Educational Equity vs. Equality

At Crooked Timber today, some interesting ruminations on the meaning and utility of concepts of "equality" or "equity" in education. He starts off opposed to equity for its vagueness, and seems to end up supporting its flexibility as one social justice concern among many.

The comments are interesting, too.

Two links...

From the State Journal, an article on local patients from various backgrounds who have difficulty understanding health information: here.

And from Slashdot via Metafilter, we learn that the University of Virginia is beginning to phase out its student computer labs. Clicking on that MeFi link leads to some interesting discussion, including cost-cutting measures, what happened in schools where free laptops were mandatory and/or provided, and discussion of the software and other issues related to providing a lab suitable for the needs of the most users.

Article on "The future of reading" from the NYT

Interesting article today about how digital tools change the work of the school librarian:

A group of fifth graders huddled around laptop computers in the school library overseen by Ms. Rosalia and scanned allaboutexplorers.com, a Web site that, unbeknownst to the children, was intentionally peppered with false facts.

Ms. Rosalia, the school librarian at Public School 225, a combined elementary and middle school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, urged caution. “Don’t answer your questions with the first piece of information that you find,” she warned.

Most of the students ignored her, as she knew they would. But Nozimakon Omonullaeva, 11, noticed something odd on a page about Christopher Columbus.

“It says the Indians enjoyed the cellphones and computers brought by Columbus!” Nozimakon exclaimed, pointing at the screen. “That’s wrong.”

It was an essential discovery in a lesson about the reliability — or lack thereof — of information on the Internet, one of many Ms. Rosalia teaches in her role as a new kind of school librarian.

Read the rest of the article here.