Hi Y'all,
Just a quick note. Louis writes a long message to me below. As this
doesn't seem to fit with what I said in my post, it must be in response
to someone else's post. It appears that Louis and I are in agreement
that students may learn best in a variety of situations and "one size
does not fit all".
Linda
Louis_Schmier wrote:
>
> 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 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\
> / \__/ \/ / /\ /~\/ \
> /\/\-/ /^\_____\____________/__/_______/^\
> -_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\
> _ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____
--
Linda M. Woolf, Ph.D.
Associate Professor - Psychology
Director - Gerontology
Coordinator - Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights
Webster University
470 E. Lockwood
St. Louis, Missouri 63110
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
