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Post by hengest on Sept 14, 2021 10:51:57 GMT -5
Personal remark. The notes below are about my own experience of school as a child and young adult.
I did not like school, although I did well and was praised for it. Doubtless there were emotional sources of my dislike that were part of my makeup due to my nature and early experiences in life. But it seems there was more than that. There was something false about the whole operation. They told us often that everyone was unique and wonderful and that education was so important, but the whole attitude of the institution seemed to say the opposite: that everyone was the same and boring, and that education was simply another job to go to.
I couldn't articulate that thought when I was twelve, and no one was listening anyway. But that split, the way they said one thing and seemed to live another, reminds me of the implicit statement in "one true way" thinking about gaming: this is a game where the imagination is unlimited, but the imagination has to be limited by the system as written (and maybe by a module).
What RJK says about what a ref (DM, GM) should be is cousin to my notion of what a teacher should be. A teacher gives coherent instruction (as the ref gives coherent information about the game world) and then responds actively to students while guiding them deeper into the topic in accordance with their choices (as the ref makes sure to respect they players' agency within the game world).
A quote from RJK:
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Sept 24, 2021 11:27:34 GMT -5
Personal remark. The notes below are about my own experience of school as a child and young adult. I did not like school, although I did well and was praised for it. Doubtless there were emotional sources of my dislike that were part of my makeup due to my nature and early experiences in life. But it seems there was more than that. There was something false about the whole operation. They told us often that everyone was unique and wonderful and that education was so important, but the whole attitude of the institution seemed to say the opposite: that everyone was the same and boring, and that education was simply another job to go to. I couldn't articulate that thought when I was twelve, and no one was listening anyway. But that split, the way they said one thing and seemed to live another, reminds me of the implicit statement in "one true way" thinking about gaming: this is a game where the imagination is unlimited, but the imagination has to be limited by the system as written (and maybe by a module). What RJK says about what a ref (DM, GM) should be is cousin to my notion of what a teacher should be. A teacher gives coherent instruction (as the ref gives coherent information about the game world) and then responds actively to students while guiding them deeper into the topic in accordance with their choices (as the ref makes sure to respect they players' agency within the game world). A quote from RJK: I agree with you, I hated school and I hate the fact that now that we have computers in the class room, there is no attempt to use them in the correct way for maximum benefit. They still teach the same way. But computer open up the possibility of self paced learning. So one kid could cover the same amount of material in one year that most of his classmates need 8 years to cover, that is you can keep a kid with his age group, but by the time he is a freshman in high school he could be working on his 8th college degree. I have the same hate for online classes, instead of letting you cover the material as fast as you can, they want you to waste time in chat rooms and other stuff like that. As an adult (in my case an older adult) if I take more classes, I am not doing it for the social experience, I have that already, I want to learn with the minimum of interference from time wasting stuff. In college, back in the days of using punch cards to program a computer by laboriously reading each card with punch for ones and zeros, I got to participate in a self paced learning program that an English professor wrote. They way it worked was you sat down at an IBM Selectric Typewriter that was connected to the computer lab about a half mile away (in spring of 1975 so no monitor) and you were given questions as they were typed in front of you by the program and you typed your answer, if you were right it retyped the answer below yours. Instant feedback. If you were wrong it typed try again. If you were wrong the second time, it typed the correct answer below yours. Instant feedback and correction of the mistake. If you were making too many errors (wrong answers) it took you throw a tutoring loop. Every so often it would give you a test, passing was 90% a standard that I highly support for all classes in school. You continued going though a variety of questions and tutoring until you achieved 90% or better proficiency and then you went to the next lesson. I wish this had been available for all my classes from first grade on. There is no better teaching method than to have instant feedback and instant correction of error, individually for each student. The fact that it is also self-paced allows the brightest and quickest students to cover a lot of territory and advance as fast as they are capable. And