Because of a gifted teacher who was *way* gung ho to teach about the
holocaust, I knew *tons* of gory details at an early age.
Read "night" and "dawn" and that poem about the hang man coming for
people's neighbors but people don't care until they're the ones the
hang man comes for. Think it was 4th grade? Maybe 5th.
I wouldn't trade that experience for the comfort of ignorance. Heh.
That's where the Milgram stuff came in too... sorta explaining how
horrible stuff gets done by average people.
Learning that stuff when I was young and impressionable made a *huge*
difference towards my interpretation of "life". It is /powerful/
stuff.
For the math, I was thinking about a convo on another list about how
quantum mechanics/physics is being conveyed. We still work our way
through it following the "historic" discovery trail (electrons
orbiting like planets, etc.) vs. tackling it from a more recent
perspective first (probability clouds, etc.). Seems confusing and
off-putting for some folks to learn and then unlearn, over and over
again.
Eh. There *is* quite a lot of information available to us now. Lots
and lots and lots. Guess it makes more sense than ever to focus on
critical thinking and "how to learn stuff" and whatnot.
:Den
--
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
Italian Proverb
On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Kris Sisk wrote:
>
>>What do you guys think about dumbing down history for the young ones?
>>Or dumbing down math for the young ones?
>
> Some parts of history it's probably best not to give little kids all the
> horrific details on. For instance, it's one thing to say millions of people
> were killed in the holocaust, but quite another to go into the gory details
> of the various tortures inflicted upon them. And another still to talk about
> the biggest group of holocaust victims while not mentioning the rest (an
> entirely different form of dumbing down history).
>
> As for math, I don't see any reason to ever dumb that down. Unless, of
> course, by dumbing it down you mean starting with the basics and building
> upon them. That's kinda a neccessity. Much as I'd like to see my kids doing
> calculous in the third grade it's just not going to happen.
>
>
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