Category: Education (Page 1 of 7)

What good is the Department of Education?

February 16, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

I taught Physics for 25 years at two nicer school districts and was an instructor for 15 years at an academic summer camp for genius children. There is objective evidence that I was an excellent teacher. Also, I can discuss education forever, so an effort will be made to keep this post limited to the federal Department of Education.

The budget for the federal Department of Education (DoED), is 268 billion dollars. There are 54 million students in k-12 schools. The DoED spends $5000 per student, but doesn’t have any students.

Bill Gates likes being autistic.

January 26, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Bill Gates on Autism

These are my students on our field trip to Cedar Point for Physics Day in 2011. They are all weird in their own way. I picked the year at random, because it doesn’t matter.

Bill Gates makes a good point about students being over diagnosed, labeled and medicated.

Dumb blondes in bed with popcorn.

January 20, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

A few weeks ago, I started watching the Popcorn In Bed Youtube channel. It’s a reaction channel featuring two cute blondes watching movies. The movies are chosen by member surveys and are generally very good. The channel is an easy way to watch a familiar movie in a half-hour rather than a couple of hours.

The two women are charming, and started the channel with virtually no knowledge of movies. Initially, they weren’t familiar with actors such as Sigourney Weaver and Bruce Willis. They don’t know much about history or other topics that might be considered “common knowledge”. It’s usually cute, but occasionally astounding.

Summer School isn’t like the movies.

January 12, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

I’ve been scanning and organizing old photos.

This is from teaching summer school at Cleveland Heights. The photos look like one of those “White savior” teacher movies where the young White woman is teaching the urban kids that society has given up on. She sees something of value in each and every one, and somehow, ignites a love of learning.

Teaching a bunch of Black kids at an urban school wasn’t like that, but if they make a movie, I want to be played by Gwyneth Paltrow.

Rain Man is an engaging and relevant movie. 8/10.

January 2, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Oh boy, this is going to sound bad.

Rain Man is a movie that doesn’t often get mentioned, but it should because it’s relevant to what’s happening with children today. While watching it tonight, it struck how looking after an autistic person is like having a dog. Yeah, that doesn’t sound good at all, but hear me out.

Sparky is smarter than a monkey.

January 1, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Dogs succeed while chimps fail at following finger pointing

Ever since we watched Inside the Mind of a Dog, Sparky has been telling everyone that he’s smarter than a monkey because they said that dogs understand human pointing, and primates don’t.

There are times when I suspect that Sparky is stretching the truth. To start the new year off right, I challenged Sparky to demonstrate that he understands human pointing. It took some training, but he is getting the idea.

How to Learn Physics in 2025.

December 16, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

While working out, my brother and I were chatting about goals for 2025. These aren’t New Year’s resolutions that are vague and optimistic, but actionable tasks that are specific, measurable and recorded. It’s the difference between “start working out” and “go to the gym twice per week”

Not my protégé.

December 15, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

I’ve been scanning and organizing old photos.

This is from Physics Day at Cedar Point in 2001. Johnny is the student in the center of the bottom row.

Racist programs eliminated at state universities.

December 12, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

College Fix: Race-based programs at Ohio law schools

Five public law schools in Ohio are ending their scholarships and programs based on race following a conservative think tank’s investigation.

The Buckeye Institute, based in Columbus, Ohio, launched the investigation this year into five law schools at Ohio State University, Cleveland State University, University of Akron, University of Cincinnati, and University of Toledo.

It’s great that the Buckeye Institute got law schools to drop racist programs, but why did those programs even exist? Ohio has a Department of Higher Education intended to advise the governor and General Assembly on higher education issues. What have they been doing?

Ohio has a Republican governor with a General Assembly that looks like this:

If Ohio can’t address divisive progressive policies and eliminate DEI in state universities, then what are Republicans even good for?

Make Lunch Great Again

November 27, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Bold action like this would get teachers to eat in the cafeteria again.

The NRHS cafeteria used to serve the best bagel sandwiches. You know how some restaurants serve the best bread or rolls? It’s not just butter or garlic, they do something to make the rolls feel, smell and taste just right. NRHS bagel sandwiches were like that. I think they steamed them or something, then wrapped them in aluminum foil. They weren’t greasy or sloppy, just warm, soft and savory.

Michelle Obama ruined all that. The cafeteria ladies at Normandy and NRHS used to cook. Lunch might be casseroles, pasta or pizza that they made that morning. What ruined everything was requiring nutritional information, like you’d get on packaged food, for each item. Restaurants can afford to determine that information for each recipe, but school cafeterias can’t. Bagel sandwiches stopped soon after that.