AUSSIE

Blog entry posted November 16th, 2009 by Dale Worsley

In my last post I claimed, with the help of Zhongkui the Demon Queller and a few statements of understanding, to have vanquished the teacher’s main demon of time. I can tell from the looks on some of your faces that you’re not quite convinced. Let’s take the time to go into it a little deeper. (When the revolution’s complete, that’s what all teachers will be able to say instead of “We have to move on because we have so much to cover.”) Let’s hear what a few writers have to say about the subject, and play it out from there.

Flaubert: “Give me an argument, and I’ll give you a novel.” What he means, I think, is that once you’ve got the right big idea, or theme, as English teachers are fond of calling it, you’ve got all you need to organize your details. You can lay exhibits A, B and C out on a table, connect the dots, and make a clear case, convincing the judges, i.e., our rightfully skeptical students.

Given that most of the doubters in my audience are science and math teachers at this point, and mathematics being the language of science, I’ll give it a go with geometry, and try to state the big idea of that subject: Idealized figures and the properties of space, along with the definitions, postulates and theorems that govern their qualities and relationships, not only illuminate the actual physical world we inhabit, but lend us the logic we need to interpret and mold that world to our uses.  Boil it down to: It’s the wings of geometry that allow us to fly.

There’s the argument.

Okay, M. Flaubert, where do we go from here? Chapter One (Exhibit A): the wing outside the airplane I’m riding in is a modified triangle. The world is illuminated. Chapter Two (Exhibit B): the symmetry of this wing, with its reflection on the other side of the fuselage, creates the balance necessary to keep us afloat. We have been lent the logic. (And, for lagniappe, seen geometry’s close tie to physics.) Chapter Three (Exhibit C): I’m getting back to NYC from Phoenix in time for dinner and a good night’s rest before going back to school tomorrow. The world is being molded to my uses.

In his poem “Saliences,” A.R. Ammons writes, “Where not a single single thing endures, / the overall reassures.” Knowing the overarching why of geometry helps my daughter to persevere as she struggles with hairy geometry proofs beside me on this airplane. She is reassured that there is purpose, a destination, a place to call home somewhere at the end of her journey through the single things: the segments, the angles and the updrafts.

Another metaphor that might help comes from Thoreau, who wrote, “A theme is like clay. It grows under our hands.” Are our students feeling the theme grow under their hands? Or are they helplessly flailing about and losing courage?

To my way of thinking, the stakes are high. We don’t spend time (not to mention minds), we waste it when the coverage gets us through the curriculum but doesn’t build any understanding, and time is our most precious commodity in the classroom.

Here’s the point of this post: big ideas are the Bodhisattvas of curricular design. When invited into the classroom and allowed to organize the thinking therein, the suffering of learners is alleviated. Of this I am persuaded. If you are still skeptical, put it to the test. Open your doors, let the ideas in, serve them tea, and enjoy.