Re: Talent vs. Credentials or being "adopted" in -- Talking Circle Alternative

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Date Posted: Sat, 11/23/02 10:20pm
Author: sunny
Subject: Re: Talent vs. Credentials or being "adopted" in
In reply to: Steve Russell 's message, "Re: Talent vs. Credentials or being "adopted" in" on Sat, 11/23/02 8:36pm

>Yeah, there's that whole Nietszchean idea that rules
>are meant only for the hoi polloi.

:o) You can't scare me with that Nietszche=Nazi stuff. The poor fellow has gotten a bad rap by being taken out of context, same as implying what the Catholic Church does has anything to do with what ole J.C. was talking about! And as depth psychology, Nietszche's stuff is really quite good, imho -- that evolution of the individual from "the camel" to "the lion" to "the child" is the college experience in a nutshell -- a whole lot better than Freud, at least, lol.

Actually, I finally remembered it was deTocqueville I was thinking of ... the French may have not discovered the Americas as Bella's documentary is claiming, but they have had some interesting things to say about it .... do you suppose he could have forseen the current admin. for example?

Sounds like you've really gone out of your way to take your students wishes into account in evaluations, and I think that's terrific for their morale and trust in you, even if you don't see much difference in the results. I'm not too surprised, really -- I think the biggest gaps in styles of "knowing" would be relevant more at the grade school and h.s. levels [I've seen some schools have adopted journal-writing or a "portfolio" approach that sounds very interesting tho' I've no experience with it myself]. The kids who need a more experiential, visual-spatial, "right-brain" approach have pretty much been weeded out by the college level, I would guess, or at least they're probably not taking criminal justice classes :o) so the differences between those who do or do not like essays, etc. may be just a reflection of those who do or don't like to do more work ....

It was an interesting experiment tho, thanks for sharing the insight. And respecting their wishes surely can't hurt in building rapport. I suspect you are a very good teacher, actually -- sounds like you basically like them as people, and that's half the battle won right there :o)

sunny

>Actually, I notice in my teaching that the better
>students need less direction. When I say "better
>students" I am talking about grades.
>
>One thing I have really changed my mind about.
>
>I always thought different people have different kinds
>of talents that would show up better on different
>kinds of evaluations: essay, oral, multiple guess,
>paper writing. Because I believed that, I always tried to mix up my evaluation methods so that everybody's talent could surface.
>
>Having done it a good long time now, I no longer
>believe it is necessary. Almost invariably, the same
>students come out on top regardless of the method of
>evaluation. I have gone to great lengths to try to
>prove my original opinion, including having other
>people grade stuff that had any discretion to it.
>
>Don't get me wrong, students have pretty clear
>PREFERENCES about how they would like to be evaluated.
> I will always respect their wishes to a great degree.
> But when it comes down to the short strokes, it
>really doesn't matter. They just think it does.
>
>Steve

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Replies:

Re: Talent vs. Credentials or being "adopted" in -- Steve Russell, Sun, 11/24/02 8:11am
- Re: irons in da fire -- tso, Sun, 11/24/02 11:04am
  - Re: irons in da fire -- Steve Russell, Sun, 11/24/02 2:01pm