Boy, interrupted. (by teacher)

Krashen and Brown recently published this research paper in the Singapore Tertiary English Teachers Society journal: What is Academic Language Proficiency? [download PDF]

Their paper flies in the face of current popular pedagogical 'wisdom' that suggests that nearly everything needs to be taught explicitly to students.

Specifically, they suggest that metacognitive strategies (supposedly designed to assist students with creating a deeper understanding of material) may actually be getting in the way of students' learning.  They quote the experience of one middle school teacher who had encouraged students to pause at intervals during their reading to create visual associations:

After a few weeks, her students rebelled, and told her that "Metacognition was interfering with the reading zone ... (it) disrupted the flow of a great story; ate up precious hours that could have been devoted to living inside another great story, and wasted their time as readers ... not one student could name a positive effect of the strategies on his or her reading performance".

'Conventional wisdom' usually looks at tools that have the potential to be useful, and advance the implementation of these tools or strategies in day-to-day contexts.  However, 'common sense' (which is possibly closer to 'enduring wisdom') might be worth considering when 'useful' tools and strategies are actually creating unnecessary detours from the simple enjoyment of learning.  Sometimes spending too much time on the scaffolding may unnecessarily slow down the building process.

...some strategies are teachable and useful to learn.  Others are less useful, limited only to conscious language learning and deliberate memorization.  Still others, those that all humans naturally possess and use, may be counterproductive to teach.

Ref:  Krashen and Brown (2007).  STETS Language and Communication Review, Singapore Tertiary English Teachers Society.

An Experience of Being Alive

People say that what we are seeking is a meaning of life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth.

It's not complicated - it's just emotionally difficult

Just because something has been a lot of work or consumed a lot of time doesn't make it productive or worthwhile.

Just because you are embarrassed to admit that you're still living the consequences of bad decisions made 5, 10, or 20 years ago shouldn't stop you from making good decisions now.  if you let pride stop you, you will hate life 5, 10, and 20 years from now for the same reasons.  

...Pride is stupid.

Being able to quit things that don't work is integral to being a winner.  Going into a project or job without defining when worthwhile becomes wasteful is like going into a casino without a cap on what you will gamble: dangerous and foolish.

"But you don't understand my situation.  It's complicated!" But is it really?  Don't confuse the complex with the difficult.  Most situations are simple -- many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.  The problem and the solution are usually obvious and siimple.  it's not that you don't know what to do.  Of course you do.  you are just terrified that you might end up worse off than you are now.  

I'll tell you right now: If you're at this point, you won't be worse off.  Revisit fear-setting and cut the cord.

Ferris, Timothy (2007) "The 4-Hour Workweek."  Crown, New York.  pp. 222, 223.

John Stuart Mill (1869): Active learning through discourse

A person who derives all his instruction from teachers or books, even if he escape the besetting temptation of contenting himself with cram, is under no compulsion to hear both sides; accordingly it is far from a frequent accomplishment, even among thinkers, to know both sides; and the weakest part of what everybody says in defence of his opinion, is what he intends as a reply to antagonists. It is the fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic - that which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, without establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate result; but as a means to attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it cannot be valued too highly; and until people are again systematically trained to it, there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical departments of speculation. On any other subject no one's opinions deserve the name of knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced on him by others, or gone through of himself, the same mental process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy with opponents. That, therefore, which when absent, it is so indispensable, but so difficult, to create, how worse than absurd it is to forego, when spontaneously offering itself! If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds and listen to them, and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater labor for ourselves.

John Stuart Mill

"On Liberty" (1869), Chapter 2.