| Well said. -------Original Message------- Ahh -- you're making the mental leap that because people don't remember something, then they were never taught. Fault the educational system instead of demanding personal responsibility from students for retaining the knowledge they are taught. As a private music teacher I am constantly amazed at what my students remember and what they don't remember. For some students I will explain some new concept, have them play an exercise with that concept in it and then by the next piece they don't remember what I just taught them (and that they demonstrated that they understood) a few minutes earlier. For other students I use the same explanation and then never have to explain it again because they retain what they are taught better. Case in point, yesterday evening I was teaching a young girl who is learning to play the flute, and she asked me "what are all those dots above those notes?" This was about a new piece of music she had been handed in school band class earlier that day. I explained that they are called "staccato." "What's staccato?" she asked. I had been about to continue my explanation but she jumped in with the question, so I explained what the dots meant, showed her how to play staccato music on the flute (which is the instrument she's learning) and had her play the music. She played it very well, with a clear grasp of staccato. A couple of minutes, in a different piece of music, there was a note with a staccato dot over it, and she played it wrong. I mentioned "the staccato quarter note" and she said "Huh?" with a puzzled tone. I said, "Don't you remember -- you just played that other piece with staccato in it." She said, "What?" I had to pull out the other piece point out what *she* had asked me about, and I said "Don't you remember what you just played a couple of minutes ago?" "Oh, yeah. That." If someone had walked past my studio door before she finally remembered, it would have been easy to assume that I hadn't taught her what staccato was, which was not true. That she didn't remember at that instant is her fault, not mine. Most high school students in the U.S.A. have to take Chemistry -- I challenge people who are not professional chemists to tell me the molecular weight of Gold *without looking it up!* Of course you could tell me any number and I couldn't prove you were right or wrong without looking it up myself, because *even though I was taught it back in high school and had to know it for a test that I passed* I can't tell you now, because that sort of knowledge has no relevance for me at all in my life. History and geography are boring subjects for most people and have no practical use for most people in high school, so they don't work to retain what they're taught, thus they answer incorrectly or not at all when given the kinds of tests or questionnaires that are cited in the sort of articles you are referring to. But that doesn't mean they weren't taught. -- David H. Bailey ------------------------------------ Yahoo Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: <*> Your use of Yahoo Groups is subject to: | ||
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