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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (25062)	9/28/1998 1:12:00 PM
From: George S. Montgomery	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Alex, really? If a new exposure becomes melded into the foundation, and thus enhances it, is it still necessary to dreg up specifics - and ignore the benefits experienced by the totality? George

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (25062)	10/7/1998 2:07:00 AM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

<I'll put on my bowl cut and pointy ears and say if it were a CHOICE (which fortunately it is usually not) I'd pick "string of facts" every time. Enjoyment does not build a safe bridge. A sovereign command of logarithms does. Ideally a student should enjoy learning. But the one mandate is to learn. No exam has a question like "Did you enjoy the chapter on conic sections?"> Well, Alex, I don't think we were having any kind of rancorous disagreement, just a philosophical difference. The paragraph I copied here DOES suggest, however, the same thing that I did--that perhaps our disagreement is to some degree because your are scientifically oriented and I am more of a liberal arts person. The reason for that is that your field requires that one logical and serious scientific fact be built on top of the other in order to build a knowledge base where science is comprehensible. While you could argue that literature, for example, is the same way, in that understanding is enriched by knowing mythological and Biblical references, for example, I could say that it is not strictly necessary, because much of it is pleasurable and whole on its own, one piece of art at a time. A poem, for example, can stand totally on its own, the words carrying the entire piece. A chemistry experiment requires a knowledge base. There are essentially two ways of looking at children--as vessels to be filled with facts, or as flames where the desire for learning burns brightly, until it is extinguished (sometimes snuffed out by that same vessel overturned). While I prefer the analogy of the flame, both theories can work for liberal arts students. However, the vessel filled with facts is the only one where a child can end up as a scientist. And I think enjoyment and love of learning is a wonderful bridge. I would rather walk across it than a string of facts any day!