The Teacher’s mistake-and why it could doom us all

Most errors stem from unconscious habits of the mind—ways of thinking picked up in work, education, family and public bar. Teachers and lecturers are not exempt. Their lives largely consist in imparting information to the ignorant, then correcting its assimilation through marking essays and test papers. As their students readily comply, driven by ambition, cupidity or fear of ambitious parents, the teacher concludes that learning has occurred, and approves his own methods accordingly.

But the world outside the groves of academé is a very different place. Violent, short term and full of festering resentments such as class, race and the bitter memories of forced attendance at the knees of some pedagogue for whom they entertained neither liking nor respect. Here decisions are based on quick instinct, not measured reflection. Judgements depend upon on habit, emotion, and identity, not fact and logic. So when the educated set out blithely to explain complex issues such as climate change, interethnic tensions, or pandemics they expect the same compliance, the same reverence, as they received in school. Forgetting that most minds have long since been locked against reason, and barred to the entry of all but the smallest facts. Why else is it so hard to convince people to give up smoking, gambling, or drinking? A second’s reason revealed the harm: and the educated repeated the admonitions for decades, until partial success was achieved. Now we begin to understand the terrible fate of Cassandra, doomed to be forever right, and forever unheard.

Unless the educated-among whom we include the followers of this humble blog, gentle readers- can learn to adjust this fatal psychic flaw, the world will continue to slide towards climate catastrophe, pandemic disaster, and war. Oh, we almost forgot-your former pupils now have nuclear weapons

#climate change #global warming #pandemic #antibiotic resistance #tribalism

Andrew O’Neil on how to fix a broken education system

Veteran students of Britain’s national decline keep returning to a single motif: it’s our education system. For too many years the United Kingdom has tolerated appallingly low standards of literacy, numeracy and vocational skills which have left it trailing far behind the field of comparable developed counties. The reasons adduced include: a two-tier system of private versus public education, with all the opportunities rigged in favour of the former: under investment , with education ever in the firing line of the latest round of Treasury penny pinching: an atrophied system of vocational training with an overemphasis on bookish academia. Well do we remember the personal experience of a teacher who told us “in a one hour lesson I spend the first twenty minutes trying to calm them down and pay attention: in the next twenty I might get some teaching done; the last twenty is spent trying to maintain order as they await the end of the lesson” That was thirty years ago; but the experience is relevant today. Incidentally, we make that two thirds of the budget spent on every lesson wasted: but then, we were never very good in maths class.

Don’t take our word for it. Believe the words of Andrew O’Neil a heroic figure who pens a regular column for the Times Educational Supplement. Contrary to all experience, still believes something can be done. [1] He is honest about the problems: poor retention of teachers: endemic violence and above all an unwillingness to confront these issues until they break into total catastrophe, with the murder of a teacher by a disgruntled pupil, although quite often they do it to each other as well. His learning is vast, his interest multifaceted. Oddly he actually sees signs of hope for our poor land:

There are promising signs of change. In Bridget Phillipson, we now have a secretary of state committed to long-term solutions rather than short-term firefighting. Her emphasis on system design, fairness and early intervention marks a departure from crisis-led reform

Travelling on holiday, on business or whatever, we became used to a sort of condescending pity from foreigners whenever the subject of education came up. is there just a chance that, for once our appalling national system might be mitigated, or even turned around altogether? Could we actually start to catch you up?

_{thanks to d foley}

[1]https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/general/why-education-keeps-collapsing-into-crisis

#united kingdom #education #great britain #economics #schools #gangs #youth #violence #graffitti #drugs

Intriguing new discovery sheds light on how we learn languages

We have a confession. After more than thirty years studying Spanish, we still struggle, sometimes badly. Not so much when reading! There’s nothing like a Kindle and its dictionaries to help with all those tricky words. Or even when listening to things like the news and weather on the TV. No, it’s when a group of them are talking excitedly, perhaps in the studio during a football match. That’s when it comes out like: YélbalónestáconhaveeuupasuhdelanterocouthojMadreepotpourrismamporrerodeharrikane chichinaboakadebandamenaosmalmalgooooooooooooooooaol! And that’s on a good day.

Now an article from the multi-learned Nicola Davis[1] of the Guardian suggests what may be going wrong. Up to know, we have always assumed to that one listens to individual words and then assembles them into a meaningful pattern. But according to Professor Liina Pylkkanen of New York University, something different may be happening. It seems humans recognise groups of words, sometimes very fast indeed. And this happens when they are in the grammatical pattern of the listeners native language. In English this is Subject-Verb-Object. And the Professor even seems to have found a region of the brain where this may be occurring.

Of course, none of this is to say that one cannot acquire a really fluent understanding of another language. We know this, because we’ve met people who are much, much better at it than we are. But it does shed light on what to do if you want to get better at your listening skills, Yes, books are a fantastic way to begin to build a vocabulary, word by word. But there will come a time when we have to tackle those words in groups, unbroken by the gaps which you find in a text. The trick is to pick out recurring groups of words. Thank you Nicola. Thank you Professor Pylkkannen.

//www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/23/human-brain-can-process-certain-sentences-in-blink-of-an-eye-says-study

#neurology #linguistics #language learning #nicola davis #spanish