Home
Funding Areas
About Us
"The grades you got in school don't really matter," says educator and bestselling author Esther Wojcicki.
Speaking recently at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Wojcicki said education in the US is flawed because it discourages "kids who are super creative but who are not following all of the rules."
How do we continue to encourage them? "The number one way I think we need to [encourage creative students] is we need to cut the importance of grades," the 81-year-old California high school teacher said, per CNBC.
"Everybody is fighting for grades and those grades lead to college, and if you don't have those grades you cannot go," Wojcicki said.
"We need kids to be able to think our way out of the problems that face our world. School, as it is set up today, does not do that."
Some neurologists argue that memorization has benefits like exercising your brain, and that remembering information is the first step to understanding it.
But education experts contend that prioritizing high test scores rather than demonstrating deep understanding of materials fails to teach important learning skills.
Selected Grant News Headlines
A customized collection of grant news from foundations and the federal government from around the Web.
"From diapers to car seats, strollers, and bottles, I'm amazed to see the creativity and convenience into the products that won this year's Innovation Awards," says a judge in the Juvenile Products...more
There's a new kid on the block: products that grow. In a Harvard Business Review article titled "How to Win in a Changing World," Vijay Govindarajan and coauthors lay out a series of steps...more
Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron has designed a new children's hospital in Switzerland that's designed to look like a town, the Guardian reports. The design for Kinderspital, which is due to open...more
Virginia Tech and Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC, are teaming up to study how artificial intelligence can be used to improve children's health care, the Washington Post...more
Boston Children's Hospital is ranked among the best children's hospitals in the US by US News & World Report, and it's also among the best in the country when it comes to using artificial...more
"Most parents know AI will be crucial to their children's future." That's the takeaway from a new Morning Consult survey commissioned by Samsung Solve for Tomorrow. The survey of 1,000 US...more
A Canadian court has ordered the release of a man accused of raping a 15-year-old girl, after his lawyer argued that the girl hadn't actually committed a crime, the CBC reports. According to the...more
The UK's ban on junk food advertising could have a big impact on the food industry: It could force companies to come up with healthier recipes, reports Food and Drink Digital. "In the context of...more
If you're an 8-year-old in Ethiopia, there's a new app for that. HaHu Scripts is a mobile app that "gamify[s] learning of Amharic and Tigrigna languages," according to its website. It's the...more
A 5-year-old Chinese boy is being called "China's Elon Musk" after he programmed a character to catch thieves, Quartz reports. According to China's People's Daily Online, Junyi Zhang created the...more
Children News from...
Gates Foundation
Social Entrepreneurship
Spotlight
Using Fashion as a Force for Social and Environmental Good
Jeff Denby co-founded PACT, a movement camouflaged as a clothing company. Denby and his team decided to build a business to fund the causes they believe in.
