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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

Holding the Truth: Reflections of a Navajo Artist

Thu, Feb 24, 2000

Melanie Yazzie, contemporary Navajo multimedia artist, and visiting professor at the University of Arizona, gives a lecture and slideshow on "Holding the Truth: The Personal and Political in Art." This event iss co-sponsored by the Harvard Native American Program. **Melanie Yazzie** is a Dine (Navajo) artist of the salt and bitter water clans. Yazzie works in a variety of media including prints and ceramics, among others. Through her installations, she examines both internal and external influences on Native people. For instance, neither the cloth in the Dine skirts nor Blue Bird flower are indigenous to the Dine people, but after being filtered through the hearts and hands of one of its women, they become synonymous with it. The monotype is another example of art that challenges Native portrayal in the dominant culture. By using the personal example of her own family, Yazzie presents real portrayal of Native culture, without idealizing, degrading or commercializing it.

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Back to School: Path to Universal Primary Education

Tue, Mar 13, 2007

Wide Angle producer Pamela Hogan screens her film *Back to School*, and a panel discusses universal primary education. Across the world, more than 100 million children are out of school this year. In the developing world, one in four children drop out before completing four years of education. Nearly one billion adults, one sixth of the world's people, are illiterate. In 2003, producers from New York's Wide Angle world affairs television series traveled to Afghanistan, India, Benin, Brazil, Romania, Kenya, and Japan to film the stories of seven children beginning their first year of formal schooling, some against great odds. Now, three years later, the filmmakers have returned with *Back to School*, a film which revisits these children as they continued, or fell behind, on their paths through elementary school. The speakers in this discussion include David Bloom, Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography, Harvard School of Public Health; Matthew Jukes, assistant professor of education, Harvard Graduate School of Education; and Fernando Reimers, Ford Foundation Professor of International Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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Adequate and Equitable School Funding

Tue, Nov 16, 2004

This discussion addresses the question of adequate and equitable school funding, an issue that has been debated and extensively litigated in Massachusetts and other states across the nation for many years. Panelists include *Sacramento Bee* education columnist Peter Schrag. Schrag presents findings from his latest book, *Final Test: The Battle for Adequacy in America's Schools*; Michael Rebell, executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, successful plaintiffs in the New York state suit to secure adequate resources for students in New York City; and Robert Costrell, chief economist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the Executive Office for Administration and Finance. The panel is moderated by Robert Schwartz, Harvard Graduate School of Education lecturer on education, and former president of Achieve, Inc., an independent, bipartisan, nonprofit organization created by governors and corporate leaders to help states improve their schools.

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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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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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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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Fragments: Links between Cognitive Science and Education Policy

Thu, Feb 24, 2005

Michael J. Feuer of the National Research Council presents the second in a series of lectures on links between cognitive science and education policy. This lecture focuses on sources of complexity in the American school system and implications for the design of rational models of education policy. Feuer emphasizes the intended and unintended effects of the fragmented system of school governance that exists in the US, the limitations this imposes on the use of existing measurement tools to gauge individual and institutional progress, and the problems that arise from accountability systems that inadvertently create incentives for opportunistic behavior among students, teachers, and school authorities. Given these constraints, Feuer argues for a new approach to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of alternative governance models, defining rational goals for education policy, and setting reasonable expectations for improvement. **Michael J. Feuer** is Executive Director of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education at the National Research Council of the National Academies.

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"L" is for Literacy: Reading with Children

Wed, Mar 2, 2005

Harvard Graduate School of Education celebrates the work of Dr. Seuss, with a forum to discuss children's literacy, the effects of parent-child and child self-motivated book reading, and child literacy programs. Initially created as a one-day event to celebrate reading, the National Education Association's Read Across America has grown into a nationwide initiative that promotes reading every day of the year and culminates on March 2nd, the birthday of Dr. Seuss.

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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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