| CoffeeSaint even if some students do not activally participate in discussions I believe it would have more postive value then endless facts. I think it would be better to have several extremely intellegent kids rather then a large amount of poorly educated students. One reason why we are so behind Japan and China because we lower the bar to make sure everyone passes while most countrys make an education a privalege if you do not participate then you can just fail. I understand you really can't do anything about it as if you made your class purely critical thinking you must likely would get fired. As my debate teacher was. But still I would encourage you to keep some class discussions in your curiculum. For facts and ideas are useless if you have no way of processing the information. All todays education does is help produce a uniformity work force destined for unskilled labor while China and Japan hold higher positions. I hope you don't feel as I'm am attacking you as you sound like a good teacher dedicated to his work. |