[ExI] education again

[William Flynn Wallace]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 2:27 PM, Stephen Van Sickle <sjv2006 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>> I wonder if your 14 year old can mentor one of the similarly gifted 10
>> year olds.
>>
>
> This was once a popular method of education:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitorial_System
>
> if for no other reason that it was extremely economical.  But it also has
> other advantages.  In my experience, I've found i never truly master
> material until i try to teach it to someone.  And giving older students
> some (supervised) responsibility for the younger ones can instill positive
> values and help with the "maturing process" that Spike mentions.
>
> I've often thought that the worst feature of "modern" education is that
> everyone almost exclusively spends time in the company of others the same
> age.  Ideally, one should spend most of their time caring for the younger
> to learn responsibility and in the company of the older who teach by
> example.  With the decline of large extended families, this is getting
> harder to find. Schools just stunt social and emotional growth.  And barely
> manage to teach.
>
> ​What I have wondered about is the impersonal nature of watching a video,
however well executed.  So I have these questions, probably for Spike:

When the Khan Academy videos are used in schools, what happens after the
video?  Is the video watched by a group which then discusses it?  Or maybe
the teacher gives more examples or problems?  How can or do they
incorporate peer mentoring into this?

When my chairman approached me about buying videos for a statistics class,
which I taught, I told him that they might be useful if I were ill for a
substantial period of time, but otherwise I'd prefer to teach the class
myself.  No, I did not even consider being replaced by videos because that
wasn't going to happen in the 90s and maybe not now.  Perhaps I should have
had him buy them to study the teaching techniques.  Since the Khan Academy
videos are so popular, I assume math and other teachers are watching them
for tips on how to teach.

But anyway you sift it, the burden of the sheer transmission of information
has to be taken out of the hands of teachers.  It can really be a
mind-numbing experience for the teacher.

Have any of you experienced something like this?    You are assigned
reading material, which might be a text, or several papers, given time to
absorb them, and go to a class where they are discussed and the teacher is
just a team leader responsible for keeping the class on track and providing
expert advice.
For all I know this might be standard procedure in some graduate school
classes.

bill w
​


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