4 ms·

I see. That's why I partially blame the teacher in that situation. I think a critical part of teaching is to contextualize the material in the larger picture.

by jtr1 11y ago

I see. That's why I partially blame the teacher in that situation. I think a critical part of teaching is to contextualize the material in the larger picture. I had a math teacher in high school who, when I asked why I had to learn the quadratic equation, answered with an asinine anecdote about someone asking her to recite it in a social setting. Mathematics felt similarly arbitrary to me at that point, and I was turned off to it for an unfortunately long period of time.

davidw 11y ago
The thing was; it was a pretty clear pattern. I had good and bad science and math teachers, but even with the benefit of time and perspective, I don't hold most of the English ones in a very high regard, at least in terms of their teaching - many of them seemed to be perfectly kind and agreeable people. One of the ones who was also held in fairly high regard in the school once got into 'time being relative', and trotted out, in the same sentence, something about experiments showing time being different at the poles and the equator, as well as something about time in "latin" cultures. That drove me up the wall!
hugh4 11y ago
That's a good point. The most common question out of a student's mouth is "But why do we have to learn this?" And that's a pretty good question. Unfortunately they're asking the people least likely to know. Teachers don't even know why most of these things are important. They learned them at school, and then they grew up and taught them, but they never passed through the stage of actually putting them to use in any other context.
- davidw 11y ago
  Yeah! Lately I've read a few books on copy writing. That would have been hugely useful to study in high school; both in terms of learning to sell someone on something, which everyone needs to do sooner or later, as well as learning how other people try to sell to you.

by jtr1 11y ago

davidw 11y ago

The thing was; it was a pretty clear pattern. I had good and bad science and math teachers, but even with the benefit of time and perspective, I don't hold most of the English ones in a very high regard, at least in terms of their teaching - many of them seemed to be perfectly kind and agreeable people. One of the ones who was also held in fairly high regard in the school once got into 'time being relative', and trotted out, in the same sentence, something about experiments showing time being different at the poles and the equator, as well as something about time in "latin" cultures. That drove me up the wall!

hugh4 11y ago

That's a good point. The most common question out of a student's mouth is "But why do we have to learn this?" And that's a pretty good question. Unfortunately they're asking the people least likely to know. Teachers don't even know why most of these things are important. They learned them at school, and then they grew up and taught them, but they never passed through the stage of actually putting them to use in any other context.

davidw 11y ago
Yeah! Lately I've read a few books on copy writing. That would have been hugely useful to study in high school; both in terms of learning to sell someone on something, which everyone needs to do sooner or later, as well as learning how other people try to sell to you.