it allows those who need more time to absorb the concepts and more repetition to retain them to have the time they need to succeed. Traditional teaching bores some kids to tears and leaves others behind because of the one size fits all approach. This method keeps kids together with their age group, but allows each to have their education tailored to their personal capacity to learn. Once each kid has mastered the things that all kids need to know then they can be helped to choose a successful path as an adult based on interests and ability. The whole 60% is passing is cruel because kids are passed along without actually learning anything. A minimum proficiency of 90% ensures that all are capable. For the tiny minority that cannot meet that level of proficiency, they can get the help they need for an alternate path that does not involve dropping out, when they age out. Most kids that learn little do so because little is asked of them, only a few lack enough brainpower to learn and those should be treated with kindness not social promotions. Using computers with an advanced and perfected version of what I saw in 1975 allows the kids to be kept with their age group, allows for individual instruction even with 20 kids in a classroom and eliminates the evil of the social promotion because in the same classroom, each kid has a computer with programming tailored to them. No more one size and one speed fits all. |
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Post by hengest on Sept 27, 2021 14:20:06 GMT -5
I have the same hate for online classes, instead of letting you cover the material as fast as you can, they want you to waste time in chat rooms and other stuff like that. As an adult (in my case an older adult) if I take more classes, I am not doing it for the social experience, I have that already, I want to learn with the minimum of interference from time wasting stuff. In college, back in the days of using punch cards to program a computer by laboriously reading each card with punch for ones and zeros, I got to participate in a self paced learning program that an English professor wrote. They way it worked was you sat down at an IBM Selectric Typewriter that was connected to the computer lab about a half mile away (in spring of 1975 so no monitor) and you were given questions as they were typed in front of you by the program and you typed your answer, if you were right it retyped the answer below yours. Instant feedback. If you were wrong it typed try again. If you were wrong the second time, it typed the correct answer below yours. Instant feedback and correction of the mistake. If you were making too many errors (wrong answers) it took you throw a tutoring loop. Every so often it would give you a test, passing was 90% a standard that I highly support for all classes in school. You continued going though a variety of questions and tutoring until you achieved 90% or better proficiency and then you went to the next lesson. I wish this had been available for all my classes from first grade on. There is no better teaching method than to have instant feedback and instant correction of error, individually for each student. The fact that it is also self-paced allows the brightest and quickest students to cover a lot of territory and advance as fast as they are capable. And it allows those who need more time to absorb the concepts and more repetition to retain them to have the time they need to succeed. Traditional teaching bores some kids to tears and leaves others behind because of the one size fits all approach. This method keeps kids together with their age group, but allows each to have their education tailored to their personal capacity to learn. Once each kid has mastered the things that all kids need to know then they can be helped to choose a successful path as an adult based on interests and ability. The whole 60% is passing is cruel because kids are passed along without actually learning anything. A minimum proficiency of 90% ensures that all are capable. For the tiny minority that cannot meet that level of proficiency, they can get the help they need for an alternate path that does not involve dropping out, when they age out. Most kids that learn little do so because little is asked of them, only a few lack enough brainpower to learn and those should be treated with kindness not social promotions. Using computers with an advanced and perfected version of what I saw in 1975 allows the kids to be kept with their age group, allows for individual instruction even with 20 kids in a classroom and eliminates the evil of the social promotion because in the same classroom, each kid has a computer with programming tailored to them. No more one size and one speed fits all. A couple replies, first to the sections in bold (also, have an Exalt!): self-paced learning: this is true, and as far as I know this possibility has not been explored or has hardly been explored. At least in post-secondary education, it is very unlikely ever to be made real because one of the central problems in many fields is to keep the students well behind the instructor. The possibility of truly self-paced learning would be too frightening to those who are not actually competent to teach their courses. wasting time: Again, at least in post-secondary, I know that one of the central goals is to waste