Curriculum

State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick's plan to add environmental education to the curriculum of public elementary, middle and high schools is a welcome move toward making all students more aware of our responsibility to care for the planet and the impact our choices have on it. Many important public policy debates — from climate change and conservation to man-made disasters such as BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico —...

The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has launched a free, online curriculum for high school teachers to use in their classrooms. Teaching the Food System is designed to be inserted into anything from social studies, to environmental science and biology classes. The center which is part of the Bloomberg School of Public Health is offering $2,000 grants to teachers who need money for materials or field trips. 

Arnold Blumberg plops the zombie head on a table at the front of the small theater. "I brought a friend," says the University of Baltimore professor, clad in an unbuttoned black shirt adorned with red skulls. Blumberg is meeting his class for the first time and it seems appropriate that he greet them beside "old Worm Eye," undead star of the 1979 Italian cult film "Zombi 2. " It was Worm Eye's decaying visage that called to a young Blumberg from the shelf of a Randallstown video store in the 1980s.

Free State Montessori School in Fork will hold a parent workshop on Feb. 22 at 6 p.m. The workshop will address the Montessori hands-on approach to teaching language. It will explore how the language curriculum is handled at all levels of development, from toddler through elementary school. Parents will get a chance to work with the curriculum's materials to better understand the Montessori method. The workshop is free. Light refreshments will be served. Free State Montessori School is located at 12536 Harford Road.

The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has launched a free, online curriculum for high school teachers to use in their classrooms. Teaching the Food System is designed to be inserted into anything from social studies, to environmental science and biology classes. The center which is part of the Bloomberg School of Public Health is offering $2,000 grants to teachers who need money for materials or field trips. 

Baltimore County school leaders disregarded advice from state officials and forged ahead to overhaul the teaching of English, spending more than $5 million over the past few years to buy textbooks that mostly sit unused and to rewrite a curriculum that has been shelved. The system spent about $2.2 million on a 27-year-old grammar textbook with outdated references to encyclopedias and almanacs, both barely used by today's students, according to school system documents. The textbook and accompanying workbooks remained in a warehouse for nearly a year, and school officials acknowledged they are just now being delivered.

SCHOOLHOUSE POLITICS: LESSONS FROM THE SPUTNIK ERA. By Peter Dow. Harvard University Press. 304 pages. $34.95. IMAGINE a group of America's leading scientists, child psychologists, film makers, anthropologists and some real live teachers getting together and considering the relationship between scholarship and teaching and examining the nature of the learning process and the nature of children.Imagine the curriculum they could create for 10-year-olds. It would use dynamic teaching tools: silent films that not only present facts but teach concentration, observation and thinking skills.

Beginning today, fifth-graders attending city schools will no longer be told that generations of black people were "born" into slavery.Instead, they will be reminded that all people are born free and that slavery is a condition imposed upon free individuals by the "perpetrators of slavery" through man-made laws.Also beginning today, fifth-graders will learn about the ancient African kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhay and about the learned men and the great universities of Timbuktu.They will listen to, and contemplate the intricacies of jazz music and gospel music and scat singing.

ARLINGTON, Va. - Now that Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has ruled that our moral, ethical, even legal framework in the matter of capital punishment for murderers under 18 is to be determined by "evolving standards," let us move on to another application of that flawed philosophy: sex. In the produce section of the grocery store, the lowly cucumber is about to achieve an elevated position in some Montgomery County public schools. Montgomery County has long been known as a "bedroom community" in the affluent Washington, D.C., suburbs - an appropriate moniker given what young students are about to be taught.

The Anne Arundel County school board has approved two new textbooks for use in its family life curriculum.The board voted Wednesday to add "Married and Single Life" and "Education in Sexuality" to its list of approved materials for the curriculum.The textbooks were among 17 pamphlets, books, videodiscs and videotapes that are up for board approval.The entire list was to have been approved during the summer and early fall, but not all of the board members were able to review the material in time.

