Online education is a perfect way to start a successful career with flying colors.

Keen students be it a high school pass-out, working professional doing nine-to-find job to make both ends meet or a busy housewife- there are various accredited online universities, offering college courses online. With distance learning, one doesn’t have to make major commitments to score well. Students can purse online degree courses from their house without hampering your job prospects.

Benefits of Online degrees:

• Online education and Distance Learning environment offers visible and measurable benefits.

• The online education curriculum program runs through audio-visual, visual and e-learning modules. The Internet provides significant functionality in the transmission of information.

• Online learning enhances the interaction between the students and faculty to students.

• The online and web-based is a substantial added value to the traditional education.

• Online education promotes and enables student-centered teaching approaches. Thee education is tailor made to suit the personal learning styles and busy schedules.

• The study material is accessible 24x 7. Online availability of resources can be accessed from any corner of the world.

• Student’s progress is evaluated instantly.

• With the technological advancement online learning stands a great chance of popularity.

• Students can take course of education irrespective of the location of an online university.

• Distance learning is best suited for the students who are doing full time job and even those busy in fulfilling family responsibility.

• The academic staff is not restricted by geography or the halls of campus based buildings.

Various Online Degree Courses:

Vast and extensive range of courses is offered by various accredited online universities. Almost, all kinds of courses in various degrees are available. Virtually all courses offered in regular degree courses are offered by online universities through distance learning. Degree Courses are offered in streams of arts, science and commerce. There Bachelors degree (which is of 3-4 years), Masters Degree (of 4 years), Phd Degree (which can go for up to 5 years) and other vocational courses.

Here’s a list of top ten best online universities, ranked on the basis of its online degree courses, quality of course work, degree options, study material and administrative work:

1. Walden University

2. University of Phoenix

3. Bellevue University

4. Grand Canyon University

5. Salem University Online

6. Capella University

7. DeVry University

8. George Washington University

9. Strayer University

10. Villanova University

Quick tips to select online universities:

• Online degrees programs aren’t full time online. They work via mails, CDs, telephone and videotapes. Choose a university where the technical support is efficient.

• Inquire about the qualification and facilitation of instructors and teachers, which will undertake your classroom.

• Select a customer-oriented university that has a provision of assigning a personal advisor who helps to solve queries and actively participate in administrative details.

• Enroll in an online university where one can earn degrees within a time span of two to three year and avail lectures and study material by attending classes on a part-time basis.

Take an in-depth enquiry about the success and results of students and alumni.

EDUCATION’S FLY IN THE OINTMENT

by Robert DePaolo

As a grizzled veteran with thrity years worth of experience in public (and private) school systems I have been alternately fascinated and appalled by the relatively poor academic achievement levels among American students. As a school psychologist, I have also seen many students who would have “made it through” in previous times now being identified as learning disabled and/or attention deficient.

Like many others i’ve looked at numerous factors extant in the public school system in trying to figure out why these trends have emerged.  I’ve also taken into acount the explanations and ostensible remedies served up by politicians on the left and right, by parents, educators, beaurocrats and others. Since, among my professional responsibilities is to administer intelligence tests I’ve been able to determine – beyond any doubt - that most students in and out of special education have the necessary cognitive abilities to succeed - all things being equal. As someone with a fair amount of knowledge regarding child development I also understand that while a learning disability is defined as a discrepancy among intellectual skills and between Intelligence and academic performance,  most if not all people, regardless of their circumstances, would tend to show strengths and weaknesses in their test profile – simply because nature is not a cookie cutter.

The question is; why do some students lack the ability to keep up in class? Although I’ve spent a lot of time observing children in classrooms, the answer did not occur to me until recently. In the past I seldom paid much attention to curriculum. This error of omission came about for two reasons. First, teachers most often had me observe students in open-ended periods such as recess, when they were more prone to acting out. The second reason is that I simply assumed the curriculum was developmentally appropriate. After all, it is typically handed down from people with considerable expertise in the field, both state-wide and nationally.

But every now and then I would get a counseling  referral regarding a student presumed to be depressed. In several instances I probed in atempting to find the source of the mood disorder, only to have the students tell me they were sad and frustrated because they had absolutely no idea what was being taught in class. It had nothing to do with their home life. School – they implored me to understand - was the problem. That was why they frequently called in sick.That was why they acted out so as to get taken from the classroom and why they actually preferred being lectured by the principal to enduring the painful confusion and alienation they felt in class.

It was after a number of such encounters with students that I began to pay closer attention to the curriculum as a possible antecedent of student pathology. My first real academic observation was of a second grade class, where the teacher was discussing iscoceles triangles, the difference between squares and parallelograms and other bits and pieces. She drifted from one topic to another , hoping the students would have some sort of Eureka experience and tie it all together. None that I observed did.   It was a disheveled, incongrouous lecture which for most students might as well have been in Greek. I then observed other classes, where similar mix and match non-thematic curriculum items were being offered. After a while it occured to me that the reason there are so many confused, inattentive, “learning disabled” students is due to an absurd curriculum being hoist upon students well before they are developmentally ready to absorb such material.

But it isn’t just development. After talking with teachers (all of whom were involved, caring and hard working professionals - themselves frustrated) it occured to me that there is a new curriculum theory in education that has simply failed. Many teachers know this but are playing the hand they’ve been dealt. The current thinking is that children learn best when concepts rather than rote memorization of facts are involved. Some gurus in the field have come to believe that rather than teaching children the times tables by recitation, they should present them with multiple examples of math facts in the hope that the children would eventually put together the times tables on their own. 