time. It goes by many names: class discussion (the students understand well that they are just helping the instructor to run out the clock), group work, review...it is common among humanities instructors, behind the scenes, to admit they just don't know how to fill the time because the entire course is basically a sham. self paced learning program that an English professor wrote: this sounds awesome. Do you remember at all the content of the course? Not the details, but what was the topic? I agree with you about the 90%. Where I have taught, the course starts out impossibly slow, even on paper. Then you consider that 60% is technically passing (65% at some institutions), then you consider how easy the tests are made and how generously they are graded and it turns out that for many students you have lowered the bar to be lower than they were when they started. I am not saying each of these factors is always the same everywhere, but I do have first-hand experience of them and believe that many of them are often true. We spend too much time (way too much) in the humanities on plot summary, a smattering of "background" that literally anyone could look up on Wikipedia, and fitting the work into some flavor-of-the-month social lens. We spend very little time on the building blocks that help someone to read productively on their own: - English grammar and syntax
- semantic ranges of words, changes in sense over time
- etymology
- register
- myth and folklore
- classical languages
The list could go on, way on. But instead of this, we have an endless assortment of superficial "takes" on literature. It reminds me of the distinction between DIY that draws on all primary sources (as well as the ref's and players' imaginations) and the module-based profit mode. RJK discusses this distinction at length in DATG.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Sept 27, 2021 23:14:40 GMT -5
self paced learning program that an English professor wrote: this sounds awesome. Do you remember at all the content of the course? Not the details, but what was the topic? Basic Grammar, all the stuff they did not teach in the school system I grew up in. I had the chance to do this because I took a Basic Grammar class my freshman year, the class was a waste of time, but this program really helped me. They were not going to let me take the class, they said look at your SAT score and I said, all that proves is that I can read and have good comprehension of what I read, but grammar is a mystery to me. So they finally let me take the diagnostic test and I scored 20%, at the end of the quarter I took it again and scored 93% all due to that computer program. As I said I wish I could finished the whole thing instead of just a third of it. We spend very little time on the building blocks that help someone to read productively on their own: - 1 English grammar and syntax
- 2 semantic ranges of words, changes in sense over time
- 3 etymology
- 4 register
- 5 myth and folklore
- 6 classical languages
In my first twelve years I learned very little of #1, none of #2, none of #3, #4 I have no clue what that means in terms of language, although I know the other meanings it has. #5 what I know about myth and folklore I learned on my own outside of school. And #6, no instruction at all. What I had going for me was that my whole family both parents and all four grandparents read a lot and told stories, my life was steeped in reading from birth. So reading was always a strong suit and a major interest. I've read about 2+ books for every day I have lived. |
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Post by hengest on Sept 30, 2021 19:50:43 GMT -5
self paced learning program that an English professor wrote: this sounds awesome. Do you remember at all the content of the course? Not the details, but what was the topic? Basic Grammar, all the stuff they did not teach in the school system I grew up in. I had the chance to do this because I took a Basic Grammar class my freshman year, the class was a waste of time, but this program really helped me. They were not going to let me take the class, they said look at your SAT score and I said, all that proves is that I can read and have good comprehension of what I read, but grammar is a mystery to me. So they finally let me take the diagnostic test and I scored 20%, at the end of the quarter I took it again and scored 93% all due to that computer program. As I said I wish I could finished the whole thing instead of just a third of it. We spend very little time on the building blocks that help someone to read productively on their own: - 1 English grammar and syntax
- 2 semantic ranges of words, changes in sense over time
- 3 etymology
- 4 register
- 5 myth and folklore
- 6 classical languages
