Subject: Re: The Fourth Summary of C & I and the Internet -Reply
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Sat 29 Jan 2000 - 06:22:04 MET
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 15:22:04 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: The Fourth Summary of C & I and the Internet -Reply
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On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, Dennis Nelson wrote:
> Regarding the need for the interaction possible in classrooms:
> Several thoughts:
> prior to public schools, was not the interaction in the home and in the
> community?
> should there be a different interpersonal interaction and protocol
> between family, the neighborhood and the rest of the world?
I sure hope so. I will not make my personal goal to investigate the daily
habits of my neighbour in detail and with the hope to affcet them and
exploit them for the purpose of my further analysis. Also, I hope that
the function of my thoughts in my teaching environment will differ from
that of the surveillance techniques developed by my parents in order to
ensure that before I can see a bigger picture I do not take a cliff for a
walking path. As for the rest of teh world, well if I weer to subject to
scruting every word the rest of the world uttered and vice versa we would
be still wondering whether it was worth to get up since we may not in fac
tbe here:-):-)
My point? All interactions are situated. And it is the situation and the
forces that mediate it that is important to be aware of if only so that we
know what we do and what is done to us, and what options are there.
> is the value I get from the school greater than the value of a longer,
> deeper, more intimate relationship with my own family and
> neighborhood?
Right. Is the value of a lolly I swallow lessesr or greater than of a
piece of potatoe? Can we make such judgments without knowing the situation
and hence the criteria of judgment? And how do we know that even then we
do have teh right criteria for making such judgments? And btw, maybe the
judgment needs not to be made? How do we know what matters and what does
not and what is there to assess against what? I have been very lucky with
Arun-Kumar Tripathi sending me lots of references for reading and
compiling on my web-page. One of the articles he sent to talks about
things which seem fit if only because the fitting is rule-based and we
do well such things. Much harder it is to reflect on the sources of the
fit:
Consider, for example, the institution of the word problem:
One drain can empty the pool in 6 hours and the other drain can empty
the pool in 8 hours. How long will they take to drain the pool together?
It is easy enough to set up the reciprocals for this problem. But how
about:
Jim can paint the house in 6 hours and his dad can paint the house in
8 hours. How long will they take to paint the house together?
Again, we can automatically set up the reciprocals -- or we can inquire
into Jim's relationship with his dad. For example, we can ask whether
their famous cooperative projects devolve into discussions of football.
Word problems set standards for scientific courses by the simple expedient
of having right answers, and they ensure that one course can build on the
next by providing a clean way to specify what the student has learned. But
they also encourage an uncurious habit of mind that Heidegger called
enframing: trying to fit the world into the equations one has to hand.
Enframing feeds on the distances between the classroom and the rest of the
world.
Ania Lian
ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mlal2
please, keep checking my IFETS-site:
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mlal2/lists/ifets/ifets.htm
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