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I taught the Iliad to Chinese teenagers (2021)
- mcenedella 3y agoScholar’s Stage is an internet treasure.
- kurthr 3y agoThis story makes me want to reread a classic. It's amazing how motivating a good teacher can be!
- aleksiy123 3y agoBeing able to rewrite your essay after feedback makes so much sense. I wonder why this isn't standard. I guess the extra work involved.
- justin66 3y agoWhat the author describes sounds similar to the normal process of reviewing a first or even a second draft, but with extra terror and bullying built into it. Every essay I receive is graded with a terrible harshness. Almost no one gets an A on the first try. But all students are given a second try. I return their essays with dozens of comments in the margins, a graded rubric, and a paragraph of instructions on how they should improve their work.
- aleksiy123 3y agoI don't think this bullying if he is upfront about the rubric/requirements. He isn't saying he doesn't give them an A on purpose. He says almost noone does against those requirements set out. As long as those requirements are not unreasonable. He is also explicitly giving them instruction on how to improve as well as comments. If they follow they follow the suggestions and then get an A. That seems fair. I don't remember my teachers ever reviewing a first or second draft for me. Just turn in an essay and get a final immutable grade. I do have a vivid memory of getting my first A in 8th grade art class just by asking what I could improve in my drawing a couple of times before the final turn in. Apparently I never thought to apply the same process the rest of school :/
- watwut 3y agoThey were never taught American school essay writing style before ever. And while Americans think it is the most natural thing in the world, it come across as completely artificial weird structure with no real rationale for people outside of it. Meaning, they have zero chance to get A even if he gives out super detailed instructions. Because he is asking them too much. He is not giving them As on purpose. He made grading system that ensures it.
- nkrisc 3y ago“Almost no one gets an A on the first try.” Sounds like they could get an A if they did it well enough. He’s saying most don’t do it well enough. Whatever it is, it’s not bullying.
- eszed 3y ago> Americans think it is the most natural thing in the world. By and large, they do not. (Where did you go to high school? I'd like to send my kid there, if that's true to your experience.) Argumentative essays seemed just as "artifical [and] weird" to the vast majority of the native English-speaking American college freshmen I taught as they did to the author's Chinese students. We can speculate about the reasons for that, if we like. The cohort who (in my experience) were best-prepared for that style of writing / thinking were German ~16-year-old ESL students coming from their gymnasia system. Those kids were a delight, and really kept me on my toes.
- dudul 3y agoHow is that bullying? That sounds like a pretty good process to me.
- lolc 3y agoI think the word choice comes from the idea that the students get forced into taking the reviewers position. While this is a dynamic that can happen, it is by no means how the process should play out. So if that's the perspective and if one can't see the setup as an instructor offering guidance, one better doesn't attend university at all. And if the bullying scenario happens, find another place! I agreed with everything I read and wished I'd had so much consideration, both as a student and as a teacher.
- nkrisc 3y agoIn what world is this bullying? > I return their essays with dozens of comments in the margins, a graded rubric, and a paragraph of instructions on how they should improve their work. Has the word “bullying” lost all meaning?
- shermantanktop 3y agoI read that comment as a response to the teacher’s stated goal of using the first essay to establish dominance and power. Is it bullying? I don’t think so, if it is applied evenhandedly. Some excellent essays are probably getting marked down to achieve the shock-and-awe effect, and that’s not super fair. But as powerful people like to say to the powerless: who said life was fair?
- kelipso 3y agoPretty much every essay will have flaws, things to comment on, things to improve. Students especially are not going to write perfect essays, not when professionals have editors and they do the same thing, lol.
- justin66 3y agoI think there’s a lot wrong with skipping the draft process and replacing it with… a graded draft, essentially. But I’m just willing to take the author at his word on the following point: > Every essay I receive is graded with a terrible harshness.
- nkrisc 3y agoYou can grade harshly and still be fair. The author implies that some might actually get an A on the first draft (though not many). Is it good teaching? I have no idea. I know it’s not bullying though.
- denton-scratch 3y agoIt doesn't seem to me to be about fairness or unfairness; it's teaching. Students didn't have to prepare a second draft, illuminated by the teacher's comprehensive remarks; but it would have been stupid not to seize that opportunity to learn. He's marking the first drafts down to emphasize the importance of paying close attention to his remarks. And "paying close attention" to the teacher's remarks on an essay really means rewriting it. These students aren't being bullied; quite the opposite, they are receiving individual care and attention from a dedicated teacher. If only all teachers handled essays in this way.
