> Ray Evans Harrell , commenting on the full 12 month school year concept,
> said:
> ..snip..
> > When are these students going to have the time to learn to be human beings?
> >
> >When their sexuality is strongest we give them science as a substitute.
> >Sit in that uncomfortable chair and get control of those hormones!
> ...snip...
> >
> >Would more school in a hot room help? How about a look at Cat on a Hot
> >Tin Roof, or Streetcar Named Desire for the answer to that one? Math,
> >Science and Social Studies do little to channel testasterone.
Depends on you mental model of what is done in a math, sci or social sci
class. My math class rolls balls, bounces balls, measures distance,
creates math models and build 11 foot tall icosahedrons out of 2 x 4's,
and geodesic domes (small but next year about a 26 foot diameter one on
the deck that we built last year.); science is similar; in soc sci we have
a research course studying the JFK assassination and have put out a
newsletter, my partner in the class has taken 2 trips with students to
Dallas and 1 trip to Notre Dame to interview Robert Blakey of the House
and Senate Select Commitee circa 1976 (and he not given ANY interviews on
the subject to anyone and he met with our students for about 2 hours).
Reasonable, authentic, creative, constructive (in the theory sense) can be
done with all students. The kids who are doing the above work are all
adolescents, all Ld and many with ADD or ADHD (not to mention the social
issues that get compounded from these disabilities.) Is this easy ? No.
Can it be done ? Yes. Can all schools do this ? Yes. Our school model
works for 9 months, it can work for 12.
John wrote:
> These are really important concepts. I lived through a group of 25 teen
> age boys with neither interest in academics nor sports. For them, there
> were girls, drugs, and rock and roll. Since they usually failed a course
> or two, they spent most of their summer in school. They got worse. My
> solution was to take them out of summer schools, pack them in a couple of
> pick up trucks with tents, packs, and canoes, and keep them in a river
> channel or on top of a mountain for two or three days a month, with day
If this type of programming needs to happen then it must happen. This is
educational. We need to break the mindset that school is what we went
throug in the 60's. Tidy rows with useless books working mindless
problems. There are many better ways to teach, and lots of places are
doing them. Why not a week in the field and then and day or 2 in the
library finding info that supports the trip ? Maybe they will find trail
guides and identification keys for the next trip .
Schooling must meet the individual needs of the student, and empower that
student to make the choices that need to be made. And the learning and
choices don't stop on June 1 and start again on Sept 1
Thanks,
Paul
prkosuth@mychoice.net
OPINIONS ARE MY OWN
Brehm Preparatory School
Carbondale IL
--"prkosuth" <prkosuth@mychoice.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>