Where is balance? -- Re: Academic priorities
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From: Steve Richfie1d on 6 May 2005 00:33 Bill, et al, > The root problems were (1) the generic nature of the education system and (2) > the overriding drive to keep each group of kids together. The very concept of > "stay back" and even "do it again" (or anything similar) seems to have been > deleted from the minds of everyone involved in education. In my rather different approach, my kids had a box full of things (broken small appliances, etc.) to take apart and the tools to do it with, etc., from when they could first crawl. I am convinced the the MOST important "period" in their education is right at the beginning, when people put their babies in the hospital crying rooms. On day one, when the kid cries for milk, you wait until they stop to catch their breath and THEN you quickly feed them, After a couple of times they figure out that it is when they STOP screaming that they get fed, and from then on you get one loud blast followed by silence as they wait for their milk. Saves your eardrums and starts communication on day one. If you just construct a LOGICAL world for them, they will grow up logically. However, most people consider them to be mindless blobs and so pay no such attention until they get into school, when it is almost always just too late. One challenge I had was that my kids knew other kids were in school and wondered if they weren't really missing something. Ultimately, I had to just enroll them for a while so they could see how bad things were there, and so each of them got a couple of years total in the form of a few months here and there. It didn't take them long to realize that they were learning more at home than they could ever learn from the talking heads at school. Steve Richfie1d
From: Brian Inglis on 6 May 2005 01:09 On 05 May 2005 20:38:07 GMT in alt.folklore.computers, Casper H.S. Dik <Casper.Dik(a)Sun.COM> wrote: >Norman Yarvin <norman.yarvin(a)snet.net> writes: > >>In article <d5a5rr$tms$1(a)osl016lin.hda.hydro.com>, >>Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen(a)hda.hydro.com> wrote: > >>>Besides, who needs a sharp knife when a broken whiskey bottle is handy? > >>Me. Bottles are not as easy to break as the movies show; and once broken >>they're liable to break further, likely shattering in the wielder's hand. > >And which part of a plane can you hit with a bottle that wouldn't >break before the bottle breaks? Crew hostages? -- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis(a)CSi.com (Brian[dot]Inglis{at}SystematicSW[dot]ab[dot]ca) fake address use address above to reply
From: Steve O'Hara-Smith on 6 May 2005 04:24 On 5 May 2005 18:32:48 GMT nmm1(a)cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote: > That rule as far as regards matches goes back a long time, perhaps > several decades. The one about lighters is newer, but might still > be a decade old. Lighters were always permitted before smoking was banned.
From: jmfbahciv on 6 May 2005 05:23 In article <d5d3fh$rp7$1(a)nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>, Andrew Swallow <am.swallow(a)btopenworld.com> wrote: >jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: >[snip] > >> >> >> <clap, clap> I talked about this with Mom last night. I >> apparently lied when I told the story about my nephew. It >> wasn't a butter knife but a screwdriver which he had >> put into his pocket after fixing the lawn mower and then >> went to school. By all means, let us teach kids not to >> fix anything. > >Screwdrivers are a different matter. The woodwork room should be >equipped with screwdrivers and the children made to return them at the >end of the lesson. What lesson? The kid was fixing his mother's lawn mower before he left for school. I can't tell you how many times I've find various tools in my back pocket because I'd finished using them and went on to other things. > .. So there is no honest reason for children to be >carrying one during the day. There sure is if he was working before he left for school. > ..Bad reasons include using sharpened >screwdrivers as weapons and sabotaging school desks. We seem to have a culture clash. On farms, kids get up at dawn and work for a couple of hours before going to school. :-) /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
From: Bill Leary on 6 May 2005 08:15
<jmfbahciv(a)aol.com> wrote in message news:mZ6dnQryba79yebfRVn-pg(a)rcn.net... > In article <d5d3fh$rp7$1(a)nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>, > Andrew Swallow <am.swallow(a)btopenworld.com> wrote: > >Screwdrivers are a different matter. The woodwork room should be > >equipped with screwdrivers and the children made to return them at the > >end of the lesson. > > What lesson? The kid was fixing his mother's lawn mower before > he left for school. I can't tell you how many times I've find > various tools in my back pocket because I'd finished using them > and went on to other things. I get up a couple of hours and do things before going to the office. I sometimes end up with the oddest stuff on my desk, or in my car, because I'd stuffed something in a pocket while doing the job or picking up afterwards. > > .. So there is no honest reason for children to be > >carrying one during the day. > > There sure is if he was working before he left for school. The simple "honest reason" is "Oops, forgot to put that back in the tool box." One of the problems with Zero Tolerance is that the concept of "honest mistake" has been thrown out. Intent is irrelevant, only results matter. - Bill |