Comment on There’s more to life than what you read in books by Sith Kristen (atams)

I love your list!

One thing I can think about is the context for discernment. For example I often wish with this election cycle that more people had had practice following politics in school. Of course it gets messy when you start talking current politics in say a public school, but what if students watched first televised American presidential debate? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbrcRKqLSRw With context you start to realize you’ve heard it all before when someone tries to sell themselves as a “new kind of candidate.” I think you are less likely to get pushed around by the loudest voice on the media.

History has advertised its role in providing context to education for a while (the don’t know history, doomed to repeat it mantra). But I think it spans other contexts. For example, one of the things you notice in the conversation on GMOs is that people need more context in order to be able to discern and make connections about their choices. The problem I see is not that people feel strongly about this, but that often the things people often criticize and praise here don’t match what is actually going on.

The article coaching that was in our reading this week, talked about knowing how to recognize how bad a situation is, and what can be done about it. The need for a doctor to have context and know how to sort a current situation into that context to make a decision. So schools is for context, and learning how to use context for discernment.

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Comment on When engineers take philosophy by Sith Kristen (atams)

I really like the idea that some of the biggest questions are more memorable not asked directly, but asked in ways that are tied to specific examples.

As much as I like philosophy, my favorite is an approach in which a story highlights a philosophical argument. Like a lot of the distopian stories, and a lot of the stories by authors who write both philosophical works and stories (I just read Till We Have Faces, by C. S. Lewis, and is has a really cool mix).

I’m trying to think about the question Cody posed as well. One question that came up with my lab mate recently as she was describing a hybrid line we are working with, is “what is a species?” I can picture rather than give students a list of definitions (and there are many), giving an example of a case in which there is gray area and starting with that.

Comment on Smarter, Dumber, or Lazier? by Sith Kristen (atams)

I couldn’t agree more about the part about basic math. But it’s interesting to hear you bring in spelling. It made me think. I am HORRIBLE at spelling. Really, really bad. And this has been true since elementary school, just as soon spelling words moved away from being phonetic. This was long before I had access to a computer. I am very thankful for spellcheck and technology in this arena. It allows me to communicate without being written off before someone actually hears what I have to say. So while I agree that it is important for people to learn how to do things like math and that technology can make people less interested to learn it, I think for people who have legitimate difficulties with a tool (like basic math or spelling) that helps you do something else (like physics and written communication) technology is a real gift.

Comment on Beyond the Dimensions of my ‘Horticulture Box’ by Sith Kristen (atams)

This is really interesting to think about, because I am also in a boat where it is easy for me to think more about the day to day and less about the bigger social issues in the way material is presented. And I think not everything has to be about an “issue.” But I think you give a great example of taking a step back at a broader question.

In horticulture it would be cool to have a landscape design project that was optimized specifically for habitat (birds, bats, butterflies, etc.).