Re: conlanging during class (Re: Grammatical Summary of Kemata)

On 13 Dec, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> Heh...I can remember a couple classes that were *definitely* like that.
> (And I had a friend at Brown U. who never bothered going to his comp sci
> classes--he just got everything by remote login and website.  Then again,
> this guy was TAing comp sci as a freshman and was the hacker supreme at my
> high school, so what can I say?
    Actually there were _two_ philosophies, although the aforementioned one
was more prevalent, ie the purpose of a teacher is not to "teach" (Heaven
forbid!), but to put obstacles in the way of the student, one after another.
Those who fail, fall by the wayside. Ah, but those who have successfully
jumped all the hurdles can, in fact, be said to be educated: they've proved
their competence, after all! (Exactly where they managed to pick up that
competence is never mentioned --- certainly not in the classroom! And,
more importantly, whatever happened to the many poor unfortunates
without extracurricular sources of education is not considered important!)
    I absolutely hate that system! I think it's totally corrupt! The second
philosophy may have been a bit more "anal" , but I prefer it: the student
is considered a "tabula rasa" when he starts and it is the teacher's job
to try every means possible to ensure that the student leaves the classroom
in possession of the knowledge, insofar as that is possible. (Total disdain,
however, as in the case of reading newspapers during class, is something
else again, IMHO!)
    This second philosophy is what I follow every day as a therapist. And,
in fact, the testing can be said to be "super-anal": during a session there
may be hundreds of client-utterances, and each one is scrutinized and
treated as a "mini-exam" exposing what the client has managed to learn
so far and in which direction the next bit of teaching
(or therapeutic intervention) should be in order to increase the client's
competence.


>
> >     In fact, I once had a (required freshman) course where it was
> > _impossible_
> > to pay attention to the professor: he'd been _dead_  for some years
> > before I
> > even came to the university! He'd videotaped all his lectures and they
> > simply played them  on overhead TVs to auditorium-sized collections of
> > students! Talk about tenure!  ;-)
> > (Tests were given and graded by [bored] teaching assistants!)
> >
> Oh my...<laugh>  Now *that* is bizarre!  Were they out of professors?  <G>
More likely,  out of money! ;-)


> ObConlang: one of the things we've been reading about in math curriculum &
> instruction is Wiggins & McTighe's _Understanding by Design_, which talks
> about "backward design"--you start with what you want students to know,
> determine "acceptable evidence," and *then* design the curriculum.
> Whether you like this paradigm or not, it makes me think about how I'd go
> about teaching one of my conlangs (assuming there were any takers; though
> even if not, the intellectual exercise is worthwhile in itself).  I
> *started* doing teach-yourself pages for Czevraqis, though that project is
> on hold, and I can pretty much see where the rest will go: introduce basic
> verb conjugations, more noun cases, hit the morphology, etc.  I haven't
> the *faintest* clue on how I'd write teach-yourself pages for the weirder
> Tasratal with its random combinations of connectives.  Well, if the
> eventual goal is to be able to use the !@#$ connectives, perhaps introduce
> them triad by triad in some coherent manner, saving combinations for
later.
> ..<pondering>
Sounds good so far!


Dan Sulani
--------------------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.

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