Well, there is hope in the making Chris! She will make you pround in class one day (if you get her that is...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r43yCiKlbCo&feature=related Must have taken a lot of M&M's to get her there, would you not day Stephen? Joking aside, it is quite an impressive display. I wondered whether they were cheating by indicating it to her from another angle, or with a pointer of sorts... but it seems to be genuine enough. Cheers! JM ________________________________ From: Christopher D. Green [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2008 6:28 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] What's wrong with America [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In defense of America, we should note that the kid got it right. They specially pick the kids for that. She's right, you know, they do speak French in (parts of) Europe. :-( Canada's not much better, actually. When I was just finishing my PhD, I was teaching history of psychology at one of the top schools in Canada (U. Toronto, so you would expect to get pretty good students, on average). It was early in the course, I was lecturing about Ancient Greece and its wars with Persia (which then extended all the way through present-day Turkey). I had intended all this as a little bit of background for the "important" (i.e., psychological) material, vaguely assuming they had all taken a Plato-to-NATO course in high school or first year university. Anyway, I could see I was losing them, so I found a map of the Aegean (showing the coasts of Greece and Turkey), threw it up on the overhead, and continued on. Still, things were a little odd. The following week, I decided to have a "pop" quiz -- a map of modern Europe with all the countries' boundaries drawn in, but they had to supply the names. I figured it would be a little fun (more visual, less verbal), and most of them could show me what they knew (and the few who couldn't would take the hint). Boy, was I wrong. The average number of European countries these students could name on the map was about FOUR: usually England, often France, sometimes Spain and/or Italy. Almost never Germany. Almost never Greece. The bit of Turkey that stuck into the map, when it was labeled at all, was often called India or China (meaning virtually all of Asia was missing form their mental maps of the world). I was flabbergasted. They were irritated and grumpy. The course proceeded, but neither of us got completely over the incident. Being a pedagogidolt at the time (I like to think I'm somewhat less so now) , I did it again the next year. Same result. I never did that test again. I just teach them the geographical material now, as though they had never seen a map before coming to my class. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ "Part of respecting another person is taking the time to criticise his or her views." - Melissa Lane, in a Guardian obituary for philosopher Peter Lipton ================================= --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