- svat 3y agoLook at the bits just before and after what you quoted: > That is the second key to reaching cynical teenagers: they must be treated like men and women whose decisions and opinions matter. I was eager to learn from their observations and opinions. I genuinely believe I have as much to learn from my classes as they do from me. […] Students were eager to tell me of these conclusions because they believed (rightly) that I valued their insights and experiences. […] mostly to my attitude towards my students. Taking students seriously means setting high expectations for their work. This is the harder path: requiring more of students means investing more time and effort into their growth. […the part you quoted…] This process requires double the work on my part, but it makes the students better writers. Teach things that matter. Believe your students matter. Set high standards, but invest the time to ensure your students can meet the standards you set. I wouldn't describe the approach as “terror and bullying built into it”.
- lr4444lr 3y ago>As a rule Chinese students are more attentive and less rebellious than their American counterparts. As an American who's taught both native born American students and recent Chinese immigrants, I confirm this is true, much to the embarrassment of my national pride.
- keybored 3y agoNational pride? One could just frame this as American students teenagers being more independent-minded… and more rebellious (the last part can be both a compliment and not).
- rblatz 3y agoIf you look at the opposite of rebellious as conformist both have negative connotations, and I think in general American culture values at least in theory rebelliousness over conformity, even if in practice there is a strong conformist push from those in charge.
- dmz73 3y agoLooking from outside the US and basing my opinion on news, movies and comments in forums like these, I see there is an enormous conformist push from all levels of society (school, work, religion, military, gangs, culture, politics), much more so than in most other western countries. Granted, that could be just my impression due to prevalence of US culture on the internet and in every day life, and all countries (western and other) might have similar levels of conformist push but it is the US that prides itself on individualism so the level of conformity just stands out more.
- trealira 3y agoWhat makes the US seem so much more conformist to you than other western countries? I didn't think it was more conformist than countries like Spain, France, Germany, etc.
- shermantanktop 3y ago
- bsder 3y agoWhy would you pick the "Iliad" though? 1) The "Odyssey" is more interesting and far more often referenced in arts and culture. 2) It's not an English book so you are going to suffer from double the translation misfires (Greek -> English -> Chinese). There are lots of choices for literature in English that are just as or even more important than the "Iliad".
- birdofhermes 3y agoFolks have been translating Homer for centuries, any modern translation is going to be adequate.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoI agree on both counts. I could never finish the Iliad. No matter the translation, it can never overcome the catalog of horrors. Whenever I see "scholar" in a sitename I go on alert. The About page confirms it in this case.
- watwut 3y agoReading articles author did not asked students to read it all. They read sections, wrote essays on topics that show up in poem etc. The poem was basis on which other stuff was taught - like American style essay writing. Author spent roughly a year preparing the seminar.
- jldugger 3y agoI mean, the entire seminar is titled "War." The teacher here has a clear US conservative background, which for whatever leans jingoistic. Other assigned reading includes "Why Men Love War" from Esquire magazine, and Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kaycebasques 3y ago> Why, my Chinese students asked, will we read this? Because you need to prepare for American university classes, I replied. But more importantly: because this book might just change your life! I said this without apology or awkwardness. I believed it! Ultimately, if a great work of history and literature does not have the potential to change a student’s life, to shape their character or transform their worldview, there is no point in teaching it! Love the boldness and clarity here. Whenever a classic movie is showing in the theaters that my wife has not seen, I tell her "we gotta watch this." It's not that I even enjoy or think of these movies as my favorites. It's that there is something in the movie that might stick with her and change her (and me).
- jncfhnb 3y agoDoes this not apply to any film?
- lolinder 3y agoThe day after watching The Last Jedi in theaters people asked me and my wife how we liked it. There was an awkward pause as both of us simultaneously realized that we barely remembered anything from the movie—the only response we could give was that it was forgettable. So, if "it's weird that I didn't remember it at all one day later" counts as something that sticks with me and changes me, then yeah, I guess so?
- KaiserPro 3y agoWhat would be the Chinese equivalent of the illiad be? (well equivalents, there are going to be more than one)
- j7ake 3y agoJourney to the west. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West
- optimalsolver 3y agoIsn't that the Chinese equivalent of the Odyssey?
