Subject: RE: [hackers-il] Re: Lightning Speed Math Teaching

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 11:54:52 +0200

> How about teaching the kid more about reading, writing, socializing,
> perhaps drawing, building things, being creative? Math is not
> everything, you know.
> 
> I think it's a common mistake that school is there to give the kid
> knowledge. It isn't -- it's there to aid his development. Teaching the

So why have school at all? I don't think kids in the old days of child labor
were less developed, infact it is believed that kids in the victorian days
matured earlier.

Why is education compulsory? to have an equal start for all.
What does equal start means? It means that if child A spends his childhood
mining while child B studies math and history, Child B is better off, and we
want equality so we need to have everyone studing.

---

From: Alex Shnitman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 15:52:30 +0200

Hi, Chen!

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:54:52AM +0200, you wrote the following:

> So why have school at all?

To aid the kids' development, just as I wrote.

> I don't think kids in the old days of child labor were less
> developed, infact it is believed that kids in the victorian days
> matured earlier.

Matured earlier? What's good about that? I'd like my kid to have a fun
childhood that he would be fond of remembering.

Perhaps you mistook "aid" in my sentence above as "speed up", while I
meant help, assist.

> want equality so we need to have everyone studing.

This is all great, but how is it related to the discussion?

What I was saying, in other words, was that the amount of math that we
have in school is just fine. This silly race against time -- know more
in less time, finish university at 21, at 20, while at highschool,
become a maths prodigy at 16 -- what is it all for? Kids at school
play basketball, watch TV, play computer games, learn to deal with the
other sex, hell even play "ajuim" and climb trees. That's what they
*do*, and that's what they *should do*. There's no other way to
develop a healthy psychology. In my opinion, parents who force their
kid to learn all day don't deserve to be parents any more than those
who beat up their child.

-- 
Alex Shnitman                            | http://www.debian.org
[email-masked], [email-masked]   +-----------------------
http://alexsh.hectic.net    UIN 188956    PGP key on web page
       E1 F2 7B 6C A0 31 80 28  63 B8 02 BA 65 C7 8B BA

For Sale: Parachute. Only used once, never opened, small stain.