Journey to the West (Part 2)
It strikes me that you can sell snake oil in many ways, but that a few are somewhat eliminated if your clientele does its research. For example, if you sell Programme A that will make your wrinkles go away, but five years later, everyone is wrinkly and worse, then it isn't good to ride into town announcing that Programme A is very good and you should try it too.
It is interesting to see people make a purse out of a sow's ear. My very first thought on observing this ancient skill being practised again was that the plural of 'sow' is 'swine' and the plural of 'cow' is 'kine' and I am so lucky to be alive to see it all come to pastoral fruition in the fields of barley. I note that the Germans are very good at leatherwork, and their wallets of pigskin are actually quite lovely and last a long time.
The main problem, I suppose is that it is hard to show that a programme aimed at the top 10% is actually useful for the top 1%. In a large population, ideally, schools should cater to the top 0.01%, 0.1%, 1%, and 10%. This is because each group really has different needs. A person in the top 0.01% is more different from a person at the 1% level than a person at the 1% level is from a person in the 5% level or perhaps the 10% level. You can't use the same programmes for chemical engineers as well as sanitary engineers, and wordsmiths as well as locksmiths, unless both groups are equally competent or incompetent at the skill to be taught.
And that hasn't even touched the area of what learning really is, and how we can help differently-intelligenced (haha, I can be politically correct too) people do their best.
This then was Day Two. Oh yes, I actually bumped into the Head of Government and a couple of ministers. Unfortunately, this was at a rather sad event, at which we were all bidding farewell to a loyal and very loud-spoken servant of the state. Sigh.
It is interesting to see people make a purse out of a sow's ear. My very first thought on observing this ancient skill being practised again was that the plural of 'sow' is 'swine' and the plural of 'cow' is 'kine' and I am so lucky to be alive to see it all come to pastoral fruition in the fields of barley. I note that the Germans are very good at leatherwork, and their wallets of pigskin are actually quite lovely and last a long time.
The main problem, I suppose is that it is hard to show that a programme aimed at the top 10% is actually useful for the top 1%. In a large population, ideally, schools should cater to the top 0.01%, 0.1%, 1%, and 10%. This is because each group really has different needs. A person in the top 0.01% is more different from a person at the 1% level than a person at the 1% level is from a person in the 5% level or perhaps the 10% level. You can't use the same programmes for chemical engineers as well as sanitary engineers, and wordsmiths as well as locksmiths, unless both groups are equally competent or incompetent at the skill to be taught.
And that hasn't even touched the area of what learning really is, and how we can help differently-intelligenced (haha, I can be politically correct too) people do their best.
This then was Day Two. Oh yes, I actually bumped into the Head of Government and a couple of ministers. Unfortunately, this was at a rather sad event, at which we were all bidding farewell to a loyal and very loud-spoken servant of the state. Sigh.
Labels: Education, Intelligence, Progress
etched with acid at 8:50:00 pm
1 Comments:
But what is most oppressing is when one's abilities and interests are assumed from past performances in assessments that have no direct relevance to the ability/interest at hand.
AFAIK, the designers of the IB didn't intend for their programme to be limited to a top percentile of a population.
But obviously, if a student's test scores don't fit the distribution profile of envisioned students, there is no possibility that the student may thrive in a new environment that is more conducive to intellectual curiosity than the old. Rather, he clearly has inferior aptitude for critical and creative thought and must be prevented from even considering epistemology. Obviously.
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