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 Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 5:41 pm
Speaking as a former history teacher... whose expertise was in Medieval and Renaissance Europe/British Isles and (weirdly enough) US Colonial to Civil War history... if the students don't enjoy the class, don't become engaged with the material, and thus do poorly on their exams--it is the teacher's fault. Anyone is free to disagree; this is my OPINION. smile But I had colleagues who clearly did not enjoy what they were teaching--and thus failed completely to get the attention of their students. I'm relieved and delighted to state that no one ever complained of such problems with me. smile But just making people memorize dates, names, and suchlike is lousy teaching. It's so important to understand how Event A way back in 1655 led to attitude #1 which in turn led to intolerance (or whatever) that made it possible for Event B to happen--and how that all relates to the modern world. If you know your stuff, that kind of Socratic, explicative teaching is NOT difficult.
My Opinion only... your mileage may vary. smile
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Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 12:09 pm
There's a good bit of truth in that smile
I wish there were more schools that taught like my highschool did, but then I understand that discipline is a very high concern in most schools and our school kind of rebelled when we had someone come in and try to create more discipline rolleyes Everything was very discussion based. We sat at tables (not desks), with two to a table, and all the tables set up in a square-ish shape with the teacher's desk at the front. The teacher would give a little lecture, do a reading, or what have you, and then we would have open discussion. You didn't raise your hand; you learned to become aggressive and be able to jump into arguments or your idea wasn't heard. If things got to heated, the teacher would cut in, but the discussions always ended up being fairly spirited.
Another thing that I loved about it was that most of the time, we didn't have text books. The history teachers generally created books of photocopied material that they owned and knew we'd need, and we always bought a bunch of individual books for English (except for Shakespeare class, where I received my first huge, complete works with added essays - with we lovingly referred to as "The Brick" because it was about that size and weight).
My history teachers were absolutely amazing. My freshman year, I took an ancient history class and he always supplemented the areas we were studying with stories from when he'd travelled through those countries. And in 10th grade we had Modern European History, which is probably where I really learned to love the Renaissance (and the French revolution redface ). On top of that, almost all the English teachers I've ever had have taught through the history surrounding the literature, which I discovered in my British literature class is something that I love more than the literature itself. Except for my Tolkien class, which was perfect without history interfering with it. Oh, and our Spanish teachers tried really hard to make us all communists...
But that's what you get with a private college prep school in Boulder, CO. Man, I miss that place!
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