Hi RV – I’ve been away, and thus no reply to your interesting message. I’m not sure I understand everything you’ve said, so please (if you take a look at this) correct any misunderstandings.
I agree that students should be encouraged to develop the skills they are best at, but I also believe that they should be encouraged to improve in other areas. Otherwise people turn out to be unbalanced. We need our humanists to have some idea of what the sciences are about, and we need our scientists to have some idea of what the humanities are about. And we need all our citizens to know what a great and fascinating world this can be. I’m a humanist by training and profession, and I will never be a scientist, but I love science, and I think I’m a much better person for my interest in it.
I have some questions about the idea that the “cream will rise to the top”. I think this approach can lead to a kind of elitism. I agree that people with great talents should be given the opportunity to develop their talents. But we need a society in which everyone is given a chance to develop as much as they can. I also think that there are all kinds of talents, and some of these are not recognized by our educational system. That’s one reason I would like to see a broader curriculum.
You’re right that schools have huge populations to contend with, and perhaps teaching gardening/farming would be difficult with so many students. But the gardening program should begin in elementary schools, where there are typically fewer students. In the park near where I live, there is a community children’s garden, and there are many of these around the city. They are run by volunteers, and students from the community volunteer to work in the gardens. By midsummer they are selling produce one night a week, and we often buy heritage tomatoes from them. It would be easy to attach such a program to the nearby elementary school. There have been proposals to extend the school year through the summer, and gardening would be perfect summer course. The schools do run summer programs already, so it wouldn’t be hard to fit this in.
You wouldn’t have to have students garden every year. If they do one gardening course in the early grades, then when they start to study botany in high school they will have a sense of the organisms they are studying in the classroom.
I’ve gone on too long, and in any case gardening was only one possible area of study that I mentioned.
My main points are:
Education should be more active than it is. We should try to get students out of their chairs for part of the day, we should try to teach them that learning works best when it is active rather than passive, and we should teach them that education is concerned with work in the world.
There are lots and lots of things we could teach that would draw on the various talents that people have, not just on the rather narrow view of academic success that we too often fall into.
Hi RV – I’ve been away, and thus no reply to your interesting message. I’m not sure I understand everything you’ve said, so please (if you take a look at this) correct any misunderstandings.
I agree that students should be encouraged to develop the skills they are best at, but I also believe that they should be encouraged to improve in other areas. Otherwise people turn out to be unbalanced. We need our humanists to have some idea of what the sciences are about, and we need our scientists to have some idea of what the humanities are about. And we need all our citizens to know what a great and fascinating world this can be. I’m a humanist by training and profession, and I will never be a scientist, but I love science, and I think I’m a much better person for my interest in it.
I have some questions about the idea that the “cream will rise to the top”. I think this approach can lead to a kind of elitism. I agree that people with great talents should be given the opportunity to develop their talents. But we need a society in which everyone is given a chance to develop as much as they can. I also think that there are all kinds of talents, and some of these are not recognized by our educational system. That’s one reason I would like to see a broader curriculum.
You’re right that schools have huge populations to contend with, and perhaps teaching gardening/farming would be difficult with so many students. But the gardening program should begin in elementary schools, where there are typically fewer students. In the park near where I live, there is a community children’s garden, and there are many of these around the city. They are run by volunteers, and students from the community volunteer to work in the gardens. By midsummer they are selling produce one night a week, and we often buy heritage tomatoes from them. It would be easy to attach such a program to the nearby elementary school. There have been proposals to extend the school year through the summer, and gardening would be perfect summer course. The schools do run summer programs already, so it wouldn’t be hard to fit this in.
You wouldn’t have to have students garden every year. If they do one gardening course in the early grades, then when they start to study botany in high school they will have a sense of the organisms they are studying in the classroom.
I’ve gone on too long, and in any case gardening was only one possible area of study that I mentioned.
My main points are:
Education should be more active than it is. We should try to get students out of their chairs for part of the day, we should try to teach them that learning works best when it is active rather than passive, and we should teach them that education is concerned with work in the world.
There are lots and lots of things we could teach that would draw on the various talents that people have, not just on the rather narrow view of academic success that we too often fall into.