Re: filk -- incomplete, so far: SCHOOLTEACHER'S LAMENT

Re:

Hmmmm ... if the facts on a given topic aren't suitable for/
comprehensible by youngsters,
why not delay that topic until they are mature enough to comprehend
the facts?

Because then you can never teach anyone anything -- ...

I should have made clear that I asked my question in the spirit of a
"devil's advocate."
("Devil's advocate" is one of the best ideas that the Catholic Church
ever came up with -- an officially appointed skeptic/objector/nit-
picker, required to find and officially present any and every reason
NOT to canonize someone who's been proposed as a possible saint: a
pity that the Catholics eventually abolished that role in canonization
hearings ... )

Actually, for the reason Bob mentioned, I think that any presentation
of a known-incomplete/superseded model should come with a disclaimer
of the type Mark Horning suggested: I forget his actual words, but
something like:
"This is a simplification. leaves things out, and/or it presents
things in easily picturable ways. When you understand this much -- and
a whole lot more -- you'll be ready to understand more on the topic
and to investigate/learn on the basis of a somewhat less simplified
picture."

Re:

I don't know how easily you could fit it into a song, but how about
paired
verses about a bad teacher and a good teacher using (ideally) the
*exact same*
simplifying assumptions, but where the bad teacher's use of these
assumptions
results in comic failure, while the good teacher's serves as a
stepping stone
to latter understanding of the real facts?

That would be a great song to write, but I could never be the one to
write it: I didn't have enough good math/physics/history/English
teachers to *know*, ultra-reliably and lin my bones, how the "good
teacher" half of the pair would proceed with key subjects.
(Trying to write that song you suggest, I'd feel a bit like a
harem-guard trying to write a sex-manual. The poor surgically
diminished fellow may well have learned, via observation, quite a lot
about competent vs. incompetent performance, but his "outsider looking
in" perspective must inevitably starve his work of a certain crucial
something ... )


Kate Gladstone -- http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: filk -- incomplete, so far: SCHOOLTEACHERS LAMENT
    ... if the facts on a given topic aren't suitable for/ ... why not delay that topic until they are mature enough to comprehend ... propose to teach youngsters about television, ... is, arguably, an age/stage at which that topic should not yet be ...
    (rec.music.filk)
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  • Re: No Exit & Sartre
    ... at what age, if ever, did you first realise a teacher had ... Not just a difference of opinion, ... verifyable facts, but rather about opinions and argumentation; ...
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