Personal Update

Well, I lost my quest in making it to EVERY class this week. My alarm didn't go off this morning and I missed math at 8 AM. That's okay, though. I can catch up in math and I'm sure it was all review material anyhow. I am somewhat excited to start reading the novel The Rule of the Bone for English. At least it'll get me away from writing about, learning about, talking about, and maybe even thinking about blogs blogs blogs. I have a Psychology test coming up in about 25 minutes, but I'm fairly confident about that. I'm hoping to finish it early enough to go back to my dorm and relax before the most boring span of 50 minute ever begins: Chemistry. I have been to chemistry only a few times, but it is SO BORING. I think I am better off learning the material on my own. I'll keep going anyway. Even if I already know the stuff, and even if it's really boring. I can't wait for classes to be over today. After Wednesday, my schedule is pretty easy. I have Math 8:00-9:50 on Thursday and I have classes from 8-noon Friday and I'm all done. Today I have 8-noon (9-noon if the alarm isn't working) and then 2-3. I don't like having so many classes piled on top of each other. I gotta get some homework done before Friday too. I don't feel like typing anymore. I'm done.

Needed: A New Literacy

I read this essay by Melvin E. Levison, and found it to be similar to "School is Bad for Children" by John Holt. The author seems to think that there needs to be some reforms in the way school systems work. He touches on three points: Let children learn more by using their senses, teach reading as a process of see, smell, feel, rather than just words on paper, and teach writing as not only verbal but something to utilize all medias. Mr. Levison thinks that the schools make children change the way they think in that they see something in nature (a grasshopper, for example) and don't necessarily know the name of it, but they know what it is by color, shape, movement, size, etc. School, according to Levison, makes them forget about the color, shape, movement, size, and other attributes and the children then only think of it simply as a grasshopper. He also feels that schools ruin the reading process for students. Students are forced into reading novels, whether they like them or not, and rather than allowing the student to picture the story in his own mind, schools change their path of thinking to only realizing a story as words printed on paper. Similarly, Levison feels that schools make a similar mistake in the way they teach writing. Rather than using their imagination to come up with a great story or essay, schools force children into writing an essay of certain content. Since it is now more of a chore than anything, writing is usually thought of among children as merely words piled onto a piece of paper.

Two passages from the essay:

Paul Valery: "seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees."

Papert's ultimate goal: "to turn computers into instruments flexible enough so that many children can each create for themselves something like what gears were for me."

......that's about all I have to say about this essay.