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoI was looking for this comment just to give it a +1. Journey to the West has had a massive cultural impact and it's delightful to see where a lot of those memes originated. Fans of modern fantasy will feel right at home.
- AdmiralAsshat 3y agoWater Margin? Journey West? Romance of the Three Kingdoms?
- squaresmile 3y agoAnd Dream of the Red Chamber to round up the four great Chinese classical novels
- tmtvl 3y agoAnd to round off the six most beloved, The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei), and The Scholars (AKA Unofficial History of the Scholars).
- dash2 3y agoCan you recommend any good one-volume translations of those?
- lvl102 3y agoThe Iliad is the first book I read cover to cover. At 15. I hated reading fictions growing up and just got away reading cliff notes during middle school. The book changed my life not because I learned anything from the texts but I learned the merits of reading something cover to cover without taking shortcuts. I also learned that some people can recite the entire book from memory which was my first realization of “100x” myth.
- jeroenhd 3y ago> I also learned that some people can recite the entire book from memory which was my first realization of “100x” myth. I don't know about memorising translations, but the Iliad was composed specifically so it could be memorised, and it was long repeated (even in competition form!) before it was ever written down. The Greek original follows a strict dactylic hexameter with rhymes and other tricks to make it easier to memorize. It's crazy to think in a world of writing that back then people memorised entire books/songs/poems like the Iliad instead of simply reading a copy. It makes sense, in a way; copying such a long text would take ages, especially with writing implements at the time, but I'm still amazed by the dedication these ancient people had.
- bitwize 3y agoI've always found it fascinating how the Polynesians kept records of their families' history. Each family has a song, taught from one generation to the next. Each generation gets to add their exploits as a verse to the song, which can grow very long yet must still be memorized, recited, and taught to one's children.
- int_19h 3y agoAnd you have to have writing to begin with... Consider also the degree of investment this requires from society as a whole. To learn to recite large works from memory like that pretty much requires a person who dedicates their life entirely to the craft (excluding other productive work), not just learning the techniques and the stories themselves, but also eventually teaching others to carry on. These are all extra mouths to feed by the rest, and yet some form of it was historically extremely widespread in pre-literate societies. It just goes to show how important stories and generational memory are to us as species.
- cm2012 3y agoOdyssey is a better and more relatable story
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoDidn't have time to read it but listened via LibriVox. It's a story of a violent age where thuggery ruled. Women were at the mercy of men (E.g. Penelope having to just about control a bunch of 'suitors'). I can't find it at the moment but IIRC Odysseus and his men put in at a port at a village, put all the men there to the sword and taje the women for slaves, sex and bounty. You get the picture. Scratch the surface and it gets ugly. (Fascinating read nonetheless)
- cm2012 3y agoFor sure. People talk about killing and enslaving a village super casually, like they don't consider it a moral question at all.
- jhanschoo 3y agoThey are... different stories. The course invited the students to imagine when the Greeks were so obsessed with honor (just as we might be, say, so obsessed with riches), and how it nevertheless manifests in places in modern society. There is a value to that exercise. Also likely because it might have been one of few books accepted for a standard qualification.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago(2021)
- Der_Einzige 3y ago[flagged]
- lolinder 3y agoScholars may have fought bitterly over whether the relationship between them was sexual (it undoubtedly was), but words like "gay" and "homo" and "LGBT" are completely anachronistic in an ancient Greek context. Greek sexual norms were completely unlike our modern ones in many ways, some of which make most people in the modern West uncomfortable, including the LGBT community. For example, take the Sacred Band of Thebes: > It was composed of 150 male couples, each pair consisting of an older erastês (ἐραστής, "lover") and a younger erômenos (ἐρώμενος, "beloved"). That second word—erômenos—is deeply tied to pederasty, which is something that neither the LGBT community nor conservatives want to talk about. Greek writers describe relationships with an erômenos as often starting at about 13 years old. I think the instinct to distance the modern LGBT community from the ancient Greeks is well placed. It's a rhetorical minefield that allies would be better off avoiding.
- genman 3y agoI have to point out that the terminology used here is not universally understood in different cultures and the difference is not at all subtle.
- rKarpinski 3y agoStrong take given the opening scene of the Iliad is Achilles raging about Agamemnon stealing his girl
- int_19h 3y agoA heterosexual relationship with another person does not preclude the one GP is talking about from being homosexual. Greeks themselves didn't really think about it in these terms, anyway. It was completely normal, and in some social contexts even expected, for a man to have sex with another man, and then go on to marry and have children.
