From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Wed Aug 28 2002 - 21:18:44 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Yes, but imagine you're a teacher in a school, even where you have
> a free hand with the curriculum. Unless you're teaching a bright
> and gifted class, good luck. I predict that you'll find their
> enthusiasm and interest almost impossible to arouse towards anything
> you find worthwhile.
I dunno. I can't really say since I don't think I was ever given
anything interesting to learn in school. I also differ with your idea of
'a bright and gifted class'. I was in a gifted program in 7th grade and
it didn't seem all that different. (except that the 1st quarter of PE
was formation marching). Consider these quotes from Gatto:
<<David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal
development, when both are 13, you can't tell which one learned first
—the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I label Rachel
"learning disabled" and slow David down a bit, too. For a paycheck, I
adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won’t
outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise,
"special education" fodder. She’ll be locked in her place forever.
In 30 years of teaching kids rich and poor I almost never met a learning
disabled child; hardly ever met a gifted and talented one either. Like
all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by human
imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine
because they preserve the temple of schooling.>>
----http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue3.htm
I can't find the reference, but somewhere on his site Gatto mentions
getting inner-city kids excited about *tax forms*. While perhaps as
libertarians we find the idea of getting excited about tax forms to be
somewhat disgusting, I think Gatto's intention was to get the kids to
learn about something that would be real in their own lives. Perhaps
they had seen a parent struggling over tax forms and figured they might
help.
I seriously have the idea that kids could be motivated by having them
teach. Or even prepare curriculum. Just teach two courses: web front-end
and web back-end. Maybe a third course in personal financial management.
Make every other subject support these courses. I'm quite serious: get
the kids involved from the first day of first grade into creating
curriculum for next year's class. And put it on a web site. Teach 'em
html even before they can read.
-Mike
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