"Gary McGovern" garywork@lineone.net wrote: I've seen how some of these Russians are taught. They get a heavy education in literacy and grammar. In England, that's not true. Grammar has been abolished from the curriculum (Except for the expensive private schools run for the rich). I know people who leave school not even knowing what a verb is. Sorry but that isn't by accident. It's not just England. 10-8 years ago I ran a computational linguistics paper in Melbourne, Australia, and I was getting students who didn't know what a verb was. I was also getting European-ancestry Australian-born-and= educated students at the undergraduate level who wrote "Chinglish", that is, the kind of English written by Asian students who are not used to inflections and have trouble even _hearing_ the difference between "sing" and "sings". (Like I have real trouble distinguishing tones.) It's not accidental; it's just that "evidence-based teaching" is an idea whose time has yet to come. There used to be a saying in New Zealand that we were always five years behind the USA in educational "fashions": wait five years until the latest fashion has PROVEN itself a dumb idea and THEN adopt it.
It isn't by accident, but it's not a conspiracy. It's basically the "prescriptivist" (now a dirty word) -vs- "descriptivist" question; current ideology has it that descriptivism is the humane true-to-linguistics approach but prescriptivism is authoritarian (and we all know how evil THAT is (:-)). The problem is that the educators have forgotten (or never cared to learn) that the natural state of natural languages is for people to be unable to talk to the people in the next village but one down the river.
This is relevant to Smalltalk: the natural state of programming languages is for Foo Basic to be different from Bar Basic (like the Prolog company that had a Mac Prolog and a DOS Prolog, one of which took angles in degrees and the other of which took angles in radians). I find the recent work on porting things between different Smalltalks encouraging.
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of Roboteacher :o) where anyone can download the program over the web and get a good solid education in literacy and grammar just as the well educated people get. Is this something that exists? Where can I read more about it?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard A. O'Keefe" ok@atlas.otago.ac.nz To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 4:37 AM Subject: Re: Computerchannel.de: Squeak 3.0 tested
It's not just England. 10-8 years ago I ran a computational linguistics paper in Melbourne, Australia, and I was getting students who didn't know what a verb was. I was also getting European-ancestry
Australian-born-and=
educated students at the undergraduate level who wrote "Chinglish", that
is,
the kind of English written by Asian students who are not used to
inflections
and have trouble even _hearing_ the difference between "sing" and "sings". (Like I have real trouble distinguishing tones.) It's not accidental;
it's
just that "evidence-based teaching" is an idea whose time has yet to come. There used to be a saying in New Zealand that we were always five years behind the USA in educational "fashions": wait five years until the
latest
fashion has PROVEN itself a dumb idea and THEN adopt it.
Well I'm surprised. I thought Aussies might have had it a bit better being free from Mother England.
I don't like the sound of these fashions. Surely the best way must be the old-fashioned classical educations with the bad bits dropped and good new methods added. Overall it should be pretty constant. I think. I'd be interested to know ho Leonardo Da Vinci was educated for example.
It isn't by accident, but it's not a conspiracy.
Alright, I was hasty to point the finger of blame and put it down to a class thing. And I'm not prepared to research all the official papers to find who made the decisions. I'll accept that it is not a conspiracy, but was done accidentally on purpose (does that sound better ;-))
It's basically the "prescriptivist" (now a dirty word) -vs- "descriptivist" question; current ideology has it that descriptivism is the humane true-to-linguistics approach but prescriptivism is authoritarian (and we all know how evil THAT is (:-)).
Yes, its very very bad :-). Authoritarians are so evil that I could write scores of essays telling what's wrong about their infinitely unquenched thirst for power and domination.
The problem is that the educators have forgotten (or never cared to learn) that the natural state of natural languages is for people to be unable to talk to the people in the next village but one down the river.
This is relevant to Smalltalk: the natural state of programming languages is for Foo Basic to be different from Bar Basic (like the Prolog company that had a Mac Prolog and a DOS Prolog, one of which took angles in
degrees
and the other of which took angles in radians). I find the recent work on porting things between different Smalltalks encouraging.
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of Roboteacher :o) where anyone can download the program over the web and get a good solid education in literacy and grammar just as the well educated people get.
Is this something that exists?
It exists in my head, I don't know of another yet.
Where can I read more about it?
You have to create him in your own image ;-). Unless you wait a few years for me to do it. Just make him unarmed, subserviant to the student and the students best mate if you can't wait.
Regards Gary
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