You know, I was just thinking- I might be totally off, but does it seem to anybody else that Hermione enjoys learning less for itself and more because she is insecure and needs something to make other people respect her. In this way, I think it's really no wonder that she is in Gryffindor rather than Ravenclaw. I never got the impression that she actually enjoys studying, so much as she has to put on a facade of being "the smart girl" because perhaps she is afraid of being disliked without it. Not that she isn't actually smart, but it seems like the use of her intelligence is more forced than natural
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You know, I was just thinking- I might be totally off, but does it seem to anybody else that Hermione enjoys learning less for itself and more because she is insecure and needs something to make other people respect her. I may have told this story before, but this reminds me of a girl I went to school with
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And Virginia explained that she and Sue often were paired up as partners in various classes, and that Sue breezed thru math and science because those subjects required set facts as answers. But apparantly Sue had quite a problem with the "soft" subjects, and Virginia revealed that Sue actually not only hated English, Literature, History, and anything to do with the arts, she strongly disparaged them. Because, according to Virginia, those subjects required Sue to actually THINK, rather than memorize and regurgitate facts.
As a scientist I must protest this. A system where one succeeds in math and science because one isn't required to *think* is messed up. Science is an immensely creative endeavor. Math too, but not necessarily at the secondary level (though even there proofs, constructions, integrations the moment you go beyond the trivial there is some serious thinking). If at the highest level that science is taught in US high schools one isn't expected to design methods to study a new problem the system is in worse trouble than I
I'll second that. Anyone who tries to solve Descartes's four-line locus problem with no ability to think creatively is screwed. Hell, all I had to do was follow his proof well enough to demonstrate it without notes and that took creativity, because when you are blanking out because you're standing in front of a room full of people and have social anxiety, the ability to look at all the lines and get your memory back by figuring out what the next step must be is crucial. And there are a bunch of lines, so it isn't obvious; it's kind of like a magic eye picture where you have to look at just the right parts the right way to see where you're going
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This might be connected to the way the whole educational system is set up to make sure you can fill in the right bubble on tests, but I don't think that can take all the blame.Back in my day they weren't teaching to standardized tests, the teachers were just lazy. At least in my school system
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Either way, teaching to a test - just internal vs. externally imposed ones. Possibly some of your lazy teachers got promoted to positions where they could impose their methods on whole districts for my generation... Although frankly, the public school system idea in the 19th century was designed to make good little obedient citizens of us, so it probably just hasn't changed much ever since. (Hell, it's common for students to take a loyalty oath at the beginning of every day. That's the kind of thing we sneer at when other countries do it.)
My mother also took typing and did very well in it - and her teacher was so disappointed that she wanted to go to college, of all the useless ideas, when with her skills she could get a good job as a secretary right after graduation. Business classes definitely weren't seen as for the college bound at her school either. (And then she went to nursing school and then went back and got her master's degree, and her teacher would probably have a heart attack at how much more money she makes doing that
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(Hell, it's common for students to take a loyalty oath at the beginning of every day. That's the kind of thing we sneer at when other countries do it.)
Do they still do that in schools? We stopped saying the Pledge in my sophomore year, and by mid-junior year were refusing to stand for the Anthem. But that was circa 1968-70, and it was our way to protest the Vietnam War.
But to this day I refuse to say the Pledge, at least as it's written. I pledge my allegiance to the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, NOT to a piece of cloth. If I feel I'm in a situation where I have to say the pledge, I just quickly say "the Constitution and Bill of Rights", instead of "flag".
My mother also took typing and did very well in it - and her teacher was so disappointed that she wanted to go to college, of all the useless ideas, when with her skills she could get a good job as a secretary right after graduation. Business classes definitely weren't seen as for the college bound at her school either.I never understood the attitude that it was
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I didn't have to after about 8th grade, and I think sometimes they might have forgotten or not bothered in elementary school - but yes, my classes usually said the Pledge at least sometimes from kindergarten up through sixth grade, in the 1990s. I'm not a fan of swearing loyalty to cloth rather than principles either, and especially am not a fan of how it's used politically (like sticking the "under God" bit in in 1954 to prove we weren't "Godless communists
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As a scientist I must protest this. A system where one succeeds in math and science because one isn't required to *think* is messed up.Which pretty much sums up the school system I had to attend, at least how it was back 40-something years ago
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Actually, I wasn't taught any real English grammar past 3rd grade. The rest of it I picked up from taking Latin and reading a bunch of Classic (mainly 17th through 19th century) books. The latter probably explains why I sometimes have a weird tendency to capitalize things randomly and have lots of parentheses and run-on sentences. I would have killed for a decent English Grammar class.
