Three Months
This is going to be a critical quarter. By 'critical', I'm using the Greek sense of the word; it is a time that will require a lot of good judgement.
For a start, if I can't get my dissertation done within the period July-September, I might as well not bother anymore, because it will have become obvious that the knot I have tied myself in is far too difficult to unravel. The dissertation topic is like an overlay which covers several minefields. You read Tony Wagner and other North American pundits and they say how good the education system is that you're writing about. But what if it is good but not that good?
My parents are away too. For three months, it will be about house management, bills, gardening, doing the mail, watching out for serious documents from places like the USP and the various agencies that somehow have a lien on the pater's time. And interacting with my very interesting brother, who can be quirky, is always intelligent, and likes things done in certain ways.
Meanwhile, my students approach their penultimate or ultimate deadlines and examinations. And I need to help some of them a lot, because habits of mind are not so easily inculcated when for years they've been let off lightly by a system that a) doesn't push them very hard, or b) pushes them hard but provides them with unnatural assistance in getting there.
The obvious case is the TOK essays I've been marking. I used to write these things when I was primary school simply because the #1 method of dealing with the brat I used to be was to give him work to do, no assistance except answering questions with more questions (or a gesture towards the family library), and set him a deadline — something like two pages in one morning, four pages by the end of the day.
There was a marked lack of coddling when it came to intellectual problems: I remember teaching myself algebra and calculus from my maternal grandfather's library, biology and bridge from my paternal grandfather's. You learn it, you earn it.
That attitude rubbed off on me as a teacher; I'm sure a lot of my students will remember that my favourite response to a question raised in class was, "What do you think?" (I must say that Big Ben was the best exponent of all time at answering this question. He actually could think on the fly and would come up with answers on the spot. I appreciated that.)
I believe that three months of intensive teaching in questioning techniques — how to come up with good questions, how to redirect questions, how to change the focus of a question and ask it another way, stuff like that — would certainly make a cohort capable of answering epistemological questions on their own. The problem is that nobody wants to do it.
So. Three months. We should all stoke the furnaces and go for broke.
For a start, if I can't get my dissertation done within the period July-September, I might as well not bother anymore, because it will have become obvious that the knot I have tied myself in is far too difficult to unravel. The dissertation topic is like an overlay which covers several minefields. You read Tony Wagner and other North American pundits and they say how good the education system is that you're writing about. But what if it is good but not that good?
My parents are away too. For three months, it will be about house management, bills, gardening, doing the mail, watching out for serious documents from places like the USP and the various agencies that somehow have a lien on the pater's time. And interacting with my very interesting brother, who can be quirky, is always intelligent, and likes things done in certain ways.
Meanwhile, my students approach their penultimate or ultimate deadlines and examinations. And I need to help some of them a lot, because habits of mind are not so easily inculcated when for years they've been let off lightly by a system that a) doesn't push them very hard, or b) pushes them hard but provides them with unnatural assistance in getting there.
The obvious case is the TOK essays I've been marking. I used to write these things when I was primary school simply because the #1 method of dealing with the brat I used to be was to give him work to do, no assistance except answering questions with more questions (or a gesture towards the family library), and set him a deadline — something like two pages in one morning, four pages by the end of the day.
There was a marked lack of coddling when it came to intellectual problems: I remember teaching myself algebra and calculus from my maternal grandfather's library, biology and bridge from my paternal grandfather's. You learn it, you earn it.
That attitude rubbed off on me as a teacher; I'm sure a lot of my students will remember that my favourite response to a question raised in class was, "What do you think?" (I must say that Big Ben was the best exponent of all time at answering this question. He actually could think on the fly and would come up with answers on the spot. I appreciated that.)
I believe that three months of intensive teaching in questioning techniques — how to come up with good questions, how to redirect questions, how to change the focus of a question and ask it another way, stuff like that — would certainly make a cohort capable of answering epistemological questions on their own. The problem is that nobody wants to do it.
So. Three months. We should all stoke the furnaces and go for broke.
etched with acid at 12:54:00 pm
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