One busy teaching day. I controlled an exam (proctored I should say) in the morning - I should have proctored two - taught 5 review sessions for the upcoming final, then taught two 9-minute English classes. Started at 8 AM and ended at 9 PM. Still had time to think about a good analogy, though.
It seems like education is a puzzle. It starts as a pile of colored wood and ends up a beautiful painting of some sort. The pile of colored wood is the collection of ideas and the finished puzzle is the arrangement of these ideas when connections are made properly.
Education - or the piecing together of the puzzle - in Mozambique seems to be an exercise in taking two pieces, demonstrating how they fit together, and making sure the student knows how they fit together. The student copies what the teacher did and slowly builds a puzzle in this manner.
But nobody does puzzles this way.
What I'm trying to do is introduce a level of abstraction - I'm trying to show the students why certain pieces fit together. Sometimes I'll use example pieces to demonstrate my point, but my overall goal is to teach mastery of the concept of "why" the pieces fit together...then bring out from the student which pieces fit with which others. But this last step I feel needs to be left with the student, or they never know what they truly know, by proving it to themselves. My point is that a learner in the first group will be dumbstruck when presented with a corner piece because it is different and doesn't fit a known scheme - even though it is much easier to place in the puzzle. A learner in the second group knows that a corner piece reduces the work necessary to fit it in by two, though they have no idea exactly where it should go. But they will never hit a dead end. This is important - they may, on the average, have a harder time deriving a simple fact, but they will never meet a problem they can't dissect and resolve.
My advanced English class derived a rule for superlatives and comparatives from the examples I gave them. It was intellectually stimulating for them in addition to being great practice. Good day.
Peace
John
