Saturday, July 05, 2008

Thing 22

Cyndi Uriza posted this video on her blog. It is really worth 8 minutes of your time, as it shows the great gap between veteran teachers and the kids of today.




Reading Romeo and Juliet in 5 minutes??? Good Lord. That is a crying shame. The idea of "everyone spark notes" just reminds me of the intellectual robbery going on. There is plenty of time do make and post "model shots" but not enough time to read the best love play in all of Christendom?

Thanks, Cyndi, for posting the video!
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1 comment:

Eloise said...

Perhaps I'm getting reactionary in my old age. I certainly work in an environment, doing 1:1 support, where there's a really strong emphasis on meeting the needs of the learner in the instant.

But at the same time, there's an underlying expectation that, as far as you can, you empower them by teaching them coping strategies and giving them the tools to do well on their own.

Will Generation Y produce stage actors? How will they cope with playing Lear or Hamlet? Will they produce surgeons? How will they cope with concentrating for hours to do a heart transplant, or patch up multiple gun-shots or whatever? Heck, will they even produce teachers, where it's still reasonable to expect the teacher to have deep knowledge of their subject (isn't it?!)?

There is a time and place to meet the expectations of the students, to adapt to students that access material online and multi-task routinely. Many of us do that even if we're borderline too old to be Generation X after all. But there is a time and place to get them used to working for longer periods too - how many jobs have you seen or been in where you can go through it without focusing for longer than 5 minutes at a time that you also count as satisfying?

10:57 PM

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