School Books

Better or Worse

School books could have gotten better instead of worse over the last 50 years.

Students benefit from seeing overlaping examples.

 

Cultivation of a Garden

Teaching = Reproducing of knowledge

Reproducing the knowledge in the teacher

A teacher can only teach what they know.

They can only give what they have.

They can only reproduce in the student what is in them.

Teaching for a paycheck rather than love of the subject
is not what you want for your child.


A teacher of history who does not love history and who therefore is not filled with a zealous knowledge of history can hardly impart a desire to understand and know history, much less any understanding thereof.

 Students benefit from seeing a big picture,
and then being shown a few of the kinds of trees that make up the forest.
It is good to show two or three of the same kinds of trees at a time
so the student doesn't over focus in on some detail of just one tree.
This helps the student see common range of variation of features within one kind of a tree.

OVERLAPPING EXAMPLES

Showing variations in leaves from the same tree = overlapping examples = similar but not exact

The leaves on an elm tree vary somewhat in appearance.
When the teacher shows several elm leaves
the student is helped to see a range pattern common to elms.

If only one elm leaf is shown,
the student may memorize it in detail
and later when shown a different elm leaf think it is a different kind of tree.

Let the teacher first be able to explain the cultivation of a garden.

Anyone who can not explain gardening can not teach.

Anyone who cannot understand the husbandry of a garden is not qualified to explain anything to a paying student, with one exception: that he or she is unqualified to teach.

Why am I making so much about the cultivation of a garden? Because from the example of trees and a garden can the principles be taught.


The repeating pattern and the understanding thereof carries over to any subject.

The two phrases "energy converted" and "work done" mean exactly the same thing.
 Principles from physics can be applied to teaching.
 Work done can often be clearly seen.
 Energy applied on a subject has a correlation to the teacher's love of the subject.


The first test to approve the teacher should be their knowledge and love for the subject.
The second is their desire to communicate it to the students, to impart what they have, and inspire the student in that subject.
The next is their patience and willingness to accept the student where they're at and work from there.
Newton's second law comes into play here. Without a heart desire impact from the teacher to the student, there is little change in the movement of the student.

 

 
    As in Shakespeare's words by Hamlet, theres a rotten odor in Denmark, only it's in the U.S. school books. The physics, math, geometry books stink. There is little to no inspiring history of development of understanding.
Little or none of philosophy of thinking in the field.
Scarce and insufficient examples.
Insufficient explanations.


The social studies are being used by the U.N. to work against traditional American Christian values and against the republic as it was designed by the Constitution.
The literature reading choices could be greatly improved with good reason.
The new biology texts have so much detail for example in the KREB CYCLE
that major ideas are lost. Too much knowledge of details has buried the forest picture with leaves.
The major ideas have been broken down into sub-parts and lost their visibility.
The sub-parts obscure function and form to the learner.
How would you like to be shown a 2003 version of a circuit on your first exposure, with never having seen an early 1950's version of that same circuit? Bet you'd have a lot harder time comprehending unless someone who knew the higer-level-logic bothered to show it to you.

I went to school at IBM on mainframes. They taught us with 4 levels of logic on their computer systems. Each level went down into a deeper level. But thank goodness for the higher level, bigger picture explanations that prepared us to grasp the fine details on the fourth level. Today's students do not have the 1st or second levels of the KREB CYCLE available to them. The major functioning components have been broken down into their more detailed parts so that the over-view is lost.

 

Links to other sites with supporting testimony can be provided.

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