Yes. What are you doing trying to read about education on Christmas Day?
Service could be intermittent until just after the new year gets properly going, which I calculate as being on Monday January 5th. On that date and after, normal service will be back to normal, i.e. every week day, and maybe at the weekend.
Now get out of here and enjoy yourself.
Not heard of "Eragon"? You are about to, it would seem. And because of Eragon, it looks like homeschooling is about to get another big boost.
Meet the Paolinis of Montana:
For years, Kenneth and Talita – former members of a survivalist cult led by a woman called Ma Prophet – seem to have lived on a shoestring, with only occasional employment. Kenneth, the son of an Italian immigrant, used to be a photographer, but doesn't appear to have had much work lately.He and his wife have devoted their lives to their children, schooling them at home and, until recently, rarely venturing outside their small community of Paradise Valley, Montana.
And one of those children, Christopher, has written a book. And it's not just any book:
The British edition appears early next month, but already it is a huge bestseller in America, where it has surged past the Harry Potter books. Almost half a million copies were sold in only two months, a screenplay is in the works and at least a dozen foreign-language editions are on the way.
The book, Eragon of course, began life self-published. But then:
Their big break came when the popular crime novelist Carl Hiaasen visited the area on a fishing trip with his young son, and the boy became immersed in a copy of Eragon. On the way home, Hiaasen asked his son why he couldn't put the book down. "It's great, Dad," came the reply, "better than Harry Potter."To a novelist who has had his fair share of bestsellers, those words were magic. Hiaasen alerted his editors in New York, and the next thing the Paolinis knew, the prestigious publisher Knopf (a part of Random House) was offering them a contract.
This is one of the more educationally startling bits of the Telegraph story:
"I was only 15 when I started Eragon. I didn't know how to write. I just told everything in one gigantic burst, then spent another year revising it. …"
Talk about learning by doing.
If Christopher Paolini turns out to be the perfectly nice, well adjusted, civilised person which I fully expect him to turn out to be, then that will ram the homeschooling point with particular force, because the popular fear is that whereas when maths professors do it, that's okay, maybe, when people called things like "Ma Prophet" get mixed up in it, only bad things can result. But now, it seems, the result is … Eragon.
Category: Books • Home education • Learning by doing • Literacy
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I've started to read this piece by Denis Dutton, a recently acquired interest of mine, and so far I like it a lot:
With Toni Morrison, I acknowledge that what I think and do is already inscribed on my teaching, and all my work. Indeed, we do "teach values by having them," or at least cannot but reveal our values in the classroom in one manner or another. This is not a voluntary option for those of us who teach in higher education or anywhere else: it is a permanent feature of the human condition. I sit at my computer overlooking a grass commons between suburban houses. As it's a warm New Zealand summer, neighborhood children below are playing an improvised game of cricket. Mr. Gagliardi from the house opposite mine appears with his lawnmower and asks the kids to give way so he can mow the lawn. Today he's doing my side as well, because my old mower is still in the repair shop. They patiently wait by the side of the commons for him to finish, though it takes some more time when he shuts down the mower to chat a bit with Mr. McConchie next door. When the children later resume their play, Mr. Gagliardi helps out with some batting instruction, guiding them with his usual care and patience.When I think of "teaching values," I find it hard to keep my mind focused on university classrooms. The promulgation of moral principles in the classroom or lecture theater plays a real but overestimated role in the moral enculturation of young people; more important in my opinion is the human example set by teachers and other adults in the ordinary conduct of life. If morality could be instilled by teaching principles in the same way that mathematics can be taught through principles, then Moral Principles 101 would long since be required in every university. As things are, the moral education most people receive at the university is continuous with the moral example being set by Mr. Gagliardi for the children down on the commons: his demonstrated sense of communal responsibility, his kindness and friendliness, his willingness to take time to help them with their play. He's not sermonizing from a pulpit, sacred or secular, he's just mowing the lawn, and setting a decent adult example.
I will be reading all of it, and my guess is, so may quite a few of you, if you haven't already
There is now a whole book devoted to the way that managerial gobbledegook now permeates the world in general, and academia in particular. Read, for example, this report:
People were rocking with laughter; some were in tears. Deadpan, Don Watson waited. One audience member said later it was the funniest dinner of academic deans he had ever attended. But Watson was not joking. He was reading from a university mission statement and other material on its website."To provide outcome-related research and consultancy services that address real-world issues" - shrieks of laughter. The university's "approach to quality management is underpinned by a strong commitment to continuous improvement and a whole-of-organisation framework" - uproar in the room.
The university in question was RMIT but it could have been any of them. Go to your website and read the language, Watson urged guests at a recent Deans of Education dinner. That made people laugh even more. They worked at universities; they knew what he was talking about. Some of them probably even wrote this stuff. It was a surreal moment.
Thanks, as so often, to Arts & Letters Daily.
