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One side did not do well in environmental science today.

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    One side did not do well in environmental science today.

    I gave the class ALL of the books that were published by the ORIGINAL scientists, one of whom is two doors from President Obama today.... that outlined what they believed about "human population"....

    I gave them a 1 hour and 20 minute class( it meets T and Th...) and said.... please research

    a) what is said in the textbook about human populations compared to what these original THINKERS said in their books.
    b) the FACTS that are recorded by the World Health Organization and the United Nations appropriate agences about human population.

    NOT "projections" but compare the FACTS......of what has actually happened over the last fifty years...

    With the PROJECTIONS IN THE BOOKS.....

    b) decide which projections were shown to be correct and which were not.

    c) Then..... project into the future, about fourty years.... and try to determine which projections are logical and which are not.

    d) I gave them a half hour today.....while I went to get coffee and cookies... COOKIES!!!

    to come up with a statement about which things seemed logical and which were, basically.....full of cr@&.

    e) I came back in the room and said...ok one side one sheet, where is it?

    f) A kid said..."here".

    g) I said....fold it up, he did that. fold it again....he did that.....I said make a ball of it....he did that.... I said...carry it over to the trash can.... he did that....I said throw it in the trash can, and then take the trash can and throw that in the big hopper in the hall....he did that...

    h) he comes back in and I said......YOU.......individual people....need to RESEARCH and THINK and then DO SOMETHING..... on what YOU......have decided NOT what someBODY has told you!!!

    And I then had the girl on the front row come up and watch as I entered into the grade book a full grade for everybody.

    And we started the next topic.....

    But....I can tell from the conversation.....that one side....did NOT DO WELL....

    When the students actually READ.........what they WROTE.....and are now trying to HIDE.

    woodsmoke


    #2
    Re: One side did not do well in enviornmental science today.

    You are an excellent teacher, woodsmoke. Make them think, and make them use real data!

    Comment


      #3
      Re: One side did not do well in enviornmental science today.

      Thankeethankee.....

      i don't know that I deserve the kind comment.

      But.

      It took me fifteen years of teaching to realize that....

      I can rant and rave....

      And....I then basically become Mr. Holland's Opus....

      The students have taken me as an "authority figure"......

      Which the left would say....ok....

      Which the right would say.............NO!!!!

      But....it took me a long time to figure out that the students will "believe" an authority figure if he or she is sufficiently charismatic.....

      so....I subtracted myself from that.....

      If I cannot back up what I present with at least TWO divergent sides.... I don't present it..

      Now....yes..... an animal cell is NOT round....and a plant cell is NOT square....but....other than that....

      those hot button issues that the academics either demagogue or RANT AND YOU BETTER BELIEVE....

      I present both sides and let the students decide on their own....

      and then

      I go on....and never allow them to tell me what they think....

      otherwise....i am not an educator...I am an agenda promoter.

      woodsmoke

      Comment


        #4
        Re: One side did not do well in environmental science today.

        When a person, young or old, is led to discover a piece of truth for himself/herself, that is magic. That is 100x more powerful than all the lectures in the world. So, the teacher who guides a student to obtain facts, and to test them for truthfulness, and to analyze them for meaning, is the greatest of all teachers. That's my view.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: One side did not do well in environmental science today.

          aawww digging my toe in the dirt.

          woodsmoke

          Comment


            #6
            Re: One side did not do well in environmental science today.

            Lucky enough once (1974) to have the renowned mathematician Paul Halmos as a math professor at Indiana University/Bloomington.

            Related point he makes:
            Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own questions, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical special case? What about the degenerate cases? Where does the proof use the hypothesis?

            On Day One of class, he would tell us there is no textbook. That he would give us the definitions at the "black board." It was up to us to prove all the theorems by ourselves, individually. And that we were on our honor not to cheat by reading some damned textbook.

            On the day of class, he would call upon us, more or less randomly, by name, "Mr./Miss XYZ," to present our proof for that lesson/theorem at the black board.


            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Halmos

            An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles Bukowski

            Comment


              #7
              Re: One side did not do well in environmental science today.

              Qqmike

              Thank you very much for that link. He is a very interesting person and I would have considered it a great thing to have him for a professor.

              And, also, I greatly mourn the "relegation" of geometry to about one chapter in 6 years of 7-12 school.

              And the main reason for that, I think, is lack of ability on the part of the teachers themselves.

              Geometry provides a great opportunity to develop rigour of thinking! And just exactly what is it that so many people bemoan the loss of in U.S. schools? Precisely the things that we do not teach...

              You are a lucky guy to have had him.

              woodsmoke

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