Mastery-Based Learning

Also known as mastery learning, competency-based learning is a growing focus of education conversations. The premise is that students learn best by mastering a particular learning goal before moving on to new material that builds on that goal. Instead of a group of students all moving from one topic to the next with varying degrees of understanding, each student continues to work on a topic until he or she has mastered the content. Because students of the same age advance through the curricul...

 Novelty is Good for the Brain

There is unanimous agreement among neuroscientists and psychologists that the human brain operates best when it is regularly subjected to new challenges. We have recently discovered that the brain benefits from a broad variety of problem-solving activities such as crossword puzzles and Sudoku. There also appear to be benefits when we mix these activities up: doing crosswords puzzles for a while and then switching over to Sudoku, and later, back again. The same goes for changing daily routines...

 How the Brain Handles Novelty and Routine

When faced with complexity, our first response is to retreat to the familiar, even if the familiar means failing. But in addition to reverting to what is familiar, we also have another reaction: fear. We are hardwired to perceive real change as threatening, so we instinctively reject it. Sure, a few of us have the courage and tenacity to attack the complex, the unknown, and the risky. After all, this is hiow new discoveries are made. But many more of us do not. Why not? It turns out t...

 Corporations are Antithetical to the Free Market

Corporations, whose leaders portray themselves as champions of the free market, were in fact created to circumvent that market. They were an answer to the challenge of organizing thousands of people in different places and with different skills to perform large and complex tasks, like building automobiles or providing nationwide telephone service. [...]Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats. Their fundamental tendency is toward self-perpetuation. They are, almost by defin...