The problem with this approach (which we in the field of psychology call the “instances of the concept method”) is that it can only take hold after the instances are taught. “The fact precedes the concept.”…is a tenet well supported by research on learning. Furthermore, categorical learning must precede systems learning. For example, one doesn’t teach the word “fruit” before the child has learned to identify apples and oranges individually.  One doesn’t teach language arts until the child first learns the ins and outs of grammar and  penmanship. Concepts, by definition provide no framework or foundation in memory. Since they are abstract and not tangible they cannot serve as a cognitive anchorpoint. And when the curriculum is laden with concepts beginning in the first grade, it will tend to produce sad, angry, attention deficient students who can’t keep up.

I’ve also asked myself a question that is somewhat, but not entirely grounded in a good ol’days mentality. Specifically, why is it that students whose only technology consisted of cardboard alphabet letters atop the blackboard, with no computers, teacher’s aids, no special education and few if any books other than those passed out in Fall before each class, could become so well educated. More particularly, how could the boomers possibly have become more proficient in reading and math than today’s students with no reading specialists, after school programs or other support systems?

I’m convinced part of the answer lies in the curriculum. It is categorically incomprehensible, which is why in “social studies” classes many students are unsure about what they are suposed to be learning. It is why language arts classes are so generic that students can’t concentrate on just reading or writing.  Indeed the problem inherent in students not knowing what exactly they are studying is formidable and actually prevents conceptualization of the curriculum.

My sense is that perhaps a review of current curriculum practices is needed, with consideration given to rote memorization/recitation methods, narrow subject descriptions, eg. rather than social studies, divide classes up into history, geography etc. and that teachers be allowed to spend more time drilling in specific skill areas than presenting a potpouri curriculum that students simply cannot grasp. 

Here’s why:

I’ve been studying Rudolph Flesch, the reading wars, the ed wars, John Dewey, and all points in between. Along the way I learned a lot about Montessori, and her losing, bruising battle with America’s top educators. Mainly, I learned that she deserved to win.

Montessori was the first female doctor in Italy, graduating in 1896. You know she was extremely smart and determined; you know she thought for herself.

She got into education along an odd tangent. She wanted to help retarded children (at a clinic in Rome). She devised her own techniques and was soon producing miracles: these retarded children were beating the so-called normal kids! Now, that right there is an amazing and wonderful story. But it gets better.

Montessori next asked the very questions that would obsess me: what the heck were the public schools doing to Italy’s children that they lagged behind her retarded children? How could she, a medical doctor, come along and beat those schools at their own game?

Long story short: she applied her techniques to ordinary kids and, soon, she was the talk of Europe and then the world. Her ideas swept through enlightened circles in the USA. She came here to speak in 1913.

And then comes one of the most shameful moments in American education. John Heard Kilpatrick, a crony of John Dewey, wrote a piece in the New York Times (1914) that devastated Montessori. Her reputation in the USA collapsed. Montessori schools closed. Her name disappeared until the 1960s. (Both she and Dewey died in 1952.)

Now, if you want to study the differences between Dewey and Montessori, here’s a long and thorough article: “The Egg Man and the Empress,” on Looksmart.com. But I warn you, you might study the material for a semester, and still be confused. So many platitudes, abstractions, details, generalizations. Finally, it comes down to what an educator is REALLY trying to do.

Maria Montessori was trying to set kids loose, make them smart, tap into all their resources, explore (and explode) their potential. That’s what I believe in.

John Dewey and his gang were all too willing to settle for mediocrity. They were Socialists and they believed that too much learning and knowledge got in the way of producing the cooperative, interdependent children they wanted. John Dewey specifically says in “My Pedagogic Creed” (1897) that he didn’t believe in too much history, science, math, geography, literature, and so on in the early grades. That is, ages 6 to 9 when, according to Montessori and common sense, kids are on fire, eager to learn, growing every day. No, John Dewey says that he wants to emphasize social activities, including “cooking, sewing, manual training, etc.” (his words). He wants to slow kids down, to retard them. The pay-off is supposed to be that they will grow up to become good little Socialists. (Even Antonio Gramsci, a real Communist, said that if you want to help poor kids, you had better give them lots of basic academic skills.)

Here’s what I’ve figured out: you have to look at motives. Montessori was obsessed with making slow children fast. That’s a pedigree I can trust. Dewey was obsessed with making all kids Socialists. So, from day one, Dewey was not an educator in the traditional sense. He believed in conditioning. He was a social engineer, trying to build the Brave New World he saw in his head.

A century later, we are still paying for Dewey’s bad ideas. Dewey, I submit, is the Father of Dumbing Down. He and his gang specifically did not like too much literacy. That is, they were comfortable with more illiteracy. And they got it. By promoting whole word, which does not work, they made sure that this country’s literacy rate would steadily drop. This pedagogy is also, I believe, responsible for all the dyslexia and reading problems we hear about. (Want to eliminate dyslexia? My guess is that the simplest way is to eliminate sight words. Every last one. Once children start to see word-shapes, they become doomed, no longer able to perceive sounds in print.)

The problem with Dewey and Kilpatrick is that they were trying to pull off a silent coup. They wanted a Socialist America. You think they can speak candidly about their goals or strategies? Never. That’s why anything Kilpatrick, Dewey or their allies say about Montessori will be bull and balderdash. It will, more formally, be disingenuous.

Bottom line: Let’s don’t get stuck in the details. Montessori was a real educator. She always INTENDS to educate. Dewey was a real Socialist. He always intends to create Socialists. As most people understand the term “education,” Dewey was actually anti-education. Or, to be charitable, he was remarkably cavalier about it!