caroljane

Or for that matter, what species. Let's not make any assumptions. I knew you reminded me of somebody! It's Rumsfeld....oh, no,....it's all true.... Carol: The really scary part for you to consider...is that I was going to make that precise type post less than forty minutes ago, but got two phone calls that I had to handle. Which would mean that your mind works similarly to mine which is grounds for real personal fear for a socialist! Adam Adam, the fear is growing even as we speak. Objectivism is insidious. I've mentioned how needlessly uncaring I was to that panhandler the other day. Just now I confessed to using epistemology in the classroom. I live in dread that someday I will log onto the ARI corner and post, "Looking for Dr Peikoff's lecture series on Hypothermic Metaphysics, 1997-2008. Will pay anything."

I can see where the principles would work well, but I can't use them, since I have to teach that A is A only in certain circumstances. Seriously, the method of guiding students to "discover" general rules in grammar through deduction from examples ("reality")is very useful. Learning the use of articles, say. Native English speakers never learn the rules formally because we instinctively know when to use a/an, the or no article before a noun, but learners have to learn three general groups of rules (there are actually something like 50 explicit rules with 18 exceptions.)To look at the pattern and then figure out the rule that holds good for all the examples is more helpful than memorizing the rules and then trying to apply them. But the students always want that list of rules too!

Or for that matter, what species. Let’s not make any assumptions. I knew you reminded me of somebody! It's Rumsfeld....oh, no,....it's all true....

Teacher proficiency does matter. A teacher who cannot deliver will be found out. I know a story from a one-room school house where the kids could not get the teacher to admit that the answer in the back of the book was wrong. That is not very inspiring. Sure, if you have young children, maybe even up to middle school... but you know, once a kid is interested in music or art or mathematics or science, their enthusiasm carries them. It is not that they know "more" - trivia is trivial - but a teacher who cannot grasp concepts deeply will be exposed as a fraud. Of course they will, by themselves first of all. And of course proficiency matters. But knowing every detail of your subject better than every student is only part of that proficiency. And the ability to grasp concepts deeply-- if a teacher cannot grasp those concepts after contemplating them term after term after term, he will realize he is in the wrong classroom. I admit I was not thinking so much of the math and science side, though that was what the original question from Baal was about. Maybe Khan's videos are the answer to that.

Presumably their education could help them to build their own Silicon Valley, if that's what they want.

I don't actually think that matters too much. The mastery of a subject does not regularly translate into the ability to help others learn it, or to inspire a passion for it in others. When you promote the best salesman or programmer to head of the training team, they won't produce clones. The rookie teachers will usually know more of the subject than their students, and they'll learn from the students, as all teachers do.

...and? Don't leave us in suspenders. Kekekekekeke!

suspenders..suspenders....

But of course, Comrade. Layton's my MP and Mike Prue the MPP, it's the old orange flute and wearing the green around here all the time.

Uh, what you are saying is everybody hates teachers as such, and what's not to hate? the overpayment, the whining, the parasitism, not to mention the long holidays--have I missed anything?

If you read the article, Finland did that, in an inside-outside-upside-down context.

FRATERNAL ORDER OF THE SACRED IGLOO Local 13 Dear Brothers, It is with great but humble joy that we announce the success of Aim 267 of the Secret Plan which aim need no longer be secret because it has been achieved! The whole world, that is to say the United States, will now conform to the strictures of the Royal Conservatory of Music and bow down before our rules and be teachedtaught by our teachings in the vital sector of Music. This crucial breakthrough has been achieved by brothers whom we cannot name but can only indicate such as by Grade 9, Big Beatles fan, Grade 8, multitalented dual citizen, and many lower grade others who have practiced tirelessly until they reached Carnegie Hall. Embedded in the program are increasingly complex variations of "Un Canadien Errant", "Sudbury Saturday Night" and other classics, and systematic eradication of "My Way". This is only the beginning. We shall achieve the other 266 points of the Secret Plan, maybe not this week but sometime. This week we got the Study Group and Karaoke Bingo and a couple funerals, and a lot of pemmican to scrape. Elatedly Gord (Grade 3 but taking lessons from Prof Saitpeu again) Acting Shaman

Sorry, my memory sucks like usual. I don't dare to click on links because my internet is always telling me it can't exist -- who were the 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th in those categories please?

Wai?wai? free translation with government- guaranteed-round-the-clock service please? Thank you.

Only in Fluourida ; elsewhere it aches elegantly.