In my first twelve years I learned very little of #1, none of #2, none of #3, #4 I have no clue what that means in terms of language, although I know the other meanings it has. #5 what I know about myth and folklore I learned on my own outside of school. And #6, no instruction at all. What I had going for me was that my whole family both parents and all four grandparents read a lot and told stories, my life was steeped in reading from birth. So reading was always a strong suit and a major interest. I've read about 2+ books for every day I have lived. What I meant by register was roughly this from Wikipedia, which I quote below here: As to #2, semantic ranges of words, I meant the phenomenon we can easily observe, that words have different but overlapping senses. A mouse on a a computer is one thing, related to but not identical to the older sense of the English word mouse (the animal). Some words have many senses and these senses can interact and change over time. Some will die and others go on, sometimes they overlap for centuries. Now, take English. Probably most people on this board have read enough that they can read four or even five centuries of English going back from the present day without feeling like it gets too crazy. However, we will misunderstand a lot because many familiar words are used in unfamiliar ways, but we simply insert a familiar sense by habit. This causes us serious problems in reading even fairly recent English. As you said, PD, it is practically not addressed in any school program I have ever heard of. Here are a couple practical examples of why I think this should be studied at least somewhat as part of general education. 1) If we read the sentence " As He had healed them that had need of healing, He fed their hunger with ghostly meat" (1879m not that old even) most people will do okay with it until the end. Then the phrase "ghostly meat" throws us. It sounds kind of gross in context or somehow deiberately obscure or poetic. But if we know that a sense of "ghostly" is basically "spiritual," and a sense of "meat" is "any food" (not "flesh of an animal used for food"), then it is not deliberately poetic or gross, it is actually a pretty normal phrase, and a modern writer would likely say "spiritual food." The kinds of relationships between senses can be codified and studied in the abstract as well as concrete instances in a given language. Getting familiar with this kind of thing is not an impossible task and it opens new worlds for modern readers. And take note above, the spelling and grammar of that sentence in number 1 are totally normal, nothing really to give us pause or say "this language is messed up and distant." Our understanding is easily misled...but it doesn't have to be. 2) It gets much worse: Now I go to sle hym with strokys sad and sore. (Now I go to slay him with strokes sad and sore.) Sad and sore? Again, it sounds to us like a deliberate poetic thingy that just seems odd. Sad strokes of a sword? No, probably some of mostly obsolete senses of "sad": strong, firm, heavy. Sore? There is a sense, attested from the 800s through at least the 1800s, "Causing or involving bodily pain; painful, grievous; distressing or severe in this respect." And that's probably what fits here. So the swordstrokes are not personified as being "sad" and they aren't feeling pain. The slaying will be done with strong, pain-causing blows from a sword. I understand this may seem like nitpicking but this is one of the major keys to unlocking literally centuries of English (and other languages of course). Instead (in my experience) we sit there gritting our teeth whenever we have to read something even from the 19th century and our educational system pretty much does not even address this (even while assigning us works that basically require this knowledge to be understood)... |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Sept 30, 2021 20:33:10 GMT -5
What I meant by register was roughly this from Wikipedia, which I quote below here: As to #2, semantic ranges of words, I meant the phenomenon we can easily observe, that words have different but overlapping senses. A mouse on a a computer is one thing, related to but not identical to the older sense of the English word mouse (the animal). Some words have many senses and these senses can interact and change over time. Some will die and others go on, sometimes they overlap for centuries. Now, take English. Probably most people on this board have read enough that they can read four or even five centuries of English going back from the present day without feeling like it gets too crazy. However, we will misunderstand a lot because many familiar words are used in unfamiliar ways, but we simply insert a familiar sense by habit. This causes us serious problems in reading even fairly recent English. As you said, PD, it is practically not addressed in any school program I have ever heard of. Here are a couple practical examples of why I think this should be studied at least somewhat as part of general education. 1) If we read the sentence " As He had healed them that had need of healing, He fed their hunger with ghostly meat" (1879m not that old even) most people will do okay with it until the end. Then the phrase "ghostly meat" throws us. It sounds kind of gross in context or somehow deiberately obscure or poetic. But if we know that a sense of "ghostly" is basically "spiritual," and a sense of "meat" is "any food" (not "flesh of an animal used for food"), then it is not deliberately poetic or gross, it is actually a pretty normal phrase, and a modern writer would likely say "spiritual food." The kinds of relationships between senses can be codified and studied in the abstract as well as concrete instances in a given language. Getting familiar with this kind of thing is not an impossible task and it opens new worlds for modern readers. And take note above, the spelling and