Corporate morality evolution. Who negotiates?
Slavery a species evolver, but so is rebellion and mothering
Young hominids and G-type protests
Our children's futures; body, mind and soul
What lights your lamp? fMRI for nation-states and other bodies
Democracy – the best we have?
States of the Chinese unions
Influence of the gaia model
Some laws and some solutions
How much can be changed this lifetime?
Some reading: Hobsbawm, Bobbit, Hutton, Our stolen future, Klein, Soros, Stiglitz, ..
Some biographies: Keynes, Tizard, Bletchley Park, Lawson, Warnock, Torwalds, Adonis.
Novels: I Robot, Sentinel, Constant Gardener.
Science ideas: evolution from quark to cell to us, political dna and scanning techniques, crisis and chaos theory, uncertainty and unpredictability, human-network interaction, ..
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( 3.1 / 159 )English learning and/with/supported by Internet
Draft topic list for a possible booklet:
Bits of English learning that work well
Bits of English learning that work badly
Bits of English learning we don’t try (for whatever reason)
Computer/network facilities in the average English classroom
Problems the teacher faces – like technophobia
Things the kids are good at
Please email prunings on a postcard to bruce@shake.org
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( 3 / 152 )Restored some of the teaching skills I once had, and reminded me how quickly we atrophy. Learnt much that was new to me through seeing new colleagues do things better in class than I had. Have come away inspired and richer – and zapped.
The line I took with senior classes was that my teaching methods would be different from their normal much-appreciated teacher, but they should look at the different ways of learning that we were sharing and apply those that fitted into their own studies.
Eclectic (butterfly-brained) learning raised its essential head at the end of the week, with a rather good pupil saying how his thought patterns fitted well with my scattered approach, and thus had made capacitors easy. Interesting how we then in a few minutes covered lots of topics on and off subject with both of us learning quite a lot, I thought. I had however forgotten to tell him that honeymoons are easy.
Best of all, he signalled the one day demise of the binge-drinking culture. That would be a result.
So its back to dreaming about developing education ways that work for maths, physics, computer science and other uses of ICT.
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( 2.8 / 173 )Vladimir I Arnold – Russian mathematician of some stature - makes two points forcibly:
1 We all need mathematical ideas in everything we do.
2 Western schools are failing to reach enough pupils.
For details, and hopefully suggestions, we must wait for the publication by Springer in Heidelberg of his latest book. Luckily it is not as technical as his major works.
Meanwhile I would offer a short list of non-peer-reviewed causes, in no particular order. Some will offend, some will be debated. I currently believe all to be substantially correct. Good maths teachers will disagree from their own experience, but that will be because they use strategies to starve each effect of energy.
Early maths teachers in homes do so because they know maths will enhance career prospects. Untutored themselves, they put pressure on the young child before it wants to learn. And they teach in the way that worked or not for them. Which may not be how the child learns best or at all. So the child learns to cope with the pressure, not to enjoy the maths.
Most junior school maths teachers are lovely people but teaching a subject whose higher levels were always closed to them. So they teach say tables well, but know nothing of operators or series or axioms or calculus or Godel’s theorem, say. And pass on this ignorance as valuable omniscience.
School maths teachers are paid much less than they could earn as say actuaries or accountants, let alone book keepers. Who in the West would teach Maths happily long term? Ideals turn rapidly to cynicism under relative penury, especially when one’s own offspring fail to see what gives the parent joy in career. Teachers’ kids are too often today’s cobblers’ kids.
The status of a maths teacher within the school community is high. Except for why is this guy working for peanuts, or what bung is s/he getting? Hubris damages some; others struggle to maintain the image, at the expense of their pupil-facing commitment.
Maths is often/usually taught by people at or near the limit of their mathematical ability. How you deal with a question can display your natural fear – and with normal teenagers, invite attack at your weakest points.
Few school maths teachers do any original research or other creative maths work. They are likely to start each topic with déjà vu.
Most inservice training for teachers is in method not substance, by people very good at masking their own limits to adults. These masking techniques are transparent to pupils.
Academic mathematicians are not often psychologically equipped to enthuse teenagers. Which causes stress and hurt in the adult, stress and rebellion in the pupil.
University dons are not often briefed to instill qualities needed for future classroom success in their undergraduate students. Nor are they familiar with schools today, or how fast the pupils are changing. The coup de grace is that those who have done serious maths, just as musicians hunched over their fiddles for decades develop physical and mental heart diseases, accumulate mental invertedness. Not conditions that attract the red blooded young.
The intellectual disciplines of a mathematical PhD are far from the rough and tumble intellectual structures of childhood today. Even in the academically excellent private schools of Britain.
Few parents doubt the importance of maths to a child’s career. What passes on is the concern, but without interest or enthusiasm.
Many, maybe most, parents fear maths from their own formative experiences of it:
‘Never mind about the bad maths lessons’, they say, ‘I couldn’t do it either.’
Many perhaps most, of our successful maths teachers are drill-sergeants. Parades deter creativity and enjoyment.
Teenagers do not find the joy of their maths worth discussing in private time.
Class teaching offers little privacy, beyond homework.
Bullying is endemic in maths lessons, from being across the range from top and bottom of class, to playground and email persecution of swots. One cause of this bullying is the stress surrounding the subject, which makes us seek release in pushing against convention. Fear is a double edged sword, both bully and bullied at risk. And fear never solved an equation, let alone derived one.
Class teaching offers little privacy, beyond homework.
The above is not intended as rant or whinge, but as prelude to a search for solutions.
Good teachers somehow generate enjoyment. We can all achieve wonders if we enjoy the process. An analysis perhaps from OFSTED of the chemistry of excellent lessons would be useful.
For many of the problems, simplistic solutions and palliatives are not enough. Flooding our schools with teach-firsters might well work but looks too expensive.
Home schooling is attractive for the intellectual rich with good social lives.
It may be that a partial cure is possible for many learners in a networked world with goodwill from the global community of mathematicians.
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( 3 / 182 )Well done, Blair government, for
A minister of education with independence, ability, classroom experience, teeth and funding (Adonis in the upper house)
Teach first program, top rate teacher stream
Specialiost schools so kids can shine
Quality PE
Reading hour
Classroom assistance and learning support teachers
Extension schools for family INSEP
Trying ASBOs as means to education
Sensible computer trials
Executive heads with outreach
No-blame school management changes
A BBC that can promote good practice, largely through Nick Baker’s trustable team
Supporting an exam system creaking under opposing needs
Coping well with our national nonsense of have versus have-not education and attitudes
Caring about all schools
With any luck, these trials will develop into national initiatives and more important, pupil, parent and teacher morale.
And yes, I have ignored/omitted a lot both ways. Please list some, especially those that need fixing.
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