|
English
Français
Português
Archivos 2
Si el entrenador hace las flexiones,
El atleta no se hará más fuerte
Enlaces Rápidos
Archivos 3
Archivos 1
Los sermones de Phil
Archivos 2
Edadismo, Sexiso, Racismo – 2009 October 16
¿Cuál es el rol de la educación en la lucha contra el prejuicio, la intolerancia y la discriminación? ¿Es esta una preocupación valedera para Recursos Educativos Abiertos (REAs)?
- ◊ Somos criaturas biológicas; animales, para ser más específicos. Significa que nuestros cuerpos cambian con el tiempo, y somos productos de las contribuciones genéticas de nuestros padres y sus antepasados. Hay tres características biológicas que todo ser humano posee, y cada una de ellas tiene consecuencias sociales (cómo nos tratamos), esas características son nuestra edad, nuestro sexo y nuestras características físicas heredadas.
- ◊ Socialmente tendemos a describir a cada una de ellas como si se encontraran en categorías distintas y como si hubiera límites identificables entre ellas. Biológicamente las características son mucho menos distintas. Socialmente pensamos en sólo dos géneros, masculino y femenino. Biológicamente aunque usamos dos términos, macho y hembra, existe una gran variedad de sexos. Nuestra población tiene mucho más de dos sexos. Variamos biológicamente en edad muy poco día a día, y sin embargo usamos fechas arbitrarias en el calendario para hacer distinciones importantes entre infantes, niños, adultos y ancianos. Socialmente pensamos en tantas razas como categorías, y sin embargo usamos variables que son inconsistentes, contradictorias, y que son variaciones sin límites para crear esas categorías raciales arbitrarias. Biológicamente no existe algo llamado raza.
- ◊ Lo que es importante remarcar es que usamos esas variables sociales arbitrarias e inconsistentes (la edad, el género y la raza) para ponerle etiquetas diferentes a las personas, y para pensar en las personas y tratarlas de manera diferente, basándonos en esas distinciones inválidas.
- ◊ La mayoría de los estudios demuestran que los niños son capaces de distinguir entre las distintas variables, pero las toman como naturales y no hacen juicios de valor basados en ellas. Tienen que socializar para volverse prejuiciosos. Para contrarrestar eso necesitamos usar nuestras instituciones educativas para enseñar valores de aceptación, tolerancia, versatilidad y justicia. Estos valores necesitan ser enseñados teniendo en cuenta las habilidades y conocimientos de los alumnos, que en general están asociadas a sus edades.
- ◊ El análisis bosquejado arriba, que es el eje central de los cursos de ciencias sociales del primer y segundo año en la universidad, puede ser muy sofisticado para alumnos de escuela primaria, pero no lo es en ningún nivel de las materias para adultos, y puede ser incluido en el plan de estudio de las escuelas secundarias. Un enfoque más simple, uno de aceptación de todos nosotros (incluidos nosotros mismos) como valiosos sin importar cómo lucimos, puede ser más apropiado para el nivel primario. Hay una gran variedad de enfoques entre esos dos.
- ◊ Este no es el lugar para “recetas” detalladas, ya que queremos motivar a los educadores a que creen nuevos temas y métodos apropiados. Sin embargo, es importante que los profesores sean conscientes de la arbitrariedad y superficialidad de las ideas racistas, sexistas y discriminatorias por razones de edad, y de que no están basadas en hechos científicos (incluidos los biológicos). (Tuve un profesor de biología en la escuela secundaria que opinaba que Hitler estaba en lo cierto).
- ◊ Tratar a las personas de manera injusta (por ej.: acceso a la educación, al empleo, a una vivienda, a una membresía en un club, a votar) por cualquier razón es deplorable; cuando uno se basa en la intolerancia, es delictivo. Todo nuestro sistema educativo, ortodoxo y no ortodoxo, es una herramienta muy importante para prevenir y mitigar el trato injusto.
- ◊ Necesitamos tener una respuesta para quienes nos acusan de destruir su cultura tradicional, en donde profesan la discriminación. Nada de eso. La cultura no es estática, y si intentamos preservarla la enfrascamos, la matamos. Entonces lo que estamos haciendo es fortalecerla al adaptarla al siempre cambiante ambiente social mundial.
- ◊ As we develop Open Educational Resources, it is our responsibility to include this topic wherever appropriate throughout the whole range of subjects. Most obviously it should be included in social studies courses. Less obviously it should be included in science courses such as biology and zoology. Debunking the notions that there are distinct categories of race, sex and age is the responsibility of the biological sciences. A wide range of other subjects can easily have appropriate places for adding the topic. Taking the "Gardening" approach to education, where "the taught" should be considered before "what is taught," should encourage us to consider the needs of societies and communities when designing and presenting educational resources. --Phil Bartle 14:23 16 oct 2009 (UTC)
Methods of Learning are Not the Same as Methods of Teaching –– 2009 October 10
We encourage alternative and non orthodox methods of learning, and this affects how we present them to the learners, but they are two different things, and we must be careful not to confuse the two. At first this sounds too obvious, but when we are creating alternative and non orthodox processes, it can become easy to forget.
