[Sugar-devel] versus, not

[Bill Kerr]

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>wrote:

> ===Sugar Digest===
>
> I encourage you to join two threads on the Education List this week:
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-April/005382.html, which
> has boiled down to an instruction vs construction debate; and
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-April/005342.html, which
> has boiled down to a debate of catering to local culture vs the
> Enlightenment. I encourage you to join these discussions.


Agree that these are important discussions

Need to be careful about the use of the versus depiction of these
discussions IMO, this tempting shorthand can create the wrong impression

eg. I would see direct instruction as a must for autistic children but don't
see that it follows as a general model for all education (special needs are
special) or that we should even think it is possible to have a correct
general model. I don't think there is one and good teachers swap between
multiple models all the time.

no one on this list has argued overtly against  "the enlightenment" or that
local culture ought not to be taken into account, eg. Ties said "think
practical", the response was of the nature that our context demands we do <a
certain course of action>

however, I do think the roll back of enlightenment principles is not well
understood (http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/nonUniversals) and that a
better understanding might persuade more people of the need to keep
searching and struggling for different ways to go against some of  the tide
of local culture - there is a recent interesting comment thread on mark
guzdial's blog which is worth reading from this point of view
http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK3F4TMBURELZZK
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