- dsign 3y agoI grew up in a country that defines itself as opposition to another (“the enemy”, “the imperialism”), and everything else, including the lack of everything and the long blackouts, goes by undiscussed. Our Literature professor was a bright light in that world. The Iliad was the first book we read that was about what was it like to be a person in a distant time and a distant land. It was an escape and a return journey to our Mediterranean roots. Back then, I was as much of an avid reader as I’m now, but I couldn’t have made any tails of the Iliad without the help of our teacher. May his bright soul live forever in his students.
- K0balt 3y agoI would be very interested in the syllabus for the living well and the war classes. As an expat providing additional education to a group of youngsters, I have implemented similar classes - but as an amateur instructor, I’m sure yours would be better and more effective.
- dash2 3y agoThis was good: "That is the second key to reaching cynical teenagers: they must be treated like men and women whose decisions and opinions matter."
- Affric 3y agoIt’s obviously the key to reaching anyone but the phrasing is genius. Our prejudice and contempt can prevent us from even getting through.
- lupire 3y agoThey must be treated as the young adults they are, whose decisions and opinions matter.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoRight, the first thing the professor should be doing to prepare Chinese students to modern American college is to teach them that categorising people into men and women is disallowed.
- xarope 3y agoJust be aware that Mandarin has different pronouns (characters) for male and female, as with other European languages(Spanish, French, Italian etc), so it might just be a case of the teacher simply thinking and hence translating in that language, rather than some sort of bias (inasmuch as the bias is inherent in the language).
- jimbob45 3y agoDan Brown, whatever your opinion of him, did a good job depicting this in The Da Vinci Code (might have been A&D, been a while since I read either). Langdon would recall teaching these subjects and students would interject and he’d take them seriously until he convinced them of whatever the point was. Of course, with IB/AP courses, there’s no time to teach well because there’s more material than can be taught within a year.
- late2part 3y agoyou had me until OneDrive...
- aidenn0 3y agoI might have enjoyed an English class from this teacher. They understate the work when they say "double" the work for the way they grade; I seldom had any substantive comments on papers returned to me, and rarely did I have even an inkling of why one paper would receive a better grade then another. The most extreme example was when I got a paper back with a 56% and the only comment was "Great Job! Almost an A paper"
- nonrandomstring 3y agoAnthropologist and political scientist Alan McFarlane recorded many of his lectures while visiting China [0]. I really enjoyed some of them I found online, but it raised a hard question for me; outside of SOAS or Harvard, where are the visiting professors from China teaching Westerners some of the great stories and value from 5000 years of Chinese history (the stuff the CCP now wants to bury). [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54229792-understanding-the-chinese-a-personal-a-z https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54229792-understanding-t... (sorry for low quality link, but the book is a good summary )
- wolverine876 3y ago> where are the visiting professors from China teaching Westerners some of the great stories and value from 5000 years of Chinese history A great question, and I would love to take a class - even online - from a top Chinese professor on leading Chinese texts. I imagine part of the answer is that the reputations of and demand for American universities have been far beyond Chinese universities, though recently that's changing some. (That's not a criticism of people in China - it takes awhile to build those institutions and they are already moving pretty fast.)
- Symbiote 3y agoI thought one possibility might be SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies, part of the University of London. They have a visiting professor from Guizhou University, but his interest is politics: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/news/soas-china-institute-welcomes-new-visiting-scholars-and-professorial-research-associate https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/news/soas-china-institute-welco... Their reader in modern Chinese culture and language is from China: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/xiaoning-lu https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/xiaoning-lu https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/institutes-and-regional-centres/soas-china-institute/members-soas-china-institute https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/institutes-and-regional-centres...
- wolverine876 3y agoThank you!
- wolverine876 3y agoRemember that the professor isn't teaching an American or native English language work to people in another country. It's not American culture, except that we happen to read it a lot (for good reason); it's not English language except incidentally. The context of the Iliad, ancient Greece, is completely alien to the modern US, just as it is to modern China. A Chinese language translation would be just as valid. Modern Americans and Chinese have far more in common with each other, of course. The only argument is that many modern English words have ancient Greek roots, but that just makes the Chinese translator's job harder.
