Muriel:
If I can stick to the part of your "rant" that has anything to do with what
I wrote:
> nobody's talking about the kind of teacher who's leading this [ideal
> pythagorean] activity. until elementary school teachers are paid as well
as
> corporate VPs,
I'm not quite sure I follow this - "corporate VP" sounds a wee bit
overstated here. Is the implication that elementary school teaching is a
uniquely difficult and highly-qualified position, meriting a salary several
times higher than those of nurses, high school teachers, university faculty,
engineers, statisticians, programmers, etc?
> few of them will have the kind of mental energy and
the
> combination of interpersonal and mathematical skills that will make
robert's
> comments relevant to the typical classroom.
Huh? The exercise I outlined was pretty much self-running from the
instructor's point of view. Hand out the sheets and ziplock bags of squares
and let the students go at it. When somebody comes up asking for Hint N,
give it to them. Answer any questions the kids ask. Mark the papers at the
end. I don't see what interpersonal or mathematical skills beyond the
ordinary this would take.
Granted, it would take more skills than the other exercise, which seemed
to have no input from the teacher at all apart from handing out the
sheets... At the risk of stirring things, I would suggest that any teacher
who is incapable of more than the latter would be overpaid at minimum wage,
never mind the salary of a corporate VP.
(_If_ one of the goals of constructivism as practiced is to enable
teachers who can't teach (or don't know the material themselves) to run a
class, then I'd be agin it; but I don't believe that to be the case. It
looks more like a case of overgeneralizing a valid idea to me.)
> avoiding the win-lose
pitfall is
> crucial; if kids get too frustrated (if it's too much like work and not
enough
> like play) and if they don't know where they're supposed to go or if the
answer
> is withheld for too long, they'll just learn how to not-care and not how
to have
> fun with math.
I agree with this. That was more or less the point of my posting.
-Robert Dawson
