[Winona Online Democracy]
Would it not be easier to inspire learning than cramming it down their
throat?
Simply, telling someone that something will be useful does not inspire
learning. It usually inspires eye rolling. (Most over used cliche in the
book.) (I have heard many students utter expletives after hearing this
phrase.) After all if the usefulness is not inherently obvious than
perhaps something should be re-examined. Notably the reason for
re-examining this should be in the realization that the student will
quickly forget what they deem not important.
In school they teach you how to solve the following problem but often
times why it is solved this way is not taught.
(9/17) / (3/16) can be solved by
writing it as (9/17) * (16/3)
The answer is not as important, but rather the method is. Does it
matter if you can recite the answer to this relatively meaningless
series of numbers? No. How to answer it is much more important. Do you
see questions on standardized tests asking about how? Of course not that
would make too much sense and it would take away the chance of someone
guessing correctly. This would be a much fairer representation of the
students capacity. (A better one than 80 questions of:
(789.25984 + 369.214879545) / (3.1415927 ^ 5 + 3.8!) + the absolute
value of the Angle of Saturn's rings as visible from San Francisco, Ca
on December 7th 1941.
Are our children stupid because they cannot solve such an amusingly
useless problem?
(Ok, the part about Saturn's rings are bogus but the rest...))
---
David Dittmann
On Wednesday, May 30, 2001, at 01:09 , [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> [Winona Online Democracy]
>
> Or a third option could be to pay attention secure in the knowledge
> that what may
> seem irrelevant to one at 17 or 18 may prove to be very relevant later
> in life?
>
> Dean Lanz
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