[NLA] participation and resistance

[Art LaChance]

I think this is a very definite possibility Andres, especially when you
consider the attitudinal changes that enter into the picture during
adolescence.  Specifically, most children develop a sense of superiority
at about age 10 or so, as soon as the I-know-everything gene activates
(a little humor here).  Another point: do their "teachers" know the
subject well enough to field sometimes indepth questions from the
classroom audience?  If not, it seems the child and possibly the entire
group will lose confidence in that teacher, and when faced with that
scenario day after day with no alternative offered, I can see where a
child will begin to resist participation.  Especially if the child's
actual academic progress hasn't been tracked for a few years and their
reading and/or math skills trail several years behind grade placement.
Double fault on the system that is pretending to 'educate' the child.
I have no difficulty at all in looking critically at my own educational
history and picking out teachers who unknowingly absolutely defeated my
exuberance towards various subjects as a direct result of them not
knowing enough about the subject at hand.  They simply 'delivered' the
material and were unable to discuss at deeper levels.

I remember clearly the football coaches who were assigned to teach
mathematics, world history, and driver's ed.  I also remember clearly
the snickers generated within the student ranks at the thought that a
'coach' could teach academic material, whether they could or not was
immaterial.

Certainly there is more to this than stated here, from my perspective I
can see multitudes of reasons why a child might lose interest or focus
on any particular subject long enough to miss the salient points and
therefore leave the class at the end of term without useable
understanding.



Art

AndresMuro at aol.com wrote:

> Some thoughts that came to mind while reading your posts:
>
> I was reading an article yesterday in which the author argued that
> there is a disconnect between theory and practice in teaching. she
> argued that teachers could practice teaching, but they did not know
> the ideology behind what they were teaching. According to her, this
> prevented teachers and students from getting into meaningful
> discussions as to why they are learning something. they can only
> discuss the answer to a problem, but not the reason why the problem
> was chosen. Is it possible that this is what the students resist?
>
> It seems to me, that possibly the students perceive that the
> ideological reasons the students learn what they learn are not for
> their benefit, but for the benefit of someone else. Recently I was
> invited to the office of minority health conference to talk about
> health and adult education. I have been thinking about this for a
> while. to me, schools are supposed to be teaching important things and
> health is one of the most important things there is, period. Why are
> schools not teaching health in a systematic way, for example.  To me,
> this is the most clear evidence that schools don't teach what is most
> important to the students.
>
> Andres
>
>
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