Here is my Question For Mosaic Listserv Group. Thank you very sincerely. -Patrick J. Monette When I was a kid, I had very little interest in reading and making rich contextual connections, but now I love to read and I don't know why this happened. Though I'm mostly ignorant of the reasons behind this outcome, I'm almost certain that what happened was in virtual absence of most of the inscribed methodologies - in their calculated form - presented in Mosaic. My question, thus, is, How do we discard things that we might consider to be antiquated or outdated methods of instruction when they clearly worked for so many in the past? For example, reading groups that were divided by different reading ability levels. I was part of many a lower reading level in my day and I feel like I came out of these mostly unscathed. Further, I don't think that my self-esteem suffered all that much, but it's my opinion that self-esteem is immensely overrated anyway. Some of most terrible and evil tyrants in history, including Hitler and Mussolini, and some of the most notorious mob bosses and gang leaders, had - each of them - VERY high levels of self-esteem. I believe that one's values are a much greater determinant of one's character and goodness, and should anything be given higher precedents than these? Also, if my self-esteem did take a hit, who's to say that this didn't benefit me in any way? - that it didn't give me thicker skin, make me stronger, build character in me, etc.? But back to the regularly scheduled program… Although I’m not sure if I enjoyed looking up vocabulary words in the dictionary and writing down their definitions when I was a young bucking bronco, I’m not quite ready to dismiss this method of instruction as unprofitable because I think that much of the learning that was impressed on us in our younger days did so in such subtle ways that it would be impossible - indeed, unprofitable and maybe even harmful - to say, simply, that this and other methods are either great or worthless. Further, I don’t think that they necessarily have to be one or the other. Each alone may just serve as another piece of the puzzle that, combined with the many other pieces, contributes to the mosaic, but by no means completes it. That being said, in all its presumptive vigor, I love what I've read of Mosaic thus far ;).
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