All lovers of fiction can think of a literary villain who fills them with particular detestation. Every serious reader can think of one character who, on account of their cunning or malice or outright cruelty, still makes their skin crawl, and seems to embody the worst of humanity. For some, it might be Regan and Goneril, with their ingratitude and heartless viciousness. For others, it might be Uriah Heep, with his cunning, obsequious malice. For me, though, there is no villain worse than the Pout Pout Fish.
I am curious of your thoughts on appropriate scaffolding. I think to instill confidence, we need to model what we expect and provide students with tools to meet those expectations, but at what point does our desire to cultivate success become a crutch. Is a sentence starter the worse thing in the world if I still expect a student to define their own terms for the sake of argument? Does letting a student use a study guide for their test on the 'Iliad' render them unworthy of the title 'scholar?' I struggle with this constantly, and am curious what you think. Very poignant article. Thank you for sharing.
I don't think anything I wrote rules out appropriate scaffolding of material. But again, the way a school designs that scaffolding should be based on a general norm concerning the common abilities of students, and the pace at which they typically learn, rather than outlier examples of these things.
This seems to be part of a wider tendency to rain down on children all the adult anxieties and paranoias of the world, the terrible cynicism, like clipping their wings, instead of speaking of excitement, opportunity and wonderful things that await in life. Very destructive when adults do not provide the psychological anchor that communicates norms, rules and direction, almost abusive.
Completely agree about the need for school choice and achieving agreement where possible.
I am curious of your thoughts on appropriate scaffolding. I think to instill confidence, we need to model what we expect and provide students with tools to meet those expectations, but at what point does our desire to cultivate success become a crutch. Is a sentence starter the worse thing in the world if I still expect a student to define their own terms for the sake of argument? Does letting a student use a study guide for their test on the 'Iliad' render them unworthy of the title 'scholar?' I struggle with this constantly, and am curious what you think. Very poignant article. Thank you for sharing.
I don't think anything I wrote rules out appropriate scaffolding of material. But again, the way a school designs that scaffolding should be based on a general norm concerning the common abilities of students, and the pace at which they typically learn, rather than outlier examples of these things.
This seems to be part of a wider tendency to rain down on children all the adult anxieties and paranoias of the world, the terrible cynicism, like clipping their wings, instead of speaking of excitement, opportunity and wonderful things that await in life. Very destructive when adults do not provide the psychological anchor that communicates norms, rules and direction, almost abusive.
Completely agree about the need for school choice and achieving agreement where possible.