grammar of that sentence in number 1 are totally normal, nothing really to give us pause or say "this language is messed up and distant." Our understanding is easily misled...but it doesn't have to be. 2) It gets much worse: Now I go to sle hym with strokys sad and sore. (Now I go to slay him with strokes sad and sore.) Sad and sore? Again, it sounds to us like a deliberate poetic thingy that just seems odd. Sad strokes of a sword? No, probably some of mostly obsolete senses of "sad": strong, firm, heavy. Sore? There is a sense, attested from the 800s through at least the 1800s, "Causing or involving bodily pain; painful, grievous; distressing or severe in this respect." And that's probably what fits here. So the swordstrokes are not personified as being "sad" and they aren't feeling pain. The slaying will be done with strong, pain-causing blows from a sword. I understand this may seem like nitpicking but this is one of the major keys to unlocking literally centuries of English (and other languages of course). Instead (in my experience) we sit there gritting our teeth whenever we have to read something even from the 19th century and our educational system pretty much does not even address this (even while assigning us works that basically require this knowledge to be understood)... Virtually all of this that I know which is not a lot, I learned on my own outside of school. Some of it can get pretty hard to read and understand. If you read the King James Bible it is helpful to have a list of words along with what they meant at the time that translation was done, otherwise you can get off the beam pretty quickly in some places. The in depth teaching of English would benefit us all. The dumbing down of education has consequences. |
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Post by hengest on Sept 30, 2021 22:04:55 GMT -5
You know this stuff, but you are exceptional in your reading habits. I think the main purpose of education is to help people go places they could not or would not have gone on their own. Many people remain clueless about these things and English not even that holds turns into a giant mess. My knowledge is pretty limited, too.
English is the language of instruction and the main language of public discourse for the entire history of the US. How we can get away with teaching it superficially is beyond me.
By the way, I did not really mean to "teach" with that post, just to describe what I meant.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Oct 1, 2021 0:31:04 GMT -5
You know this stuff, but you are exceptional in your reading habits. I think the main purpose of education is to help people go places they could not or would not have gone on their own. Many people remain clueless about these things and English not even that holds turns into a giant mess. My knowledge is pretty limited, too. English is the language of instruction and the main language of public discourse for the entire history of the US. How we can get away with teaching it superficially is beyond me. By the way, I did not really mean to "teach" with that post, just to describe what I meant. I left a few words out that I added in. I know some of it from all my reading, but there is so much more that I do not know. But this reminded me of something, when I was a kid maybe 5 or 6 we were back on the mountain in central WV where my one set of grandparents lived at the time, before they decided to move off the mountain into a house in the tiny village at the foot of the mountain. You could not get a car or truck back there at the time, you could ride a horse, go in a horse drawn wagon or buggy or walk. We would park and walk back on the mountain, it would take about two hours, maybe more. The road was just a grassy path, the first part was in the crick for a long ways up the holler before it moved onto land for the rest of the way. The house that was built by my grandfather set on a level place with a field behind it and the path turned 90 degrees at their front yard and continued on up another 200 feet in elevation before it turned again and went on in to the mountains. On that visit my dad took me up to where it turned again and pointed down the trail and told me that if you go that way, you can go anywhere in the whole world*. That stuck with me and I have always loved grassy trails, roads and paths and I also felt the same way about books, they can take you anywhere. *Also funny, but for a couple of years I thought it had to be that specific path. Then I realized it could be any path, you just had to start and go. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Oct 1, 2021 0:32:14 GMT -5
You know this stuff, but you are exceptional in your reading habits. I think the main purpose of education is to help people go places they could not or would not have gone on their own. Many people remain clueless about these things and English not even that holds turns into a giant mess. My knowledge is pretty limited, too. English is the language of instruction and the main language of public discourse for the entire history of the US. How we can get away with teaching it superficially is beyond me. By the way, I did not really mean to "teach" with that post, just to describe what I meant. And no, it did not seem like nitpicking to me. |
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