I have to to say if you had asked me 3 years ago what I would be doing now the answer would not have been sitting in a office in France preparing to start an English lesson. It’s a strange life and I’m not sure now what that means I’ll be doing in another 3 years.
In many ways that’s scary, in many more ways it’s exhilarating, intriguing and motivating. I would never have believed I could be good at English grammar until I had to teach it for thousands of hours, my grammar has always been abysmal. I would never have believed I could live in a foreign country for over 2 years, or speak a foreign language until I had too.
Being a teacher is probably not the career I will follow until the grave but it will always be a part of me, and through teaching I have learnt me a great deal abouthow we learn, about peoples temperaments, about language, culture and how we approach problems. Not to mention I can now speak happily in front of groups of people manage time a little better and generally I’m more confident when it comes articulating my ideas.
Not to mention all the time I’ve had to write up my various thoughts and clarify what I believe in life and what I want to be in the future.
It’s strange how unexpected events lead to better situations even if they seem at first to be a mistake or a problem, it’s all about framing I guess. Now I’m working seriously on my French, getting my fitness back to a good level and returning to programming.
I can’t wait to see where and what I’ll be doing in 3 years time :).
Dialogue is not an open conversation it is a formal discussion between groups or individuals with the intention to teach, learn or evaluate what is being suggested. In many schools, students would memorize notable dialogues that perfectly explained or clearly identified a particular subject. The reason for using them in the community is to keep alive the idea of clear logical reasoning and debate, this also prepares the student to use logical steps to draw conclusions from facts.
The other idea is to give a method of individual teachingcreate a framework to allow disagreements between members in a civil manner.
[note: I wrote and read a lot more later on dialogue and dialectic methods so I know this isn’t exactly a clear description of why we should use them, or even what dialogues truly are, it’s true that dialectic and dialogues feed the minds ability to debate and reason arguments, the noting of fallacies, etc. are all good reasons to have at least a broad understanding of the discipline, but I wrote more on the subject later.]
Why are members trained in a large number of subjects and disciplines? Why not just focus on a particular field from the beginning?
General education, in many countries, segregates every subject teaching it in isolation of its peers. As a community of reason we should realize that no subject is used in complete isolation from the others, especially in the sciences, many different disciplines combine to form very diverse subjects from nano-technology to bio-chem. But equally art, philosophy and creative visual thinking have been behind some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs (DNA, General Relativity etc) in a holistic, homogeneous approach to education a general spread of foundation skills can greatly improve our abilities in unexpected ways.
Secondly, the general studying of a wide range of subjects allows us to create a basic level of equal understanding. This could point to a level whereupon the member becomes a full fledged member of the community. The idea is that the level should not be a destructive barrier for people who have very specialised expertise but a level where by the members have enough understanding that they can be helpful in any disciple in some way, even if it is just data entry or testing data, at the very least community members should understand the arguments and essentials of a dialogue in a number of different fields.
While equality is the goal there might necessarily be a hierarchy of upper and lower levels of understanding. The lower level being equivalent to a GCSE or O-Level and the upper being the same as an A-level. To become a specialist in any subject you must have a fundamental understanding of the whole (chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics) in addition to this the disciplines of electronics and computing should be taken as they are essential for building practical applications or appliances. Nevertheless, it would be unreasonable to assume that you need a high level of knowledge in all areas of all subjects there has to be some cut-off points. To become an expert in a field you need to direct your unwavering attention to it, thus an advocate of a subject will have to be content in letting other disciplines slide.
Finally, by keeping members educated or teaching subjects in a churn it keeps knowledge and humility alive as they realise their weaknesses in other disciplines and the strength of their peers, meanwhile by teaching other students their subjects it helps reaffirm and retain those fundamental skills of their trade.
Not sure what to write on it. I’m still typing up my views on creating a new community so that’s an ongoing project. I’m also working on a few programmingprojects now on hiatus because of work I’m doing on a business (that’s really in difficulties before it’s even started).
I know that people say that if you write a blog it should be a service to the people who read it and released on a timely schedule. I think I’ll take a page from Seth Godin and if you don’t know who he is…
at these.. Oh and you should read his books if you have time.
He is a writing machine far above and beyond me but maybe, just maybe I can write a paragraph or transcribe my deluded writings for at least 30 days (Matt Cutts would be proud 😉 I could form a good habit of expressing my thoughts online and also the progress I’m making towards creating a new kind of school here where I live.
Teachers training teachers will create an exponential growth of educators 3, 9, 27, 71, with each teacher teaching 3 students, who teach more. Therefore, students who have mastered a subject or even a topic within a graded subject at any level will be expected to assist in classrooms aiding others to understand. The primary goal of this is to have everyone as a teacher and a student.
To realise humility and build appreciation of other members it is vital to keep everyone in this cycle of education and learning.
It is a certainty that we all have our strengths, and a consistent churn of teaching and learning will avoid hubris, foster respect for other disciplines, and improve empathy and acceptance.
Also, it’s a truth that no subject exists in a vacuum. All sciences, to some degree, overlap, as do all artistic skills and creative abilities.
Overspecialization breeds weaknesses, and a holistic approach can greatly improve the retention of data.
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