Saturday, December 02, 2006

More Carnivals

I'm still hooked on Blog Carnivals.

First there was the Festival of Under 30 Finances. There are links to some good writing. What grabbed me was how similar the writers' circumstances are to Maggy's. While I was reading those posts I was also listening to a Washington Journal guest talking about student loans. A caller commented that young people take student loan debt for granted and it's just a short jump to consumer debt. And then where are you?

The Working at Home Carnival led to some interesting blogs. My favorite is SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution. Take a look at the Top 10 Brain Teasers.

The Dragon Slayer's Guide to Life was worth a look for the name alone and it didn't disappoint me. The post "Think Money Wouldn't Change You? Think Again." Led me full circle back to my initial concern about young people and debt.

When did we start thinking that the reason to go to college was to command a higher salary? When did we decide that made college loans a good investment? I understand why economists measure everything in dollars. It's a convenient common denominator. But I think Ms Lauria's idea for high school english students was better. She gave them extra credit for every time they reported something they heard outside of class that they had previously studied in class. Many kids became aware of references they wouldn't have understood if they hadn't talked about them in class. And isn't that really the point? Education makes our lives richer.

1 comment:

Maggy said...

It was actually Mr. Jones in Freshman English who used that extra credit.

As a side note, he also fully believed that we should shout EXTRA CREDIT! at the top of our lungs when noticing the link between the outside world and what we studied.