Two News Stories From Abroad Suggest American Education Is On The Wrong Track

News about schools in England and Finland challenge a prevailing assumption in American education–that it’s better for students to learn on their own than to be explicitly taught. GETTY It can be risky to look to other countries’ education systems for models. Nevertheless, two recent news stories from abroad raise doubts about prevailing American views on how students learn. Too often, American education reformers and policymakers have called for emulating other seemingly successful systems without taking into account the myriad differences between any two countries. An approach that has worked…

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American education leader visits Imperial

A US scientist visited Imperial to speak about innovative new teaching methods put into practice at Cornell University. Professor Peter Lepage, Goldwin Smith Professor of Physics at Cornell in the USA, gave a lecture about the potential of active learning – a teaching method where a class is made up of a series of interactive exercises, with less time dedicated to traditional lecturing. This way of teaching is already being put into action at Imperial, in line with the College’s new Learning and Teaching Strategy. There’s such enthusiasm within the College…

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American Traditional Foods

United States citizen, home and abroad, are celebrating their Independence today, also fondly referred to as the Fourth of July. The day marks the official independence of the States from their British Predecessors, in 1776. The historic American Revolution came to a close when Great Britain decided to legally set free the 13 British colonies on American land. The Declaration of Independence was originally set to come out on 2nd July but the Congress held it back and finally released it on the Fourth of July, giving entire America a…

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Summer Breaks Make American Kids Obese: Study

American children are at greater risk of becoming overweight or obese during summer vacation than during the school year, a new study has found. Paul von Hippel of the University of Texas, Austin and colleagues followed more than 18,000 children from the start of kindergarten in 2010 through the end of second grade in 2013, Xinhua news agency reported. Their results, published in the journal Obesity on Wednesday showed that the prevalence of obesity increased from 8.9 per cent to 11.5 per cent, and the prevalence of overweight children increased…

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High Resting Heart Rate Tied to African American Heart Failure Risk

For African Americans, a high resting heart rate may indicate greater risk of death or hospitalization with heart failure, a recent analysis finds. This had already been shown in studies that mostly involved white participants, but it wasn’t clear if the same was true in the black community, researchers write in JAMA Cardiology. “Resting” heart rate is measured when a person is sitting or lying down, calm and moving as little as possible. For a person who isn’t ill, a heart rate anywhere between 60 and 100 beats per minute…

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