I didn't get grammar until 8th grade (with more in the following years), and that was only because I transferred from a supposedly "good" public school to a private one (which was more luck than anything - some of the private schools in the area are just as shitty as the public ones, except at least the public ones don't make you take "Christian womanhood" classes). Even so, 10th grade was the only year we really had to buckle down and learn grammar, because we were assumed to already know the basics beforehand and to have gotten it all afterward. (This was a common pattern - in college, all our professors assumed we had all learned at least basic grammar and composition skills, but this was just not the case. I think the teachers of each year of school assumed we had learned it last year, and so most of them didn't bother to teach it.) I still got my most thorough understanding of the parts of speech etc. in Spanish and Latin classes, because not having years of models of how to speak and write in those languages to instinctively
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Are you familiar with Richard Feynman's tales about teaching in Brazil? His students there were taught to recite the textbook, so if he asked a question that they could fit into something they remembered they'd recite the answer, but if he asked them the simplest application of the same information they had no idea what he was talking about. (IIRC they knew that a ray of light traveling through a flat transparent object would emerge from it displaced but parallel to its original trajectory but didn't realize how this applied to a window.) Is this how you would describe your high school science experience?
Is this how you would describe your high school science experience?Pretty much. But add to that that I was a girl (girls weren't expected to excel in science), and that I was placed in Track 3 of a 4 track system, 1 being the highest and 4 the lowest...meaning I was placed in the "average" track, and therefore did not get the "advanced" teaching that students on Tracks 1 and 2 got
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What a tragic story! I can see a lot of Hermione in it though. She even has a dislike of classes in which there was more than one right answer.
On another note, that makes me a bit paranoid that I am that kind of learner (just regurgitates facts without being able to interpret or use them). Of course, I was a fine arts major... perhaps that will save me? ;-)
On another note, that makes me a bit paranoid that I am that kind of learner (just regurgitates facts without being able to interpret or use them).
If you were that sort of person, you wouldn't belong to a group like DeathToCapslock, at least you wouldn't be actively participating in discussions like you do, because all you'd be able to comprehend were facts and figures set in stone.
In hindsight I now see that this girl Sue was like that in school, but back then I thought someone who could come up with the correct answer almost immediately "proved" how "smart" they were. She could get A's in Calculus, but was thrown for a loop in Literature class if the class was discussing why Hamlet did what he did in Shakespeare's play...
"You know, I was just thinking- I might be totally off, but does it seem to anybody else that Hermione enjoys learning less for itself and more because she is insecure and needs something to make other people respect her.... I never got the impression that she actually enjoys studying, so much as she has to put on a facade of being "the smart girl" because perhaps she is afraid of being disliked without it."
I've actually heard of a story that seems to be using this sort of set-up to build a tragic villain- the pressure of always having to be the best in school eventually drives him insane.
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As a scientist I must protest this. A system where one succeeds in math and science because one isn't required to *think* is messed up. Science is an immensely creative endeavor. Math too, but not necessarily at the secondary level (though even there proofs, constructions, integrations the moment you go beyond the trivial there is some serious thinking). If at the highest level that science is taught in US high schools one isn't expected to design methods to study a new problem the system is in worse trouble than I
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My mother also took typing and did very well in it - and her teacher was so disappointed that she wanted to go to college, of all the useless ideas, when with her skills she could get a good job as a secretary right after graduation. Business classes definitely weren't seen as for the college bound at her school either. (And then she went to nursing school and then went back and got her master's degree, and her teacher would probably have a heart attack at how much more money she makes doing that ( ... )
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Do they still do that in schools? We stopped saying the Pledge in my sophomore year, and by mid-junior year were refusing to stand for the Anthem. But that was circa 1968-70, and it was our way to protest the Vietnam War.
But to this day I refuse to say the Pledge, at least as it's written. I pledge my allegiance to the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, NOT to a piece of cloth. If I feel I'm in a situation where I have to say the pledge, I just quickly say "the Constitution and Bill of Rights", instead of "flag".
My mother also took typing and did very well in it - and her teacher was so disappointed that she wanted to go to college, of all the useless ideas, when with her skills she could get a good job as a secretary right after graduation. Business classes definitely weren't seen as for the college bound at her school either.I never understood the attitude that it was ( ... )
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On another note, that makes me a bit paranoid that I am that kind of learner (just regurgitates facts without being able to interpret or use them). Of course, I was a fine arts major... perhaps that will save me? ;-)
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If you were that sort of person, you wouldn't belong to a group like DeathToCapslock, at least you wouldn't be actively participating in discussions like you do, because all you'd be able to comprehend were facts and figures set in stone.
In hindsight I now see that this girl Sue was like that in school, but back then I thought someone who could come up with the correct answer almost immediately "proved" how "smart" they were. She could get A's in Calculus, but was thrown for a loop in Literature class if the class was discussing why Hamlet did what he did in Shakespeare's play...
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I've actually heard of a story that seems to be using this sort of set-up to build a tragic villain- the pressure of always having to be the best in school eventually drives him insane.
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