- retrac 3y ago> The context of the Iliad, ancient Greece, is completely alien to the modern US, just as it is to modern China I'm not sure about that. We do not still have the same emphasis on the classics as a century ago, but western societies still inherit a lot culturally from ancient Greece. Here in Canada, I was taught Greek mythology in school. We examined a play by Sophocles in high school literature. Civics class inevitably brings up Athenian democracy. Philosophy began with Thales. Music began with Pythagoras. Or to put it another way: the Simpsons once did a parody of the Odyssey. That only works if the audience knows the story of Odysseus. Which of course, they do. Most westerners know it, implicitly, in much the same way the average Chinese person knows Water Margin even if they've never read it.
- dexwiz 3y agoInterest in the classics like these isn’t a solid lineage. It’s mostly an invention of Neoclassicism, and was enabled by rediscovery of the texts in Islamic libraries. But neoclassicism still strongly influences North American culture, specifically our civil buildings. It was the counter culture movement when the USA split from Britain. While a lineage is assumed I do agree they are relatively alien to today’s culture.
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- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago>> I have heard the opinion voiced that works like the Iliad are too daunting or too boring even for university students. I disagree. My experience teaching the Iliad proved to me that even high school students can find the epic engrossing. Most teenagers need help to get there, however. In this post I am going to outline how I taught the Iliad to a gaggle of Chinese teenagers. I grew up in Greece and we were taught the Iliad and the Odyssey at school. I didn't find them daunting. I liked reading them both, despite being extremely annoyed at the translation into Demotic Greek - a made-up, wooden language that nobody has ever spoken, nor will. I also couldn't stand the way the epics were taught, by literary "analysis" that bored every child out of their head. But I liked the Iliad because it was basically more of the epic battles in the songs and movies I liked at the time: I listented to a lot of epic Metal and Connan the Barbarian was my favourite movie (with a soundtrack by Basil Poledouris that could easily have been written for the Iliad). And I liked the Odyssey because it was like the fantasy books I read and the games I played: a big adventure, with many monsters encountered along the way where the hero lost companions, rather than Hit Points, I guess. All this came natural to me. I needed no "help to get there". I probably very much didn't get to any place a literature professor would want me to get. I decided that Achilles is a bloodthirsty assshole and fuck him and his μήνις, whereas Odysseus was a smart guy, an engineer, but one with a heart who guided him home, one of my childhood heroes [1]. But I think the ancient bards [2] would have been happy. They would have found the literary analysis boring and preferred the spontaneous enjoyment of a young child to a thousand eloquent analyses about the cultural value of their epics. What cultural value does an epic have, with monsters and warriors, if it can't get a teenager to be interested in it? ____________ [1] Together with Socrates and, er, Alexander. The Great - great butcher. What was I thinking? [2] Yeah, I mean the people we collectively call "Homer".
- mbivert 3y ago> I decided that Achilles is a bloodthirsty assshole and fuck him and his μήνις In the French translation I have, the translator mentions that "wrath" is used once or so in the book, only to describe Zeus's behavior. I believe the key is to interpret the text in a theistic setting: it's not "rage" in the human sense: Agamemnon is going against Apollo by disrespecting his priest, Achilles helps Agamemnon to solve the issue, and instead of being thankful, Agamemnon punishes Achilles. Achilles would have slayed him, but he didn't because Athena told him not to. That's a key difference between Agamemnon and Achilles: the latter is much more respectful of the Gods than the other. In theistic societies, you don't pick heretical heroes. Agamemnon is motivated by this blind human rage when he punishes Achilles. Achilles isn't. I believe we could make similar comments regarding the act of killing back then: in a setting where people firmly believe in immortality of the soul, the moral rules are probably way different that in today's essentially atheistic setting.
- cnasc 3y agoI’ll take this moment to plug “The War Nerd Iliad”[1] which is my particular favorite adaptation of the Iliad. I took Classics in high school and we covered it, but I never really engaged with it until I read this. It may not be for everyone, but if you’ve found yourself put off by poetic translation of a poem that doesn’t really work in English, you’ll find this more accessible and probably enjoyable. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34381315 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34381315
- at_a_remove 3y agoBack when I was a private tutor, a lot of the "lit" business required a steady hand. Shakespeare and most other plays, I would rope a nearby adult into the business and we would do everything out loud. I think comprehension for plays is much easier when you read out the parts. A few "line readings," (in the Hollywood sense) makes the antique verbiage snap into place. A slow, measured, "But I do bite my thumb ... sir" and a sideways glance, with the lightest of smirks and everything makes sense to them.
