QotD, musings

[drwex]

This passed across my screen today:

The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize 'inconvenient' facts

The speaker is Max Weber, turn-of-the(last)-century German sociologist and economist. If you don't understand why America is so materialistic you haven't read enough Weber.

I think the quote applies outside of teaching. It's kind of a nice summation of much of how I look at life.

Much elided here. Need thinking. Commentary welcome.

Comments

At What Stage of Learning?

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

It really depends on the stage of development of the pupil. Given that I have a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old, it first becomes necessary to teach them which facts are relevent to what they're looking at.

What Weber is talking about is a refinement of this: there exist relevent facts which should not be overlooked or dismissed.

But right now, I'm still getting my kids to overlook irrelevent facts. They haven't yet got to the point where they can trim the world down to what they need to address an issue.