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From: w-colinp@microsoft.UUCP (Colin Plumb)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <97@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 17 Dec 88 13:34:20 GMT
References: <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <6435@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <1988Dec16.153701.8316@cs.rochester.edu>
Reply-To: w-colinp@microsoft.UUCP (Colin Plumb)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 33
Confusion: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA

In article <1988Dec16.153701.8316@cs.rochester.edu> yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:

>On the other hand, it is obvious that very young children have an
>intense desire to learn (as well as to play).  They are always asking
>questions, "Why is the sky blue?", "What is thunder?", "What makes the
>car go?", etc.  The solution is to tap this natural curiousity and
>allow the child to pursue these interests wherever they take him or
>her.

I try to make a point of answering these questions.  I remember one time
my.. lessee now... stepfather's brother's daughter's son asked me how
a T.V. worked.  A bit over three hours later, we'd covered rods & cones,
additive & subtractive colours (although I really wish I had samples of
vyan and magenta), wave theory of light, a bit about flickering and motion
blur, and touched on a host of other topics.

I found it fun, and I'm told John asked when I'd be around many times the
next day.  It can be difficult to express it in terms they already
understand, but if you're only trying to teach one person, it's pretty easy.

>Of course, many older children have already been ruined by the
>educational system, and it may be more difficult, if not impossible,
>to show them that learning is something that can be done for pleasure
>and not just to please teachers/parents or in order to get a job.

Learning, I've found, frequently != classes.  Certainly, I've learned
a good deal, some of it (e.g. French) even useful, but even more just by
talking to people and reading whatever came my way.  I didn't learn how
to parse from my langauge theory course.  Consider that you learn an average
of 8 words a day (how many words do you know?  A thousand days is 3 years)
through your teens.  Would you attribute this to a class?
-- 
	-Colin (uunet!microsof!w-colinp)