Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2001-09-27 03:47 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2001-09-27 03:47 pm
How to Be Wrong
from my comments in the journal of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ras_sinister
They should teach you how to be wrong in schools.
Split the class into three groups and give each group an outdated textbook and tell each group to research [the same thing] and prepare a short speech to the class on it. Make sure they have different wrong information, and that it's a subject that they know little about.
Have each group share what they learned. Allow discussion. Then, at an appropriate time, say, "Class, look at the copyright dates in those books." Hold up your own textbook, with information that is more correct, show the copyright date, and share the current theories on the topic. Say: "Sometimes information is wrong or out of date. Remember, your opinion is only as good as your information."
It might or might not work.
This would be for approximately third grade students, while they're still young enough to think about things without being completely corrupted or hardened (hopefully), but old enough to read, old enough to remember, old enough to think about it a little and have it really sink in to those gummy little brain tissues that are just starting to harden.
It's not the choir you have to preach to, and it's not the brick wall. You forget about the middle ground, the grey area. The kids who are dumb as dirt with less common sense than the average tuft of grass and less willingness to learn than... (an appropriate simile escapes me) will matter nothing. The children who would educate themselves if given a chance, you must treasure and encourage and guide, but they will teach themselves.
It is the ordinary children, the ones who can be made by a good teacher, or broken by a bad teacher, those are the ones you must aim for. (I was on the high end of them -- perhaps I could have fended for myself, educationally, perhaps not. My sister/roommate is one of those who will do for herself in her areas of excellence, but needs a teacher in other areas, and is extremely unteachable in a very few points.) With ordinary children you can make a profound difference. The younger the better.
Of course, then, with younger children, you have to deal more with the parents. It should come to no surprise to you or to anyone that the children who need the most help with learning, the ones who would benefit from it most, need it most, are the ones with the parents who would like it the least. Intelligent, informed parents tend, as a rule, to bring up intelligent, informed children. Likewise for the uninformed parents.
ras_sinisterThey should teach you how to be wrong in schools.
Split the class into three groups and give each group an outdated textbook and tell each group to research [the same thing] and prepare a short speech to the class on it. Make sure they have different wrong information, and that it's a subject that they know little about.
Have each group share what they learned. Allow discussion. Then, at an appropriate time, say, "Class, look at the copyright dates in those books." Hold up your own textbook, with information that is more correct, show the copyright date, and share the current theories on the topic. Say: "Sometimes information is wrong or out of date. Remember, your opinion is only as good as your information."
It might or might not work.
This would be for approximately third grade students, while they're still young enough to think about things without being completely corrupted or hardened (hopefully), but old enough to read, old enough to remember, old enough to think about it a little and have it really sink in to those gummy little brain tissues that are just starting to harden.
It's not the choir you have to preach to, and it's not the brick wall. You forget about the middle ground, the grey area. The kids who are dumb as dirt with less common sense than the average tuft of grass and less willingness to learn than... (an appropriate simile escapes me) will matter nothing. The children who would educate themselves if given a chance, you must treasure and encourage and guide, but they will teach themselves.
It is the ordinary children, the ones who can be made by a good teacher, or broken by a bad teacher, those are the ones you must aim for. (I was on the high end of them -- perhaps I could have fended for myself, educationally, perhaps not. My sister/roommate is one of those who will do for herself in her areas of excellence, but needs a teacher in other areas, and is extremely unteachable in a very few points.) With ordinary children you can make a profound difference. The younger the better.
Of course, then, with younger children, you have to deal more with the parents. It should come to no surprise to you or to anyone that the children who need the most help with learning, the ones who would benefit from it most, need it most, are the ones with the parents who would like it the least. Intelligent, informed parents tend, as a rule, to bring up intelligent, informed children. Likewise for the uninformed parents.
no subject
no subject
Re:
Take people's opinions and what is told to me as fact.
Granted, I'm pretty trusting of people, but I try to take things at face value more and more these days.