Posts Tagged School curricula

Should we let wunderkinds drop out of high school?

In this Oct. 1, 2012 file photo, Tumblr founder David Karp participates in the "Bloomberg Leadership Summit" seminar in New York. In a deal announced Monday, May 20, 2013, Yahoo is buying New York-based Tumblr, the online blogging forum, for $1.1 billion. About $275 million will go to Karp, 26, who dropped out of high school to concentrate on computer programming and started Tumblr six years ago. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes/Invision for Advertising Week)

NEW YORK (AP) — Thomas Sohmers, 17, of Hudson, Mass., has been working at a research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since he was 13, developing projects ranging from augmented reality eyewear to laser communications systems. This spring, his mom, Penny Mills, let him drop out of 11th grade. She says she “could see how much of the work he was doing at school wasn’t relevant to what he wanted to learn.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Stax’s past influences future musicians in Memphis

In this March 22, 2013 photo, guitarists Kordae Maples, from left, Christian Nelson and Dallas Dodson rehearse a song at Stax Music Academy in Memphis, Tenn. The Stax Music Academy is an after-school program where teenagers from some of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods learn how to dance, sing and play instruments. The academy’s students play annual shows in Memphis and have toured to Washington, Italy and Australia, helping spread the soulful “Memphis Sound.” (AP Photos/Adrian Sainz)

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — One by one the teenage singers practice the opening lines to “Boogie Wonderland,” a disco-funk hit from an era before they were born, as dancers work on hip-swinging moves that require perfect choreography.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,