Saying that money had been wasted and school system policies had not been followed in the purchases of books and writing of curriculum, Baltimore County school board members asked administrators Tuesday night for reassurances that similar mistakes would not be made in the future. The school board's questions came after reports in The Baltimore Sun this month that detailed the school system's spending of millions of dollars to rewrite language arts curriculum that has been shelved and to purchase a 27-year-old grammar textbook that sat in a warehouse for nearly a year before being distributed recently.

There's something very wrong about the Baltimore County school system's spending $5 million on textbooks and a curriculum that were hardly used and are already outdated. ("Officials question millions spent on Balto. Co. texts and curriculum," Nov. 12). Donald Mohler, chief of staff for County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, said that "it appears to be questionable that this was a wise expenditure. " What an understatement. The expenditure looks even more nonsensical when you consider that funds going to the classrooms were reduced and 200 teaching positions were cut. School board president Lawrence Schmidt says the board didn't learn the details of the millions wasted until he read about it in The Sun. Isn't it the board's duty to oversee expenditures and curriculum malfunctions?

Baltimore County leaders expressed concern Friday that the school system may have wasted as much as $5 million on textbooks and a curriculum that are not being widely used, calling on school officials to more closely monitor spending. "When you find out that millions of dollars were directed toward textbooks that are sitting in a warehouse, that is a serious concern," said Donald Mohler, chief of staff for County Executive Kevin Kamenetz. "It is important that every dollar we spend be spent wisely.

Baltimore County school leaders disregarded advice from state officials and forged ahead to overhaul the teaching of English, spending more than $5 million over the past few years to buy textbooks that mostly sit unused and to rewrite a curriculum that has been shelved. The system spent about $2.2 million on a 27-year-old grammar textbook with outdated references to encyclopedias and almanacs, both barely used by today's students, according to school system documents. The textbook and accompanying workbooks remained in a warehouse for nearly a year, and school officials acknowledged they are just now being delivered.

For nearly two centuries, the Maryland Institute College of Art has been known for training painters, sculptors and fashion designers. But in May, MICA broadened its course offerings, and it is preparing to confer its first master's degrees on about 200 students planning careers in fields ranging from engineering to public health to computer science. The next step: an MBA program that will start next fall and provide classroom instruction at both MICA and the Johns Hopkins University's Carey School of Business.

Maryland has joined a multi-state campaign to improve science education — a move that will lead to a greater emphasis on analytical and conceptual thinking. As part of the 20-state effort led by the National Academy of Sciences, Maryland will help write new standards that determine what is taught in schools from kindergarten through high school. The new science teaching will encourage students to examine concepts that cross the boundaries of physics, biology and chemistry, said Stephen Pruitt, vice president of content, research and development at Achieve, a nonpartisan, nonprofit that is coordinating the effort.

About a dozen parents showed up yesterday at the school board meeting to object to the "Exit Outcomes," a proposed blueprint for what Carroll County students should know by graduation."

A decade ago, while visiting the private Calvert School in North Baltimore, Gertrude Williams found just what she was looking for inside orange boxes stacked in a storage room. Each contained a year's supply of textbooks, crayons, pencils, paper and detailed, proven lesson plans the Calvert School sends to more than 10,000 homes as part of its worldwide (and world- famous) home-study course.Trudi Williams, the principal of the city's Barclay School in Charles Village, vowed then that she would somehow bring Calvert's curriculum to her poor public school.

The recent accusations aimed at the University of Miami's athletic department are just the latest example of moral failure involving educational institutions, athletics and athletes. Every scandal seems to debunk the myth that sports builds character. Instead, these stories reinforce the need for student-athletes to be taught right from wrong with the same diligence that they learn their playbooks. Sports — at every age and on every level — seem to have become the victim of a "win-at-all-cost" culture.

Harry Thomas Walker Jr., a retired Howard County public school educator who had served in the Peace Corps during the 1960s, died Saturday of heart failure at the Heartlands senior community in Ellicott City. The Roland Park resident was 66. Dr. Walker, the son of librarians, was born in Champaign, Ill., and moved with his family to Columbia, S.C. In the mid-1950s, the family moved to Lochearn. He became an accomplished clarinetist and saxophonist, and while attending Milford Mill High School, played with the Del Vinos, a rock group.