my presentation...

Yesterday I gave a talk about Kindergarten and learning through play at the Eureka Springs Rotary meeting. I am reminded that I'm better at writing than at speaking. I tend to wander off along trains of thought without circling back to finish and then realize the ineffectiveness of my method later as I review my thoughts with no audience remaining to bring to the finish I intended. In writing, I can read through and catch the tail to circle things up.

I am reminded of my old Political Science teacher at Hastings College. He would work hard to explain each concept from different angles. We knew he knew what he was talking about, but I was often left clueless concerning how I would put any of it to work or where it fit into the scheme of things. I am also reminded of my Sociology professor, Mr. Lane. He was a slender, active man, who moved lithely before the class, back and forth as he made his important points. But where are those points, so carefully cast before a sleepy class?

Let's think honestly about schooling. There are two important forms of knowledge, Kentniss, having to do with things we discover through our own experience and Wissenshaft, having to do with what has been described to us second or third hand. The hands are literally absent in the latter. And Wissenshaft must be constantly refreshed and tested at hand in order to be of further use.

Use it or lose it. Book crap you may have never have truly gotten in the first place. Out of sight, out of mind. And yet, I can still hear my Political Science professor's voice droning through a variety of angles of approach toward complex abstractions and I can still see dear Mr. Lane walking back and forth before the class. Those things were real to me. What they tried so hard to teach was not. And so I'm trying once again to explain why and how those things we learn from the real world are of greater lasting value than what we learn when we are sequestered from reality in real schooling.

One good thing I learned at Rotary is that my attempt to introduce our Public Schools to A+ Schools has resulted in an appointment on November 9, in which the local school superintendent and the director of A+ Schools will meet.

Make, fix and create...