Don't I wish. Sadly, I'm going to have trouble treasuring Tuesdays until I'm out on my practicum. With three classes on Tuesday along with a couple of quality hours on the QEW, I'm usually facing an 8 to 6 day with negligible breaks in between. Last night I got to enjoy the 3am study call as a busy weekend led to some late night fun with Cohort prep (5 minute microteaching session), Tech in the classroom prep (did I actually cross all my 'I's and dot all my 'T's for class) and history teaching class (read articles, write reflections). Usually, these occasional sleep-deprived moments can be taken in stride provided I'm not facing an 8 to 12 solid morning of Educational psychology (scan the intro, read a chapter, doze off when it gets too psychy and not educationy enough) and instructional dynamics (scan the intro, read 2 chapters and an article). Unfortunately, I can't come up with any failed attempts at wit when relating my study for instructional dynamics as I still have one and a half chapters to go.
Based on this, you may ask what on earth I'm doing here. Well, I've always believed in the power of procrastination as a force for good. But, the real reason why I popped by is that my fingers are aching to add a couple topics here and I ... do ... not ... have ... the ... time. I will likely repeat that mantra a few more times until I can convince myself that blogs should not lead to further sleep deprivation. Without further ado's (or adon't's) I have to ask:
Why does the high school curriculum not include logic. One of the best courses I took during my second undergrad was an introduction to symbolic and semantic logic. Math students employ symbolic logic in most classes but are never introduced to the basic skills they're employing. History students employ semantic logic whenever the floor is opened for discussions but are never introduced to the facts and fallacies of semantic logic.
One of the history articles today advocated removing myths from the teaching of history in favour of a student constructed relativistic version. Mythology is a problematic approach as there are no capital 'T' truths; but, these visions are such a unifying force (along with being an effective means to underpin society's values) that I worry we're tossing the baby out with the bathwater. After all, every historiography is someone's version of a myth so by removing focus from myth we're encouraging students to hide their myths behind evidence selection and causality links. Should we be removing myths from history or is this swinging the pendulum too far.
Well, I'll flesh these out in the future. After all, chapters 5 and 7 still await ... and my keyboard has decided that hitting the ' key will now result in the display of a è. Someday Ièll know how to fix this, but for now Ièll just silently growl.
Roy, love hearing your voice in this writing. Ten weeks is hard to actually get to know my students - but you've made it easy when reading these posts.
ReplyDeleteWhat intrigued me the most in your post was this, class on symbolic and semantic logic. I'd like to know more about how they are introduced to a concept without knowing the basic skills behind it. Am I understanding this correctly? It sounds fascinating to me.
Zoe