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I taught prehistory for a long time and got really tired of playing the, this is the first example of _______ game. It's fundamentally flawed unless you assume
by pkdpic 4y ago
I taught prehistory for a long time and got really tired of playing the, this is the first example of _______ game. It's fundamentally flawed unless you assume that we can ever know everything about anything, which is completely insane imnho. And it changed constantly for prehistoric artifacts which was awesome but super tiring.
Anyway I ended up feeling best introducing historical points in a minimal amount of implied context. "The people who wrote this textbook considered _______ to be the earliest major example of _______." or "As of 20XX this was considered to be the oldest known example of ______." etc.
I started to have a lot more luck with maintaining a positive productive engaged classroom conversation when I started doing that. And it let us dive into unstructured critiques of historical method and bias which was always a good way to run out of time in lectures.
Then I realized teaching couldn't support an adult human lifestyle and had to quit. I miss these kinds of discussions though. Always glad to see them on hn.
- readthenotes1 4y ago"Then I realized teaching couldn't support an adult human lifestyle" not a modern first-world one at any rate;)
- defrost 4y agoCertainly not in central north America as I understand things to be there. Teachers in countries with university graduate requirements for teaching and strong education unions have better median salaries relative to population demographics.
- chrisseaton 4y ago> Teachers in countries with university graduate requirements for teaching and strong education unions I thought the US required a masters and had extremely strong teacher unions?
- kirsebaer 4y agoUS teacher unions are for teachers in elementary and high schools (teaching children). People teaching at universities typically do not have a union.
- chaosite 4y agoSometimes they do, but it's a per-university thing. Where there are unions, usually faculty and TAs have different unions. Sometimes one group is unionized and the other is not.
- weberer 4y agoTeachers unions in the USA are very strong.
- mach1ne 4y agoI felt like I was having a stroke while reading this.
- martopix 4y agoBut "surviving" is the keyword here. Nobody claims it's the "first example" anyway. I think it's very cool if something is "the oldest surviving ____", it's interesting information.