- jojobas 3y agoDeprogramming CCP bullshit, one class at a time.
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- bane 3y agoThis is awesome. I can't believe how much pedagogical material is put forward here. Incredible stuff. All that being said, I think the larger concept is that one of the foundations of Western civ has found a way to be presented to Students and children of Eastern civ. What about the other way around? I know that in university I had to specifically seek out Eastern civ courses qualified for my major. 20+ years later I find them perpetually a source of knowledge and inspiration when trying to understand modern geopolitics. The Illiad, Beowolf, and other foundations of Western Civilization are no doubt important, but they are only part of the pantheon of modern global civilization for which classics like "Journey to the West" and the tales of the travels of Ibn Battuta are part of. These stories have provided an important framework I have enjoyed when I'm trying to interpret what's happening in the world, and have helped me numerous times in building bridges with my fellow humans from across my planet. Despite being a graduate of a world class Computer Science program, I am more proud that I know of the importance of Mansa Musa, Qin Shi Huang, Salah ad-Din, Shaka Zulu, and other global rulers were and the time spent considering the civilizations they came from. I can only imagine being a Chinese teen, learning about the Iliad for the first time. It would be like learning who Hanuman and other legendary Eastern Asian heroes are. I wish that these legends were taught to Western students as mandatory. I had to learn "Foundations of Western Civ" in school, but I would have found "Foundations of Eastern Civ" just as enlightening.
- michalu 3y agoBeowulf is not among "foundations of Western Civilization" that's a wild statement.
- bane 3y agoDemonstrate to me that it's not.
- rramadass 3y ago> I wish that these legends were taught to Western students as mandatory. Agreed. Due to colonial history, the entirety of "Western Education" has a decidedly "European" slant. "Eastern Civilizations" are covered only as much as they are "Exotic". But in this current day and age History needs to taught in a truly "Global" manner.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoBTW, it's a pity people don't study Old Testament as a literary work. I read it at 15 as an atheistic teenager and was totally captivated by the epic mainline story with numerous fascinating side stories. It's at least on par with Iliad and Odissey in that aspect.
- shp0ngle 3y agoYou need to skip Book of Numbers, though.
- hnbad 3y agoAt least. There is a lot of the Old Testament that is literally just lists of things. Leviticus is another obvious one or the "begats" in Exodus. It's largely impossible because of the Old Testament's status as a holy text but I'd really love to see a more condensed version of it that takes it purely as an epic and not a part of existing religious traditions. I suppose that would be more likely to come out of a culture that is not so closely tied to Christianity though and I fear it might lose a lot in the double process of translation required to make it approachable to a Westerner like me.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIt's different if it's been droned at you for as long as you can remember though.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoOf course, but not at Chinese students:)
- dkga 3y ago“Teach things that matter. Believe your students matter. Set high standards, but invest the time to ensure your students can meet the standards you set.” Replace teaching with working on, and students with co-workers, and you have the basis for a functional, high-performance work culture.
- novolunt 3y ago[dead]
- hnbad 3y ago> Because these students were attached to the most competitive international school in Beijing, the majority of my students were very bright and very motivated. [..] At a less selective school this curriculum may be a harder sell. I think this kind of framing often mistakes nurture for nature in ways that can lead to bad thinking: that they were attached to "the most competitive international school" means that these students likely already benefited heavily from support unavailable to other students in order to make it through the filters. The filters don't test for individual aptitude in a vaccuum, they test for the outcomes of prior circumstances. The Chinese education system isn't exactly known for being chill and relaxed to begin with. In other words: I think by looking at this in terms of individual students rather than the systems which brought them forth, this reads like "at other schools the students aren't good enough to pass a course like this" rather than "at other schools the students have not been given the prerequisites to pass a course like this". By only looking at the school as better or worse than other schools it ignores what allowed those students to have those prerequisites and fails to identify what they are, which could have allowed for insights on what needs to be taught as a primer before such a class could be taught to other students.
- red_admiral 3y agoThe links to the slides (1drv.ms) don't seem to be working for me. It would be great to be able to see these.
- ngcc_hk 3y agoCommunist youth anyway. There is no chinese.
- denton-scratch 3y agoThis guy seems to be an amazing teacher. He's gone way beyond the call of duty in the effort he's put into course-prep; what an inspirational seminar.