more serious aspects RE: re plug in drug conversation
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In a message dated 3/31/03 5:49:49 AM, fetteroll@... writes:
<< In a loving home where children are respected and where the parents are
involved with their kids lives (not glued to them but are with them and
aware of what's going on with them and what interests them) TV loses much of
the power that is found in homes where children are leading separate lives
from their families. >>
What Joyce said about schools separating parents and children is true.
And television under those circumstances can be just one more, yet smaller,
factor in the child being influenced by something other than the parent. It
can be the straw that broke the camel's back, and it's also the only one the
parents really see happening. School they try to fantasize as happy,
productive, and good for the kids. And maybe they miss their kids. So when
the kids are home, it's easy for the parents to villify television.
I think the logic goes this way:
Parents see their kids changing and becoming more distant.
Parents have identified school as good and necessary.
School can't be the evil destruction.
Must be something else.
They see the child choosing to look at TV instead of at them.
New homeschoolers and structured homeschoolers are often working from that
same model, that there is an education children need to obtain. They don't
see those science/language/history/math units being represented well on
television. So they see television as a factor that might somehow prevent
the acquisition of needed information. That minute spent watching television
is a minute not spent reading about The Battle of Waterloo.
In the past week at our house Waterloo has been presented to my children
twice. Once by Black Adder Bact details, but few people do and fewer yet
really need to. But they know France lost, they know it was not long after
the revolution, and they know the English commander was Wellington. That
might be enough to enable them to mark the right answer on a variety of
multiple choice questions that might come along, or to get a right response
on Jeopardy.
A few weeks ago, there was an Amadeus marathon here (various people watching
it more than once, DVD commentary, "come see this good part") and so there's
another point of information for them. They can tell by costumes that Mozart
is before Waterloo, and by reference to Marie Antoinette being Queen of
France.
It doesn't matter in what order people learn things like that, or from what
sources, as long as they're sorting and connecting in their heads to create
their own model and understanding of history and the world and people, music,
costume, motive, results and affects.
It might be hard to just work into conversation, but it's not hard to work
into conversation after seeing that if Black Adder dropped his time machine
on Wellington, England could've been using francs instead of pounds.
Oh! And Leonardo da Vinci's notebook (which the kids know about in part from
Dover coloring books) came up in both the Eddie Izzard DVD (in the French
part--he said just like da Vinci, he too had designed a helicopter that
didn't work) and on Black Adder (and Marty knew that was a fictional mention,
but still totally understood the reference).
If they learn from a board game or comedy, it's probably going to stick
better than if they try to read a history textbook. If they learn from a
book about armor and weapons and horses, they learned it just as well as if
they learned it from a list of the kings of France. Too many people confuse
factoid with knowledge. You can have the knowledge in vague yet very
colorful ways, which would make the list of facts make sense. If you have a
list of facts without clues about what, why, when or how, it's just your eyes
gazing at words, and Charlemagne will look just like Louis XIV on that list,
a string of letters, black on white.
There's no hurry to learn it, there's no reason to learn it in order, and in
fact, teaching things "in order" is one of the major causes of kids deciding
at some point in school that they hate science or history or math. Because
they didn't like one part in "the order," they'd rather never even look at
the rest than suffer one more moment, and they shut down.
However pictures, sounds, and ideas get into my kids is good.
Whatever doesn't turn them against learning is good.
Sandra
<< In a loving home where children are respected and where the parents are
involved with their kids lives (not glued to them but are with them and
aware of what's going on with them and what interests them) TV loses much of
the power that is found in homes where children are leading separate lives
from their families. >>
What Joyce said about schools separating parents and children is true.
And television under those circumstances can be just one more, yet smaller,
factor in the child being influenced by something other than the parent. It
can be the straw that broke the camel's back, and it's also the only one the
parents really see happening. School they try to fantasize as happy,
productive, and good for the kids. And maybe they miss their kids. So when
the kids are home, it's easy for the parents to villify television.
I think the logic goes this way:
Parents see their kids changing and becoming more distant.
Parents have identified school as good and necessary.
School can't be the evil destruction.
Must be something else.
They see the child choosing to look at TV instead of at them.
New homeschoolers and structured homeschoolers are often working from that
same model, that there is an education children need to obtain. They don't
see those science/language/history/math units being represented well on
television. So they see television as a factor that might somehow prevent
the acquisition of needed information. That minute spent watching television
is a minute not spent reading about The Battle of Waterloo.
In the past week at our house Waterloo has been presented to my children
twice. Once by Black Adder Bact details, but few people do and fewer yet
really need to. But they know France lost, they know it was not long after
the revolution, and they know the English commander was Wellington. That
might be enough to enable them to mark the right answer on a variety of
multiple choice questions that might come along, or to get a right response
on Jeopardy.
A few weeks ago, there was an Amadeus marathon here (various people watching
it more than once, DVD commentary, "come see this good part") and so there's
another point of information for them. They can tell by costumes that Mozart
is before Waterloo, and by reference to Marie Antoinette being Queen of
France.
It doesn't matter in what order people learn things like that, or from what
sources, as long as they're sorting and connecting in their heads to create
their own model and understanding of history and the world and people, music,
costume, motive, results and affects.
It might be hard to just work into conversation, but it's not hard to work
into conversation after seeing that if Black Adder dropped his time machine
on Wellington, England could've been using francs instead of pounds.
Oh! And Leonardo da Vinci's notebook (which the kids know about in part from
Dover coloring books) came up in both the Eddie Izzard DVD (in the French
part--he said just like da Vinci, he too had designed a helicopter that
didn't work) and on Black Adder (and Marty knew that was a fictional mention,
but still totally understood the reference).
If they learn from a board game or comedy, it's probably going to stick
better than if they try to read a history textbook. If they learn from a
book about armor and weapons and horses, they learned it just as well as if
they learned it from a list of the kings of France. Too many people confuse
factoid with knowledge. You can have the knowledge in vague yet very
colorful ways, which would make the list of facts make sense. If you have a
list of facts without clues about what, why, when or how, it's just your eyes
gazing at words, and Charlemagne will look just like Louis XIV on that list,
a string of letters, black on white.
There's no hurry to learn it, there's no reason to learn it in order, and in
fact, teaching things "in order" is one of the major causes of kids deciding
at some point in school that they hate science or history or math. Because
they didn't like one part in "the order," they'd rather never even look at
the rest than suffer one more moment, and they shut down.
However pictures, sounds, and ideas get into my kids is good.
Whatever doesn't turn them against learning is good.
Sandra