kirby urner wrote: > I've read some Gatto and know about unschooling. But how does that > tie in to your advocacy for Jython, for example?
No direct link. I just think Jython is great technology considering Java's (technically) undeserved success in the market. :-) Also, if you want browser plugin support for Python, Jython already has it running as a Java applet, and that will cover more versions of more browsers than anything we can realistically hope to support with another flavor of Python. If plugin support is not important, then CPython seems a better choice to me for an educational Python with the least licensing and deployment and dependency issues and with the greatest current support. > And what does this > sentence even mean: "Mark sets out to do good; my worry is how many > Bucky Fullers the curriculum he plans is about to grind to ruin." In the context of the previous statement there, and if you consider Gatto's points about just about every inner-city kid he taught being a potential great success at contributing something to society, as well as the actual success of a place like the Albany Free School with kids who have problems at other conventional schools: http://www.albanyfreeschool.com/overview.shtml it means that schooling centered around the current needs of the curriculum instead of the current needs of the student actively harms the potential of most kids. And, as Gatto suggests, modern schools were designed to do just that -- to be levelers, not amplifiers. In order to level someone, you need to grind them down one way or another to fit some standard. :-( Today Bucky Fuller might have been placed in a special ed class and then likely put on Ritalin for obsessing about those dried peas and not paying enough attention to the teacher in class. Drugged up and labeled a failure from kindergarten, he might never have developed enough self-esteem to think great thoughts (or make them known to the world). Granted, schools do try to raise others up to the standard (but usually fail miserably at that anyway, which is OK, because it failures paradoxically justifies the need for schooling, because the kid is usually blamed). As Gatto points out, the ironic thing when we say schools are "failing", is that the reality is that schools are actually "succeeding" at what they were designed to do. They were designed mainly by industrialists http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm to make most people into compliant factory workers and consumers. Ideal consumers and factory workers from an industrialist point of view are not skeptical people -- thus the focus on science as a collection of facts, not a way of skeptical thought. The problem is just that the purpose to which they were designed in a very public way two to three generations ago (with ultimately the buy-in of most people at the time) is no longer the purpose which we now desperately need them to fulfill (which is now to create citizens for a dynamic and technology oriented 21st century) We are facing a variety of specific issues resulting in part from the very success of consumerism and industrialism, and it is often that the success of one generation turns out to be the problem of the next as conditions change in part from that success. For example, the US had a lot of productive factories for two generations, so now the problem is more what to do with all the stuff we have (including how to power it and recycle it sustainably). > I can't understand your logic yet. The commitment is to bottom-up > curriculum development, not one guy (not me, not anyone) imposing some > top-down compulsory "must learn" thing, except insofar as we tie to > the pre-existing national curriculum for South Africa. Hundreds of years ago, most kids learned what they needed to know from family and community, though some wealthy people had one-on-one tutors for their kids. The notion of sticking a bunch of kids the same age together in a room and expecting them to all learn the same thing at the same time is only in the last century or so, and it is clearly not how children learn best, since kids are ready to grasp ideas at very unpredictable times. It is a waste of a child's and a teacher's time to try before they are ready -- whether reading, writing, arithmetic, or other things, but that waste is exactly what an age based curriculum demands. So no curriculum, even a "bottom-up" one that expects kids to learn something in a specific year (let alone in a specific month or day) is going to be good for kids overall. Enough such interactions grinds down kids into tiny fractions of what they could of been (and it is not too good for the teachers psyche either); it makes many kids actively hate education, or at least hate and fear specific subjects (often math, but also often reading). Boredom by itself isn't torture and is an important part of life, but forcing kids to be in boring situations they can't evade physically or mentally for years at a time is torture IMHO. The bottom line is trust. A mandatory "curriculum" is an act of mistrust. A kid who senses mistrust is goign to be an unhappy one. I have fewer problems with advisory curricula, as suggestions or hints. > The lesson plans will specify what software is needed. If that > software actually exists, so much the better. And the students > themselves are authors of some of these lesson plans. Well, that's a start, assuming the same kids who are the authors are the ones doing the learning, otherwise, it might just be bullying. Still, I won't question that getting kids to design lesson plans is probably a very educational experience for many of them.. But on lesson plans, consider this Quaker joke (respectful enough, I think): http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/89q3/quaker.603.html "One World War II Quaker conscientious objector had been a professional wrestler. Once when he and some other inmates of the Coshocton CPS camp in Ohio made a trip into town, they were hassled about their pacifism by some local youths, who insisted that only force could change the German's views. In response, the ex-wrestler took off his coat, challenged one of the local boys to a match, and promptly threw the townie across the room. He then asked the youth, "Now do you believe that force won't change people's views?" "Heck no!" the local boy hollered back. "That's exactly my point," said the Quaker, who put on his coat and left." So, where are the lesson plans someone used to teach you be a curriculum writer and Python evangelist? :-) Or did you learn that by trial and error and life experience? That's exactly my point. :-) > It's a > community effort. A lot of these TuxLabs double as businesses after > hours, with some of the same talent overlapping i.e. the dual-use > nature of the lab makes for a convenient apprenticeship and transition > to paying work for older, more skilled kids. That all sounds good as far as it goes. And definitely in line with self-education. Anyway, time to wind this theme down and move onto other things. --Paul Fernhout _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