Carol: This would be really fascinating reading except that since at least World War II [The Big One as Archie Bunker called it] it has been dentists with the highest per capita rate of suicide in the professions. Adam I am amazed at this and can only think that the suicides were accidental overdoses of laughing gas. Actually, I have known this statistic since the 1950's and it has always surprised me, but I just checked it tonight and it is still true. Law enforcement is a close second and the military is coming up fast into third place. Professions with the Highest Suicide Rates: Dentistry and Law Enforcement But People in the Military Are Catching Up Fast! On factor for dentists is that they are legally permitted to write prescriptions for themselves, the easy access to various gases and the fact that they are very lonely as a professional class. In this article, there is a statement that the teaching staff at the dental schools refuse to even acknowledge that there is an issue or problem. The occupation with the highest suicide rate Doctors committing suicide at high rates This article in Psychology Today does not break it down within the "medical profession." Adam, thank you for the info, my joke was not so thoughtless as it appeared. My own dentist has told me about colleagues who became addicted to nitrous. I can understand that, I love it myself, but sadly seldom require it. Again the humour theme comes in. My dentist is a solid ordinary guy with cartoons on the wall - a vicious biker dentist leaning over a cowering patient, saying, "This won't hurt me a bit, bud!"and so on.For 20 years to our family he's been a great tradesman doing his job and getting better at it and we have all got to know each other. His staff have mostly stayed with him through that time. I had no idea that dentistry had so many others like the colleague he described so matter-of-factly. What pressures these people put on themselves, it is heartbreaking.

OK, I give up, what is TANetc? It is Phil's concept of a clever take off of There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch [TANSTAAFL] which is a great concept developed by Robert A. Heinlein in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress which is a libertarian manifesto. But what? I have no clue. I renew my plea for a suspension of all alphabet statements for the month of April in honor of the release of Atlas Shrugged the movie. Adam Oh well, I got it when 9th wrote it in Latin, and I figured out LMAO by myself but not much more is processable by my Victorian brain.As an incorrigible enjoyer of free lunches I am just not wired that way.

Carol: This would be really fascinating reading except that since at least World War II [The Big One as Archie Bunker called it] it has been dentists with the highest per capita rate of suicide in the professions. Adam I am amazed at this and can only think that the suicides were accidental overdoses of laughing gas.

Life is a bit absurd. We sweat and strain for the sublime and the infinite and we end up as worm food after a finite span of time. Definitely a no win situation. There are only two reasonable reactions: One is despair and the other is sardonic laughter. I come down in favor of regarding life as a kind of Shaggy Dog Story. It only hurts when I laugh. Ba'al Chatzaf but it hurts so good, yes?

and tradition, memory! the glorious crux of the week, Friday night, who will sit with who, who will put whose arm around whom (some of us were getting grammatical around then), who will be ejected by the erratic usher, former Sergeant-Major in the 8th Hussars, for such offences as being cheeky, ... the movies were great too.

How much first class math and physics do the Finns produce? (comparatively speaking). Ba'al Chatzaf Baal WSS produced a comparative test results graph on this, I am sorry I can't remember the name of the thread. I do remember that Finland was on top of one or two of math or science.

Saving Public Education: Why Teachers Mattery As the author points out, his: "...most memorable teacher was Nehama Labovitz. She taught me Bible when I was a student in Israel. She looked like Old Dutch from Old Dutch cleanser and taught everyone from refugees in camps to grad students. Like most superb teachers, her method didn’t fit a formula and is hard to describe. It often involved citing a cryptic, one- or two-word Hebrew phrase from a medieval Bible commentator and asking: “What was bothering him?” Then drawing help from anywhere she could get it." Interesting article. Adam Yes! My most memorable (and everybody's in our school) was Mr Tingley, English teacher nonpareil. He didn't even have a teacher's license, and once he said that "momento" was spelled thus to mean "memory of moments," I will be forever proud of myself, that already knowing how much more he had taught me than he or I could know, I didn't stand up and challenge the spelling.

Rick Salutin began an excellent series in the Toronto Star last weekend on public education. He began with a trip to Finland, a small weird country which outperforms large normal countries on international academic tests. "Teacher autonomy" was one constant he found in Finnish schools. They close the classroom door and leave the teacher alone. "Teacher really wants to teach" was another. To qualify as a teacher takes seven years - the equivalent of a doctorate in North American terms. "Teachers talk to each other about teaching"- in Finland they do this voluntarily on their own time, for the stimulation of exchanging ideas on improving their value to their students.Salutin reports that this does not happen in Canada, but he's wrong.He did not interview enough teachers. We do have many workshops and professional developent seminars that we will do anything to get out of, that is true. But we do talk to each other, constructively, all the time. There is much more to this series that I am looking forward to and I hope anyone interested in the topic of public education will read it too,

I so hope the movie will succeed. I want it to go all Blair Witch and cause Lenny P to pound his head against his pod, sobbing in rage. "Why did I let Aglialoro rob me of those rights for a measly million? That I already spent? There must be some way I can sue him!!"

Thank you for the nice fun compliment and let me reciprocate. I admire academics who do not insist on being called Doctor everywhere (exemplar a certain once-just-Leonard who apparently was born with a fake stethoscope strapped to his scrawny chest). I have a friend who is a psychotherapist (just MA and license) and some of her clients like to call her Dr Russell, they feel more comfortable that way, and prefer to think of themselves as patients, not clients. She is very successful and I have often thought that one reason is that she has minimal sense of humour. I have known her from childhood and never known her to laugh spontaneously or make a joke herself. Her clientele is mainly family therapy and individual, rich people. Family and individual anguish are serious, and if they could have leavened their lives with humour, they may not have been in therapy in the first place. I've often read that psychiatrists (I don't k now any stats about psychologists or psychotherapists) have the highest suicide rate among medical professionals. I am not surprised. They already know that life is a "tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think." And they have to feel and think, live consciously, all the time.