On Wed, 6 Dec 1995 GMBrady@aol.com wrote:
> >The problem between
> >teaching and learning, at least in the US, is that must of us see teaching
> >as a situation where I, the professor, talk, and they, the students,
> >listen and learn.
>
> Looking back over my many years of teaching, I find that I've steadily had
> less and less to say. Now, it often comes down to my doing little more
> than asking a single question, posing a dilemma, providing a single bit of
> data, noting an anomaly, etc., and sitting down in the back of the room.
> I look for "puzzles," the solutions to which seem to me to have great (no,
> VERY great) explanatory power.
I've found this out too. I think I'm also starting to learn how to
achieve more with less.
When I was 19, I started learning about how to invest in real estate. I
had all these binders full of information that I thought I needed. (I
didn't have a notebook computer back then.) Then I realized I had to move
to another city because there were no good real estate buys in Vancouver
that would provide a good return with minimal investment so I took a bus
to Edmonton with all those binders full of info and I had to carry those
bags around while knocking on doors asking people if they wanted to sell
their real estate to me. (Gotta learn to negotiate somehow, might as well
do it.)
Now three years later, I am starting to figure out how I can get the max
result with the minimum effort, but I had to learn to selectively delete
the right information and only take the information that was relevant. I'm
reasonably sure that I can parachute into a city, establish what I want
and go find some real estate, negotiate with the owner, buy it, get
renters in, find investment funds, without having an office there or even
a place to stay. All I'd need is paper and a pencil, my brain and a
telephone book.
Of course, the thing is, I seemed to have selectively deleted so much that
buying real estate doesn't have as much fun as it used to, so I'm into
other projects now, but maybe real estate wasn't the actual goal in the
first place.....
> I've never thought of it exactly like this before, but it seems to me
> that, in a research mode, I'm paid to think; in a teaching mode, I'm paid
> to make the students think. And I don't consider simple recall of
> something I've said or had students read as requiring them to think.
Where exactly do you teach? I think that your students are lucky to have
you as a teacher.
> It was a rare question that required
> categorizing, hypothesizing, generalizing, synthesizing, valuing, or other
> thought processes. I think the picture is about the same nationwide from
> about the 3rd grade up.
For a long time, I had the belief that school was only to get a piece of
paper to be able to earn money with. And I was really confused as to why I
had to have this drive to go buy real estate when I had to sacrifice my
standard of living and stuff to do so. (See my web page for more details.
http://www.ranch.org/~amoreno) I had to learn so many things that at the
time didn't seem all that useful, especially when most people my age were
out partying and raking up huge debts on their flashy leased cars while I
didn't even get to learn how to drive so I could drive the Lexus in the
garage that I left behind, I was biking 100km in -16 weather to get to
Edmonton so I could go read in the library.
My point is that, for most people, there is no point to learning the
abstract thinking processes that you mention above. There's no foreseeable
return for the kind of investment of time and effort that those skills
require.
If you tell them they will earn lots of money if they learn those skills,
they say, I never wanted to be rich anywys, rich people are neurotic.
They also say stuff like, I could never think those things, my friends
wouldn't like me anymore. etc. etc. I can't figure it out.
Andrew Moreno
-- Andrew Moreno <amoreno@broken.ranch.org>