CSotD: The Brotherhood Of Travel Your Pants On Outta Here
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I'm with you, Big Nate.
Part of good educational theory is that we all learn differently, but the touchy-feely folks can be just as insensitive to that notion as the memorize-this-list people.
Worst part, Nate, is that you can't escape simply by graduating. I've been roped into business seminars where we had to take a large sheet of butcher paper, draw an outline of ourselves on it, and then paste pieces of yarn, pictures cut from magazines and other random crap on it to express who we are.
And then explain it to the group.
I would rather do the exercise where we smear me with honey and stake me to an anthill.
When I was a senior in high school, we took a test that was in Kurdish. It was good choice, because the odds of anyone in the class knowing even a little Kurdish, or even a little of a language related to Kurdish, were extremely remote.
I pretty much aced it. Bullshitting on tests was something I was really good at.
And that was kind of what it was for: It was a test of how well we learned languages, so, first of all, it was well-constructed to test what it was intended to test, and, second, it was purely diagnostic, not something you could "pass" or "fail."
Third, we never, ever had to do it again. Perfecto!
However, when a graded activity seems as incomprehensible as if it were in Kurdish, is graded, and is repeated regularly … not so perfecto.
And, yes, it works both ways.
I've never understood people who don't "get" word problems in math.
To my mind, "Farmer Brown has six bushels of apples. If he sells half of them for $3 a bushel and the other half for $2 a bushel, how much money does he get?" could not be more plain.
But, whether it comes easily for you or not, Farmer Brown and his apples involve a skill you really are going to need at a level that is likely to come up fairly often.
The other day, someone posted one of those wiseass Facebook graphics (yeah, I know, that really narrows it down) about never having used algebra.
Really? You've never bought paint? Or do you buy one can at a time and keep going back when you need more?
And is that how some people manage to make dividing up a restaurant bill more complex than negotiating the Versailles Treaty?
You may not find Farmer Brown's apples easy to figure out, but you kinda need to bite the bullet and work on it, because it's an essential skill.
Sticking bits of yarn and pictures from magazines on a piece of butcher paper is, by contrast, not an essential skill, unless you really can't figure out Farmer Brown and his apples, in which case it might be what you end up doing for a living.
Which, come to think of it, could be pretty lucrative, if you can con enough people into thinking you are doing it as part of leading a team-building workshop for their company.
Yeah, I know: Expressing your feelings is also an essential skill.
But so is listening.
Most people do express their feelings. And only a few of them do so in Kurdish, and that mostly in Northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey and parts of Iran and Syria. And you can even learn to understand them, if you care enough to try.
And that's the key: Caring enough to try.
Because "my way or the highway" is bullying, whether you're pressuring people about Farmer Brown's apples or their emotional life. It's bad teaching and it's antisocial anyway.
A skillful teacher can evoke feelings by asking the right questions, and then listening. It's not that hard to create specific but somewhat open-ended writing prompts that, as Nate suggests, are about things the kids are actually interested in.
Failing that, I'm reaching for the Cheez Doodles.
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