Monday, March 5, 2007
Smart? Or just fast>
Early in the book, Miss Caroline got angry at Scout for being smarter than the other students, saying that being able to read and write cursive was wrong during the first grade. I believe that it is magnificent for a first grader to fluently read and write cursive. Miss Caroline told Scout to stop learning outside of the classroom because she was learning wrong. Do you actually think that you can learn wrong? I mean, if it is helping you read and write, is it wrong? Also, isn't most of student learning done outside the classroom? Sure, they get the basic fundamentals at school, and the tutoring and explanations at school, but you have to learn how to apply it out of the school enviroment. What is you opinion on this matter? What would you do if a teacher or parent told you to stop learning fast and stick with your grade level of learning?
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14 comments:
Well i think the reason why Miss Caroline is so against scout knowing things she has not been taught in school. Miss Caroline just wants to fell important in the way that she teaches the kids everything they will know. Also I would assume she came down to Maycomb thinking that all the kids there were country bumkins, and they are, but they are not stupid. I think that if a kid already knows things when they go to school then they should skip a grade or at least be traeted like they are smarter.
I think that Miss Caroline is just afraid of the kids being smarter then her. She is a really young teacher fresh out of "teacher school" and if the kids aren't learning the exact way she was taught they should she feels like a failure.
I belive that Scout is really smart and that if she need to skip a grade then it is her teachers duty to make sure that she does so. Miss Caroline seems to be a very inexpierenced teacher and I think that maybe she took the job in Maycomb because she thought that it would be easy and also so she could get some expierence for her resume and then she could get a better job somewhere else. I think that the job is proving more difficult for her than she orignially thought it would. If Miss Caroline may need to rethink her career path if she thinks that telling a student that they should not learn or continue to learn reading and writing at home is a good thing to do.
First off, I don't think a person can learn wrongly. People interpret things differently. The school conselors told one of my classes once that there are three kinds of learning. One can learn through hands on activities, or by plainly listening, or by seeing. (At least I think that was what it was.) There have got to be more ways of learning thoughts/things throughout life than just these three ideas. I mean there are life lessons one can learn from. Or are we just discussing school based learning? If so, my bad...
I agree with Pop...in a sense that there are several ways of learning. There is really no right way or wrong way, just whatever works best for the individual. However, I am not so sure that Miss Caroline understands this concept. She is very young and inexperienced and as far as she is concerned her way of learning is the right way. I also think she may feel slightly insulted to think that someone else may have a more effective way of teaching than she does. As for learning outside of the classroom, I think that most of that is common sense and street smarts. Most of the book learning is done in the classroom. However they do kind of go hand in hand because without one it is hard to have the other. Scout is advanced in both of these areas. Like Scout, I would feel offended if a teacher tried to slow down my learning for whatever reason. It would probably push me to learn more just because someone had tried to hold me back.
I think that Miss Caroline is just scared that if Scout is at a higher level than her teaching she isn't doing her job. Therefore, she is telling Scout not to learn outside of school so that she can teach her. Overall, yeah that's stupid but Miss Caroline is a new teacher and I don't think she really knows how to handle the situation. As far as there being a "wrong way" to learn. No, I don't think there is a "wrong way". As Pop said, there are three kinds of learning, I just think it depends on how hard you work at it and how quickly your mind can take it all in.
Yes, Scout is smart and yes she should be taught at a higher level and praised for what she already knows, but at that time in such a small school there was no other option but to do things in a very straight forward manner with everyone on the same level. Today in our school we have different level classes and a variety of activities to accomodate the different ways in which people learn. But even so it isn't perfect. Don't you have a class where it feels like they are teaching the same things every day, you're miles ahead of the other kids and you feel like beating yourself in the head even harder than the teacher is beating that dead horse? Miss Caroline sees every kid at the same level: 6 years old and dumb,in need of her saving grace. But that simply is not right and we know it...Ok I've forgotten my point but, you know? um, anyway...
I think what ichigo is right. Caroline is frustrated because she only believes real teaching comes from school and not from some backwoods folk. Scout should be treated well for having such knowledge without any real schooling.
Benjamin Disraeli, i couldn't have said it any better my self. Scout's genius has been sparked by atticus's day-day routiner of treating his children like adults. because of this the kids feel like they have to live up to atticus's expectation. do you think it is right how atticus is raising his kids?
I think that most of you learning does happen outside of the classroom, but i also think that sometimes people can be taught wrong. Scout wasn't being taught wrong in her case, but sometimes people can turn out to be bad people because of the way their parents acted around them, and they subconsciously learned to behave that way. In Scout's situation though i think that the teacher just didnt know what to do with scout because she recognized that scout was ahead of the rest of the class.
I believe that in order to be a good teacher, Miss Caroline needs to gauge each students abilities and see to them accordingly. So she should find some way to fit Scout's learning needs, instead of trying to hold her back. I think that she should have had more patience with Scout. Maybe Miss Caroline was so cross with her because Scout came on a little too strong and kind of scared her.
I think that it is kind of a threat to Miss Caroline in the way that she might feel that she is not able to teach Scout many things because he already knows a lot! I don't think it is right that she is telling him to stop learning so quickly! There is nothing wrong with having intelligence. Also the kids down in maycomb are probably not very intelligent or even close to as smart as Scout. Scout deserves to be different! Let her shine Miss Caroline!
Some of the things we learn in school will never even apply to our lives, so I think that we do learn the most outside the classroom, through real life experiences.
And if everyone had to stay at the same level of thinking, there would be no challenge for those that are more gifted than others. For example the Eagles(gifted) program we had in grade school- there would be no need for it. Smarter kids can't help the way they think..because their level of thinking is much different than his/her peers. Plus those kids would get insanely bored and get in trouble because they would have nothing better to do, or that's at least what usually happens when advanced kids are put in the wrong class. Also most parents and teachers strive for their children to be intellegent and make something of themselves.
Well said.
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