Linda, good morning. I'm about to hit the road to catch a plane. Three
quick comments. First, there is something about grains of sand and a
beach, drops of water and an ocean. I took several stats courses in the
days I was preparing for med school. Maybe they were not as impersonal as
others. Don't know. But, as we got into the math of things, I was always
told not to forget that any study is like a beach composed of a series of
individual experiences, and that the more we generalize and lump them in
the statistic melting pot, the more we distort the reality of individual
people and things. Curiously, I was taught the same thing as a blossoming
history scholar. "Beware the simplifiers," I was taught in graduate
school. And so, while we may have to talk in generalized terms of
percentages or whatever, we have to realize that our discussion is not a
perfect reflection of absolute reality.
Second, I never denied my subjectivity. I am human. Who isn't? Isn't
this plus or minus thing a recognition that whatever study is done, is a
hedging of a bet that the study is not perfect. So, why do we pretend it
is. And so, I guess the humanist in me, while being a great admirer of
science and of scientific method--which I avidly used in my research days,
cannot worship it because it is a human endeavor. The humanist in me can't
accept donning any human being, scientist or priest or philosopher or
whomever, with a cloak of infallibility or picturing anyone of us having a
schapps on Sinai's summit. Not even Moses did that. I don't know of
anything a human being can do that is not biased, subjective if you will,
proclamations to the contrary. So, I think we should always remember why
such things as white-out, erasers, and spell checks exist. We should never
think we are at any time infallibly objective, distanced, disengaged. To
take such a position is a height of arrogance and can get us into a lot of
trouble as immunerable historical examples and currently FLorida reveal.
Besides that is the nature of science, isn't it, always questioning, not
only the unknown but the supposedly known as well? Once stated and even
accepted doesn't mean beyond discussion or renewed investigation.
Open-minded skepticism based on the reality that human imperfection creeps
into the process at such moments of reading and giving meaning to the
numbers, maybe even at the point of devising an experiment. maybe at a
host of points, a fundamental characteristic of the scientist? I once
heard a prominent scientist say that science would be perfect if it
weren't for people. So far,that's true of everything, machine and human
alike.
Third, I fully agree that not every student learns best in a particularly
proscribed manner. So I ask, why? Is it a wiring in the brain; is it
past training; is it both and in what proportion? More important, in what
manner does each student learn best in my class? Is that student not
capable of learning in other ways if challenged, if his or her lid is
lifted? Do I cater to such habits; do I challenge them to think and learn
in additional ways. Then, should each of us teach each of our classes
with a great deal of variation, being masters of the impromtu? And yet, a
lot of us don't know very much if anything about each of our students
beyond a name, number, maybe face. And yet, most of us do impose a
particular proscribed manner. So, doesn't it behoove each of us to
provide in some manner a combination of commodation to each student's
learning habit and challenge him or her to break or learn new habits?
Doesn't it behoove each of us to struggle to get to know each student in
order to discover how he or she learns best and can learn better and more
rather than to offer a sweeping generality that is summarily ignored as we
teach in a proscribed manner that is accommodating to us rather than to
each student? You know lot of learning pattern has to do with habit and
past "schooling." A lot of teaching has to do with habit and past
"schooling" and tradition. How a student learns at a particular time is
not fixed in stone and a prediction how that student is capable of
learning in other manners. An essential part of learning, to repeat
myself, is unlearning. That is, to be taken out of a safe comfort zone
into new worlds in order to expand your world. And, the same is true for
our teaching. Far too many of us demand students adjust to us, to our
fixed habits. Far too many of us demand that students enter our world
under the rationalization that it is theirs. And, far too many of us have
all sorts of stated positions for not adjusting to each of them, leaving
our world, entering their world, and thereby expanding ours.
I guess my comments weren't as quick as I thought they would be. Sorry.
Hey, everyone in the States. Have a happy Turkey Day. Careful about
going into a caloric coma.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of History www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta State University www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\
912-333-5947 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\
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-_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\
_ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____
