What an uplifting experience. I was watching some street soccer on TV this afternoon. A section of a standard street was demarcated and changed into a soccer field for a while. Professional coaches donate some of their time weekly to train "at risk kids". They even compete for a street-cup. If you want to support a worthy cause see their web site Soccer in the Streets. Bravo to the organisers!
Life in South Africa so often degenerates into a whining party between the haves and the have-nots. In the 1960's and 1970's (yes, not so long ago) practically all kids played in the quiet streets and the veld and invented their own games. They, for example, learned to be creative by making high jumping poles from broom sticks and an old mattress for landing area. Cricket bats and wickets were invented in the same way. The whole area's kids would have hours of fun and learn several life skills at the same time.
Some time ago I had a related argument with someone who whined about the lack of technological equipment in a school. He did not realise how lucky they really were. You only need computers if you want to teach kids to use an office program or if you run a Computer Science Course. (Teaching Computer Science should be banned from all schools - not because the kids cannot cope with the content, but very few teachers can teach it! This is a topic for a separate blogpost, though). Some computers in a library for kids to do research should be sufficient for most primary schools. Let kids learn the other subjects through more exciting ways and learn much needed life skills at the same time. Most lecturers and teachers should also be banned from using data projectors! There is a place and a use for data projectors, but they should definitely NOT be used to run through a slide show that is received as a teacher's aid with a text book. I tried it a few times and fell asleep in my own class!
Saturday, March 15, 2008
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2 comments:
I totally share your sentiment. I remember a first year lecturer explaining memory allocations to us with the simple use of “bakkies”. This was definitely my first technology lecture that did not pertain anything more than what might have been a margarine tub and even today quite a few years later the principle is still sound and fresh in my “memory”.
P.s. I would I have not checked, but if you have not yet written the blog on “but very few teachers can teach it”, I would love to read it.
Those were good old days :). After some ridicule the margarine tubs were replaced by drawing the equivalent on the board in terms of pigeonholes and a variable is referred to as a pigeonhole, but I think the "manual computer" should be dusted off again!
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