Posts by recordari
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'aujourd'hui, maman est morte' joke
Come again?
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You can see the glass half-empty
You can see the glass half-full
But all I see are shattered dreams
Around this neighborhoodIncidentally, is 'full' supposed to rhyme with 'hood'?
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Wow, that Mark Fisher has a lot of interesting things to say. Can't you all be less intelligent, because I'm growing increasingly stressed and anxious about my work, while reading all this stuff about being stressed and anxious. I see another Camus moment on the near horizon.
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Interesting stuff all this. Our twins, 7 nearly 8, are fraternal, and reading skills seem similar, but one definitely better at maths than the other. This we put down to a year with a non-numerically minded teacher, while the other was with Ms numeracy-romancer extraordinaire.
We decided early on that controlled experiments were morally bankrupt, but the temptation remains, in the interest of anecdata.
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Steady on man, that's dangerous talk. We go down that path, children might stop getting depressed and anxious and all that.
Damn that's sobering reading. During the holidays we spent a week without TV, Nintendos, Wii, Internet access, with a table tennis table and boogie boards. There is one moment that will stay in my mind forever as all three caught the same wave all the way to the beach with grins to their ears, and squealing, unbridled happiness.
Intrinsic versus extrinsic. I hadn't thought if it like that. It always comes back to existentialism. Always! We do seem to be heading down the road of fatalism. Time to fight back I say!
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Since we're sharing, I tended towards 'I'm a teapot' whenever testing came around. I famously, well in my household, went into an exam with 45% in the 50% course work, and got a B-.
During Post-Grad Dip (yes in Business... Ok, so I'm a capitalist - shoot me) having been asked by the lecturer to use my EAP experience to teach the class of adults how to write essays for assignments and the exams, I thought I'd better overcome that little hang up, and luckily aced it.
My god, I just realised that it took me until my 30s to become the teacher's pet. Hmmm, that's not going to go anywhere good, so I'll leave it there.
Oh, and Jack, we share a similar hand-writing history. I may have shared this here before, but at the end of 6th form, as I prepared to leave provincial NZ for University (clock watching geek who was in a hurry) the teacher gave us all cup-cakes with letters on the top representing our learning characteristics. Mine had an 'e' on it. 'What's that for?' 'Your hand-writing is ellegible.' 'Isn't that spelt with an 'i'?'
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Just realised my teapot reference may be too obscure for younger or differently cultured readers... Think "headless chicken." But teapots are funnier.
Not sure whether this is unique to our 'community', but there seems to be a version of the little teapot which starts off as usual, and then nobody can move their arms, so it ends;
'Oh no, I'm a sugar bowl!'
Oh, and I knew about the goodies, just trying to lighten things up a bit. This is turning into heavy stuff. Isn't learning supposed to be fun? At least until High School, surely?
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Education is a partnership though between school, home and the wider community and sometimes teachers feel the greater burden of blame is placed on them when in fact they are doing their best.
This is cross-threading, but I hope you didn't take my comment on the 1, 2, 3 thread as a personal attack. I know from my own experience that it is never a simple equation and against some real hardship, most teachers do an excellent job. Obviously a learning partnership is desirable, and much effort should, and does, at least at our school, go into that. My (over) reaction is just to what Deborah expresses above. She has seen what good teaching and non-conformist based education can achieve, so is disappointed when it is not available.
We seem to have established that National Standards are the stick. Now where's the carrot?
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recordari - so *much* of family nurturing is also teaching however, from babyhood up
I agree with that. But perhaps my naive utopian idealism holds that every child is capable of learning things, as long as they find the inspiration and enjoyment of learning. It is why I favour inquiry based learning, and a degree of self-paced learning, as a preference to a more rigid framework, and structured curriculum that is not easily adapted. Many schools seem to do well in this already. I sincerely hope that this is not significantly curtailed by these damn national standards.
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As long as we leave the nurturing to the parents/guardians (are we defining the family here as well?) and the teaching to the teachers, that's fine. If we are going to argue that a student's ability to read or not depends solely on the home environment, then what are schools for again?
I'm not a big fan of the 'this child is unteachable' defence, or that their parents are too thick to enable proper learning, or wholly responsible for their failure. Obviously these things contribute to any child's performance, but they should not be used as an excuse, ever.
Excuse the rant, but I am the son of a teacher, and have worked in adult education (English teaching) in the past, and there are always challenges to overcome in the learning exchange, but that, IMhO, is the teacher's job.