Stone Soup, Saturday the 30th
leno...@yahoo.com
regarding those tangents tomorrow, but I doubt she will - S.S. isn't
usually that complex.
http://www.gocomics.com/stonesoup/
It reminds me of a thread I started a while back regarding "Heart of
the City":
Heart yells: "I don't get this stupid long division! What do we need
to learn this stuff for anyway? That's what CALCULATORS are for! If I
want to know what TIME it is, I just LOOK at a clock - I don't need to
know how a clock WORKS!"
It was a long, intelligent thread, but unfortunately, IIRC, no one
bothered to explain WHY adults think it's perfectly OK to tell time
the "lazy" way just because almost everyone has a watch or a cell
phone. If we have to learn long division, why shouldn't we have to
learn to tell time from scratch? That's what Heart was getting at,
after all.
Lenona.
Don Del Grande
>It'll be interesting to see if Val tries to explain any further
>regarding those tangents tomorrow, but I doubt she will - S.S. isn't
>usually that complex.
>
>http://www.gocomics.com/stonesoup/
Never mind that - pardon me for asking, since I never had this
problem, but how exactly do elementary school summer schools work? (I
assume Holly isn't in middle school yet.) If it's just an extension
of how regular school works, then how do they help students in the
subjects where they need it - teaching kids things they already know
sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
-- Don
Carl Fink
> Never mind that - pardon me for asking, since I never had this
> problem, but how exactly do elementary school summer schools work? (I
> assume Holly isn't in middle school yet.) If it's just an extension
> of how regular school works, then how do they help students in the
> subjects where they need it - teaching kids things they already know
> sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
Isn't Holly 13? That's middle school age.
--
Carl Fink nitpi...@nitpicking.com
Read my blog at blog.nitpicking.com. Reviews! Observations!
Stupid mistakes you can correct!
Don Del Grande
> Don Del Grande wrote:
>
>> Never mind that - pardon me for asking, since I never had this
>> problem, but how exactly do elementary school summer schools work? (I
>> assume Holly isn't in middle school yet.) If it's just an extension
>> of how regular school works, then how do they help students in the
>> subjects where they need it - teaching kids things they already know
>> sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
>
>Isn't Holly 13? That's middle school age.
I thought she was more like 11 - but now that I think about it, I seem
to recall that she started her periods, so 13 may be more like it.
-- Don
Carl Fink
I looked it up. She's 13.
Night Owl
> It'll be interesting to see if Val tries to explain any further
> regarding those tangents tomorrow, but I doubt she will - S.S. isn't
> usually that complex.
>
> http://www.gocomics.com/stonesoup/
>
> It reminds me of a thread I started a while back regarding "Heart of
> the City":
>
>
> Heart yells: "I don't get this stupid long division! What do we need
> to learn this stuff for anyway? That's what CALCULATORS are for! If I
> want to know what TIME it is, I just LOOK at a clock - I don't need to
> know how a clock WORKS!"
>
> It was a long, intelligent thread, but unfortunately, IIRC, no one
> bothered to explain WHY adults think it's perfectly OK to tell time
> the "lazy" way just because almost everyone has a watch or a cell
> phone. If we have to learn long division, why shouldn't we have to
> learn to tell time from scratch? That's what Heart was getting at,
> after all.
>
> Lenona.
What do you mean from scratch? Are there different levels of being
able to tell time? All clocks seem to work about the same to me. We
have both analog and digital clocks in my house. And I find it just as
difficult to read time on the digital clock as the Analog clock.
Night Owl
> regarding those tangents tomorrow, but I doubt she will - S.S. isn't
> usually that complex.
>
> http://www.gocomics.com/stonesoup/
>
> It reminds me of a thread I started a while back regarding "Heart of
> the City":
>
>
> Heart yells: "I don't get this stupid long division! What do we need
> to learn this stuff for anyway? That's what CALCULATORS are for! If I
> want to know what TIME it is, I just LOOK at a clock - I don't need to
> know how a clock WORKS!"
>
> It was a long, intelligent thread, but unfortunately, IIRC, no one
> bothered to explain WHY adults think it's perfectly OK to tell time
> the "lazy" way just because almost everyone has a watch or a cell
> phone. If we have to learn long division, why shouldn't we have to
> learn to tell time from scratch? That's what Heart was getting at,
> after all.
>
> Lenona.
To the little girl who doesn't want to learn how to spell and asks
what is the use of having to learn how to spell. I present exhibit A:
A 13 year American girl who is really good at spelling.
http://www.kansascity.com/340/story/1223841.html
leno...@yahoo.com
> What do you mean from scratch? Are there different levels of being
> able to tell time?
Well, in "Farmer Boy," Almanzo knew how to tell time from the way
shadows were falling, which would get pretty complicated with the
changing of the seasons, I imagine.
I don't know other ways of doing it, offhand. But, in Linda Allison's
wonderful early 1970s book on nature, history and science, "The
Reasons for Seasons," she said that if it's near sunset and if you
extend your arm and point your fingers at a right angle, every finger
between the sun and the horizon counts as 15 minutes! (I assume she
was referring to the width of each finger at its base, but I've never
quite tested that.) I suspect the formula has to do with the Golden
Mean.
Lenona.
Jim Ellwanger
<0f30461c-6a17-4016...@z7g2000vbh.googlegroups.com>,
Night Owl <other.e...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> To the little girl who doesn't want to learn how to spell and asks
> what is the use of having to learn how to spell. I present exhibit A:
> A 13 year American girl who is really good at spelling.
> http://www.kansascity.com/340/story/1223841.html
The National Spelling Bee has about the same relationship to "learning
how to spell" as memorizing the phone book has to "getting to know your
neighbors."
--
Jim Ellwanger <use...@ellwanger.tv>
<http://www.ellwanger.tv> welcomes you daily.
"The days turn into nights; at night, you hear the trains."