differences that make a difference
Bob Potter's Page
Gifts Received
Bob Potter has not received any gifts yet
Profile Information
- Where do you live?
- In a rural area. What means this question?
- Are you a teacher or student?
- No - Other
- If you're not a teacher or student, what do you do for a living?
- I was both technically a student and then a teacher, but now I am technically retired. I open checks for a living, if that word pertains only to money.
- What interests do you have that others might wish to contact you about?
- General semantics, Julian Jaynes, Model A Fords, the stock market, poetry.
- If you could have a front row ticket to any sporting event, concert, theater, or event, what would you choose?
- Neville Dickey and Bob Seeley on dual pianos
- What well-known living persons would you like to meet during Happy Hour?
- Poets Ted Kooser and Billy Collins.
About
Badge
© 2009 Created by Steve Stockdale on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
Comment Wall (2 comments)
You need to be a member of ThisIsNotThat to add comments!
Join this Ning Network
Thank you for your very interesting comments, Bob. As I read your remarks about the stasis in public education my first thought turned out to be quite similar to yours -- go to the private schools. Montessori is rather fixed in stone, don't you think? But there are private schools in our neighborhood, Farragut Academy, and others that may be interested. By the way this "monument" is not mine in origin, it was written by Frank Gastner. I just convinced him to go online and give the curriculum away at a very small price to Camp Kids (Summer Programs). I'm helping him peddle it, because I think it's great!
Frank decided to give the material away free online -- most people don't respect what they get for free -- so I think he ought to charge a small fee. He does charge $19.95 if he has to burn a CD and send it -- but that's just a break-even price.
Thanks for your care of the cemetery stones at Lime Rock. I'm about 1000 miles away, or I'd help too. I talk to Maxine Mallach in Lime Rock practically every week, but she's too crippled up to get out of the house and down to the cemetery. She's limited to her house with a walker. I phone Ralph Hamilton too out in Nevada, He's 89 and still in good shape -- but he never gets out of the house any more, and he doesn't have a computer. So I phone him and write letters and send photographs. I treasure the few friends I still have left, but I also make new friends among the 'youngsters'. Amazing that there are about three distinct GS generations since AK (1st generation), and the fourth generation is powering up now.
You don't have to worry about it Bob. We all fade away eventually. Thanks for caring.
I'm still teaching mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and doing research. I'm almost 80 but I still go swimming and lifting (light) weights and walking to keep me in shape and keep the weight down. I don't plan to retire --they'll have to carry me out of the classroom --feet first and highly 'coagulated'. In the fall I go bicycling with my sons, in Virginia along a "rails to trails" path, which is downhill all eighteen miles. The boys drop me off at the bottom, and they go for a fifty mile ride, leaving me napping in the camping tent.
Bob Potter wrote:
> Bob Potter has sent you a message on ThisIsNotThat.
>
> David,
> I was in the middle of sending you a proper and well-deserved reply to your request for comment on the "monument." But somehow, I happened to hit the wrong key (all this electronic stuff is my wife's fun, so she's in charge) and all my message vanished from the screen. So-- since this might happen again -- here is an abbreviated version:
> Your material: well informed, creative, etc
> My comptetency to comment: taught Jr. High, HS, and then college, also wrote MAKING SENSE ,which I think is (or now was, after a 20+year sale) the only commercially offered GS (somewhat -- we couldn't sneak too much past the publishers) secondary school text ever available. (Did I send you one as promised? Let me know.)
> David, the problem is not with the offerings (for the sake of argument and probably corrent, yours), but with the great imposing, locked and sealed
> doors of the possible classroom: teacher ineptitude, first, and administrative indifference to whatever in other's minds does't make a difference.
> After a great start on a teaching career, I went into publishing, and therefore got to spend 16 years on a Board of Education (most as chair or other responsible position). One of our goals as a board, over several years, was to include some material that might challenge the brighter kids that were in general bored as hell with the curricular pace. No luck. Sadly, the main concerns with elementary schoool teachers are so pressing that they have little time left for "outsiders" who want to complicate their lives with " stuff" they can see no reason for. (Survey after survey shows that these education majors rank at the bottom of college class majors. But I have no problem with that: What person planning on over a few years of this would continue? Those people teaching early education have gifts we do not entirely understand, and those of us "intellectuals" who might be critical probably do not even approach comphehension of their inborn skills. I really mean that. A wonderful second-grade teacher, with all the kids right with her, might not be the kind of person whose mind is not retrofitted to accommodate something new called GS. Also, there are two kids in day care, a husband tired from work to cope with, etc. etc. )
> So this is not to blame teachers. They do what we would find impossible. But that also negates any imposed curriclum from above. (Teachers do not understand the GS why or even that that controls the what.) I think, David, that the time has come to find a private school, one that has a leader, first, and a teaching staff at least amenable to considering the why and the what.
> Kendig, when at the Barstow (?) School in Kansas City, focused her GS material on 8th graders. With today's sophistication, that might be 7th. Anyhow, we have all these studies showing that GS in the curriculum does so much good, but most of them controlled studies leading to a master's or doctorate for some individual, not that anything permanent and helpful might have happed in the schools used.
>
> So, in my experience, public schools are out. Teachers might be ordered to present the lessons provided, but they would not have a real understanding of -- or cuoriosity about or interest in -- the WHY. With the increasing affluence and more and more troubles with the public schools, at least in this part of the country, private schools are booming. They must be in competition. There must be room there for some acceptance of a curriculum such as yours, first as a selling point then as an absolute winner.
> David, I'm not that computer savy, but please pass this on to whomever. I've sighned into this web thing, but don't expect to be very active. There are other concerns in my life right now. But last fall, I did go up to Lime Rock and spend about two hours cleaning the lichen, etc., off the tombstones of M and Ms AK., so the names are at least visible, and the dates. A few feet to the north are Kendig and Gates (I love it that Gates' tombstone has significantly tilted toward the west), with the lichen and moss nearly taken over. Charlotte used to clean up these things. Give me some encouragement!
>
> Bob Potter
I have left a Forum question about Cognitive Education and Communication for K-12. Your comments would be most valuable.
All the Best, David