🚀 go-pugleaf

Sheila,

Although I haven't read the books you mentioned, anything with "Every
Minute Counts" in the title *has* to start teachers out on the wrong
foot, even if it's full of good practical ideas.

Every minute *doesn't* count, not in the way they mean.  John Holt points
out that when a kid is out of school for a long time because of extended
illness or something, the school sometimes sends around a home teacher
for a few hours a week, and those few hours are enough to keep the kid
caught up.

This time management business comes from the metaphor of school as factory,
turning the classroom into a sort of assembly line in which knowledge is
poured into kids.  That metaphor has been completely discredited time and
again, but idiot politicians (and evil business persons) keep reviving it.
Let me recommend the book _Education and the Cult of Efficiency_ by
Raymond E. Callahan (Univ of Chicago Press, 1962) for a good debunking of
the whole "every minute counts" approach to education.

You say that a student teacher needs little tricks to feel at ease in
the classroom.  I say the opposite!  If you tell a student teacher that
Every Minute Counts, how can that teacher -- or the kids -- possibly
ever feel at ease?  "Oh no, Johnny's looking out the window, a golden
minute is being wasted!"  Luckily that whole idea is nonsense.  If you
can get a kid to have and enjoy the mathematician's sort of curiosity
about how things fit together, then the kid will manage to learn all the
details one way or another.  If not, all the Golden Minutes in the world
won't help.

Instead of reading about golden minutes, student teachers should read
the best book ever written about teaching:  _How to Survive in Your
Native Land_ by James Herndon (Simon & Schuster, 1971).  In particular,
Chapter VIII ("The Stream of Life") is a good antidote to the Golden
Minute approach that makes student teachers so nervous.

In article <1ikgl4$t8h@agate.berkeley.edu>, bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:
|> Sheila,
|> 
|> Although I haven't read the books you mentioned, anything with "Every
|> Minute Counts" in the title *has* to start teachers out on the wrong
|> foot, even if it's full of good practical ideas.
|> 
|> Every minute *doesn't* count, not in the way they mean.  John Holt points
|> out that when a kid is out of school for a long time because of extended
|> illness or something, the school sometimes sends around a home teacher
|> for a few hours a week, and those few hours are enough to keep the kid
|> caught up.

I was talking to a friend who works for a mining company. His salary is
such that the cost of picking up a dropped paper clip exceeds the cost of
the clip. To save money, the clip should be ignored. Of course, this
argument hardly reflects reality. He is paid for his results, but he
is not expected to work at a constant pace to achieve them. I doubt that
one works best by working at a constant pace, but I don't know the optimum
work-time relation.


-- 

Henry Choy
choy@cs.usask.ca

What rolls down stairs alone or in pairs            This has been brought to 
Rolls over your neighbor's dog?                     you by the numbers 4
What's great for a snack and fits on your back?     and 9 and the letter P.
It's Log, Log, Log!  -- "The Log Song", from            -- Big Bird
                         Ren & Stimpy

Math is tough!       -- Barbie