The Thoughts of Big Al

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Last up-dated: 18th July, 2008

18th July, 2008

I am a great hoarder of paper: newspaper cuttings, magazines, jottings of my own on paper....These are all pieces of information which I think are important and, ultimately define 'who I am'.

Trying to organise/tidy the drawers in my study, I found myself very reluctant to discard much of my hoard, so I've decided to try and store them electronically on this space. If I can cross-link them, they may well grow into a valuable resource.

1. 18th July, 2008

ENJOYING LIFE

I start with an article entitled 'A Natural Touch' by Kevin McCarthy, writing in T.E.S. 0n 02/06/1995, Here he was arguing that 'school science is devoid of joy and emotional involvement: a mechanistic model divorced from nature.'

He says that the most important science teachers are those in primary school.

We need to restore to the primary child the direct experience of nature as they live cut off from the world..... 'they never watch, simply watch, say, a bee hive or an ants' nest without having to count, measure or weigh something. Our implicit message is that real science is about quantification.'

Well, of course, it is! One of my most used quotations is from Lord Kelvin (William Thomson):

'I often say that when you can measure what you are talking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind'.

Lord Kelvin (William Thomson).

In a lecture to the Institute of Civil Engineers, 1883.

McCarthy goes on to say that,

'There is no need to tear children prematurely away from their inate sense of goodness of the world. ... Young children live in a world qualitatively different from our, which we need to contact, not reject. For them nature is cooperative, purposeful, rich in meaning and teeming with life in flowing water, in clouds and fire...... which we need to enhance through first hand experience.... through the direct cultivation of all their senses.'

This brings to mind the poem, 'Leisure', by Willium Henry Davies:

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

I recall that the Deputy Headmistress of a school in which I once taught
came across this poem one weekend and read it out at morning assemby.

I'm pleased to report that, this week, I've spent several minutes just gazng at the bees on my buddleia bush.

2. 18th July, 2008

Relevance of Teaching Material

The current (June/July, 2008 issue of ATL Report has a letter entitled 'Fighting Irrelevancy'. The author says he was teaching a PSHE lesson on 'Alcohol Awareness' ... and was faced with a pupil who pointed out that, for religious reasons, he wouldn't drink alcohol anyway, so why should he be taught this stuff.

'We are told we must make subjects relevant to tyoung people. When frustrated... will ask 'When are we ever going to use this?' The assumption in education is that the point of learning things in school is to use them in adult life. Yet education should be taking pupils out of their own parochial realms of experience,. The educated person is interested in other people, other places, other times'. Add it is exactly those topics that might bve regarded as irrelevant that they end up finding particularly enthralling'.
Real education is about being irrelevant. School is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet ideas that you are never likely to encounter therwise.
Schools should give young people as wide an experience as possible, especially in those things that they are unlikely to spend their lives doing. Only then can they make informed choices about their futures and be intelligently aware of what other people, different from themselves, might be absorbed by in their lives.
'

I couldn't agree more. I recall teaching an A Level Chemistry lesson and began telling the class about something connected that had been in the news. A hand shot up,

'Is this on the syllabus Sir?'

'No, but as A Level chemists I feel you should be aware...'

'Well, if it's not on the syllabus would you mind getting back to teaching what's going to be in the exam!'


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