Marie Curie: A Life

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Marie Curie: A Life by Susan Quinn.  Marie Curie is one of the greatest scientists of the last several centuries.  Yet people often know little of the life of this extraordinary woman who helped unravel the mysteries of radiation—to her own, and her daughter’s, ultimate peril and demise. Maria was born in Poland as the fifth and the youngest child of teachers Bronisława, (née Boguska), and Władysław Skłodowski. Władysław was the director of a secondary for boys, where he taught mathematics and physics. Władysław also taught Maria mental math—a trick she used to her advantage through her career. (Would that we commonly taught these skills in elementary school nowadays.)  Meanwhile, researcher Pierre Curie in Paris was beginning to think he would have a career wedded only to science, since he could never find a woman as interested in science as he.  But when Marie moved to Paris, Pierre was bowled over.  Their mutual passions produced a Nobel Prize and two daughters.  Pierre might, however, be thought of as an exemplar of the dangers of excessive focus. It seems he was killed while inattentively attempting to cross a busy street.  Marie, devastated, still forged ahead in her research, winning a Nobel Prize yet again for her solo efforts.  This fascinating book tells the story of this exceptional woman, with a phenomenal memory and even more extraordinary ability to piece together the mysteries of radiation.   

Learning & the Brain Conference, Boston, November 17-19, 2023

Learning & the Brain is one of our very favorite conferences, packed full of great information with terrific speakers.  You’ll see Richard Davidson, perhaps the best-known meditation researcher;  the always informative polymath Paul Kirschner; Annie Murphy Paul, whose books we’ve admired for years; and Robert Waldinger, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the longest, most comprehensive scientific study of happiness and wellbeing ever conducted. Barb’s own presentations will help reconcile the math and reading wars using insights from neuroscience (Nov 17, 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM ET); as well as the keynote on building memories and effective learners, Nov 18: 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM.  Register here to take advantage of the early registration until September 29th!

Smartick Data

One of the coolest developments we’ve seen online are the fantastic data visualization capabilities offered by Smartick Data.  Wow!  You can find, for example, graphs and articles revealing how the number of students with disabilities have trended markedly upwards.  “In the 2000-01 school year, when data collection for autism began, around 93,000 students were reported. This figure has grown nearly ten-fold to 882,000 students by the 2021-22 school year. Similarly, the category of ‘other health impairments’ has seen an exponential increase from 141,000 students in 1976-77 to over a million students in 2021-22.”  You can also break this data out by state.

Here is just the tiniest sampling of the many charts and articles you can easily access through Smartick Data:

• Visualizing The Current State of Teacher Shortages in U.S.
• Numeracy and Literacy Scorecards
• EdTech Titans: The Global Unicorns Shaping the Future of Education
• International Mathematical Olympiad 2023: Unveiling the Champions
• Visualizing the Duration of School Summer Vacations Around the World
• Crunching the Numbers: How Much Funding Do Public Schools Get?

We’ve bookmarked Smartick Data, and return to it again and again to find fun, interesting charts and articles. You can also subscribe, as we have, to their educational newsletter. Smartick is all about teaching kids math, but it’s also so much more. Enjoy! 

“Finland Government has Admitted the Failure of Finland Education”

Indefagatable investigative Japanese educational reporter Manabu Watanabe is back to reporting in English after an all-too-long hiatus. The Bildung Review is Finland’s recent report involving the shocking decline of learning standards in the country since the early 2000s.  Manabu observes: “As we all know, very few people abroad talked about the excellence of Finnish education between 1960s and 1990s. It was only after it had reached to the top in the PISA ranking in the mid-2000s that Finland was hailed as ‘Education Superpower.’ Since then, Finnish teaching has been an exciting topic and celebrated enthusiastically in many foreign media such as TV programs, books, newspapers, blogs etc. Education debates in the world have been revolving around Finland for almost two decades. However, according to the Bildung Review, while proficiency in reading and mathematics strengthened between 1960s and 1990s, rapid decline in learning outcomes began in early 2000s. So if you accept this view of the Finland government, you cannot help but come to the conclusion that the Finnish teaching mythologized after the mid-2000s is useless or even harmful, because it has caused the sharp drop in the learning outcomes. 

In this way, it poses a very painful question especially to those who have been making a fuss about Finland education on the bandwagon.”

Barbara Oakley, cómo aprendemos

Enjoy Barb’s conversation about learning and entrepreneurship at Libertopolis in Guatemala City with Maria Dolores Arias and Jorge Jacobs. 

Modern Firefighter

Learn more about the intense discipline of firefighting–and how learning applies, with Rob Kandle and Barb in this podcast episode of Modern Firefighter.

Sithu Khant’s Journey in Machine Learning

If you are trying to get a foothold in the world of machine learning, read this interesting blog post by Sithu Khant about his learning journey over the past year.

That’s all for now. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!