- ◊ Recall that among other ways of learning, including watching and listening, we recommend "doing" as the usually most effective method of learning.
- ◊ When we set up a learning session for the students to play roles in a particular scenario, for example, it is the students who are engaged in the "doing" to learn. The teacher is creating the context for that to happen. There is not one single way to create it. When the teacher organizes a literacy class into a planning meeting to decide on a project such as going on a field trip to collect fish prices information then come back to construct signs to indicate the prices of fish, it is not the teacher who engages in the doing, the students do, and the teacher creates the context for that to happen. The teacher can choose among many ways to create it, and design new ones.
- ◊ In the common orthodox method, the teacher does all the doing: preparing the content, setting up the props, making the presentation, responding to feedback and questions. The teacher, by doing, learns much about the subject, and sometimes forgets that the learners are not "doing" (just listening and watching), are less stimulated, and are learning less. The teacher can easily become puzzled, even irritated, that the learners are so slow.
- ◊ The teacher must first decide on or plan the learning method(s), and to choose what is appropriate both for the students and for the topic. That comes first. Choosing or planning the approach of the teacher, the methods to use, comes second. They must complement the methods of learning, not duplicate them. There are many possible ways to teach for each method of learning, some not yet known, so there is no automatic formula.
- ◊ In other words, designing a session must necessarily include both the methods of learning and the methods of teaching, and be planned to be complementary to each other. Three separate elements. All too often, teachers plan classes with a focus on one or another, usually how to teach it, rather than with a balanced and complete approach which not only includes both but also how the two relate.
- ◊ As we develop OERs (Open Educational Resources) we must not just parrot tired and worn approaches used in the classroom. We need to provide the best, and that includes a call for more analysis of the needs of the students and of the topics, and a willingness to be creative, novel and experimental. --Phil Bartle 07:18, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
See the WikiEd open Educational Resource, Training Methods
Language Learning; a Lesson about Learning –– 2009 October 1
One of our training documents describes a method for learning a language that is unwritten. The method also works for learning a written language . . . without resorting to writing (or to books, to note taking, or to learning the rules).
- ◊ The method is based on the idea that how we learned our first language, at ages 1-3, served us well, but the way a second language is taught in school is far different. True, we lose some of our language learning abilities as we get older, especially if we do not exercise them, but it is our methods, not our natural abilities, that are in focus here.
- ◊ When we learned our first language, we did not use text books or notebooks, we did not memorize vocabulary; we did not memorize grammatical rules. Oh we did learn grammar, but we did so by learning what felt right, not what the regulations were.
- ◊ The method was designed so I could learn a language in Africa to do anthropological studies there. I later used it for training community workers to learn a language if they were assigned to a community where they spoke a different language. The method is to pretend that you are a three year old, select only words and phrases that are useful in your daily life (Please pass the salt) and train your friends and colleagues (as informants) to repeat the term after you (you must not repeat it after them). Without telling them what you are thinking, you pretend that your informants are your older brothers and sisters, correcting your pronunciation. You choose 1-5 words only each day, no more, no less. You vary the way a word is used (I want water. He has water). Within three months, you aim for fluency, which means the ability to operate in the language, with a limited vocabulary, about a hundred words only (what we tend to use in daily life).
- ◊ Although your ability to learn a new language has decreased, you have burned learning pathways in your brain, and this method takes advantage of them. While you train your informants to not think of themselves as correcting you, just repeating after you, you pretend you are three years old getting corrected.
- ◊ You might think at first a certain fruit is a napple, which can be easily corrected later when you learn how to read and write.
- ◊ I think this method can be adapted to teaching a language to a group of students, even though it was designed for self teaching. I see hints of it in the most up to date methods of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and language immersion programs.
- ◊ What is important here is the degree to which the method can be adapted to teaching other subjects and topics. Using text books and notebooks is efficient and convenient, and encouraged by schools and colleges that are becoming more and more like corporations. unlike an environment that encourages teachers to explore and create new and unorthodox methods. Text books and notebooks encourage conformity, monotony and homogeneity (like McDonald's hamburgers).
- ◊ It may be that the new challenge of not using text books and notes, may not only make it better to learn introductory levels of each topic, but also preparing the learner to learn the more advanced elements better. I would like to hear from collaborators on WikiEducator their thoughts and experiences with unorthodox methods of learning. --Phil Bartle 01:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
- See and collaborate with the WikiEducator open educational resource, Learning a Non Written Language
Earlier Rants
Archivos 1
Los sermones de Phil
Older Rant Topics
- Methods of Learning are Not the Same as Methods of Teaching
- Language Learning; a Lesson about Learning
- Functional Literacy → Functional Anything
- Alms, Altruism and Ability
- Agricultural Revolution, Culture and Open Education
- Education and Empowerment
- Are We Making Educational Institutions Obsolete?
|
