offers suggestions for making non-arts education more connected to and like the arts. This discussion is part of the John Landrum Bryant Lecture/Performance Series, sponsored by the HGSE Arts in Education Program and supported by the Bauman Foundation.

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(Not) Talking About Race Talk

Wed, May 5, 2004

Mica Pollock discusses race talk dilemmas with local educators, as presented in her new book, Colormute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School.

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Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from Students

Tue, Oct 19, 2004

Kathleen Cushman, shares surprising advice from teens she interviewed for her most recent book about how to engage, motivate, and challenge high school students. Kathleen Cushman, a journalist specializing in education and school reform, discusses her latest book, *Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students*. Ms. Cushman interviewed forty teenagers about what teachers could do to better engage, motivate, and challenge high school students. She explains the remarkable insights they offered for improving classroom life and relationships between teachers and students. Every teenager is different, these young people say, but they all need teachers who know them well without violating their boundaries, and who challenge them without humiliating or ignoring them. Ms. Cushman's work offers invaluable techniques for increasing engagement and motivation, teaching demanding academic material, reaching English language learners, and creating classroom cultures where respect and success go hand in hand.

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Closing the Achievement Gap

Mon, Dec 13, 2004

Richard Rothstein, former education columnist for the New York Times discusses factors contributing to the race achievement gap. While policymakers attempt to narrow the achievement gap by implementing school reform efforts targeting accountability, leadership, and teacher quality, they neglected other critical social reforms. Rothstein is accompanied by a panel including: Ronald Ferguson, lecturer in public policy, Kennedy School of Government; Dan Koretz, professor of education, Harvard Graduate School of Education; and Donna Rodrigues, program director, Jobs for the Future, and founder of the University Park Campus School in Worcester, MA. Robert Schwartz, lecturer on education, moderates.

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Chinese Americans: Compelled to Excel

Wed, Dec 8, 2004

Vivian Louie, drawing on interviews with second-generation Chinese Americans attending a public, commuter university and a highly selective private university, discusses the power that race and class play in shaping educational experiences. Louie's work is introduced by Mary Waters, chair of the department of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Panelists will include Suzanne Lee, principal of the Josiah Quincy School in Boston, and Peter Law, senior guidance counselor at Charlestown High School. In the contemporary American imagination, Asian Americans are considered the quintessential immigrant success story, a powerful example of how the culture of immigrant families (rather than race and class) matters in education and upward mobility. Louie finds that Chinese immigrant families see higher education as a necessary safeguard against potential racial discrimination, and class shapes different paths to college. The views and experiences of Chinese Americans with schooling and the identities they are forming have much to do with the opportunities, challenges and contradictions that immigrants and their children confront in the United States.

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Cognitive Science and the Science of Educational Policy

Thu, Nov 18, 2004

Michael Feuer, PhD, of the National Research Council, discusses the frayed link between cognitive science and the science of education policy. He argues that patching this link encourages the development of more rational programs of educational improvement, and more reasonable expectations for reform and research. Dr Feuer explains how cognitive science has changed the way we understand and study human decision-making and rational judgment, and is a source of much of what we now know (or believe) about teaching and learning. However, this 'science of rationality' has thus far had little impact on how we think about education policy and research. In this first lecture from a series, titled "The Science of Rationality and the Rationality of Science," Dr Feuer reviews several decades of cognitive research, providing the basis for subsequent lectures that focus on the complexities of education policy and research, and the need for a cognitively appropriate approach to these issues. Michael Feuer is executive director of the division of behavioral and social sciences and education at the National Research Council of the National Academies. He holds a PhD in public policy from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Education Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Thu, Feb 10, 2005

Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske speak about their recent book, *Elusive Equity: Education Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa*, which tells the story of South Africa's efforts to fashion a racially equitable state education system out of the ashes of apartheid. Fiske and Ladd describe and evaluate the policy strategies that South Africa pursued in its quest for racial equity. They draw on previously unpublished data, interviews with key officials, and visits to dozens of schools to describe the changes made in school finance, teacher assignment policies, governance, curriculum, higher education, and other areas.

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Steven Pinker: Modern Denial of Human Nature

Thu, Nov 14, 2002

Steven Pinker, the Peter de Florez Professor of Psychology at MIT and author of How the Mind Works and The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, discusses his latest book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Steven Pinker explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmas: the blank slate (the mind has no innate traits), the noble savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and the ghost in the machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology). Pinker tries to inject calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from discoveries about rich human nature. He claims that the blank slate concept denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hardheaded analyzes of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts.

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Meet the Poet: Billy Collins

Thu, Dec 12, 2002

In this intimate discussion, Billy Collins shares his thoughts on poetry as well as select readings from his works.

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