bellevuebully
5th June 2010, 03:19 PM
I have an 8 year old in grade three who's learning the differences of pioneer times vs. modern times. The teacher had them draw a pair of overlapping circles and asked them to write "pioneer' in one circle and "modern" in the other circle, and in the middle overlapping area, she had them write 'commom' and asked them to classify a list of life aspects in the appropriate space.
When the teacher got to my daughter and looked at her chart she obviously thought she misunderstood the instructions. In the common space she had classified water, food, shelter, heating and cooking.
The teacher, trying to correct her perception, got a lesson in that not everyone in the world today lives like an urbanite. She explained to the teacher that we don't need water from the town because we have our own well water. Then the teacher said, "but you get all of your food from a grocery store in town". My kid told her that all the red meat and fish in our house comes from the bush and only chicken and pork are purchased, and that dad grows all of our potatoes, carrots and summer vegetables.
Determined to set her straight, the teacher rebutted that shelter was in the wrong spot, because we bought our house. Only to stand corrected. My daughter explained that dad built the house himself, and that the cottage was not only built by me, but that all of the timber was logged, and milled on site.
Not to be proven wrong, the teacher took a last shot at contesting the heating and cooking, stating that pioneers didn't use delivered petro products to heat their homes and that cooking was not done in an oven. Once again, she was informed that we heat with wood and that we can, preserve and smoke a certain amount of fish/meat.
It was a good exercise for both the teacher and the student. It gave my daughter a chance to realize something that she took for granted because that is all she ever knew, and the teacher (hopefully) realized that not everything in the world is congruent with her little world. I kind of felt sorry for the kid when she was telling me the story. Here she was matter-of-factly connecting the dots, and this teacher, due to her own ignorance, was trying to discredit everything she was saying. I explained to her that because the teacher encountered a situation she was not expecting and did not understand, she didn't really know how to respond. I was pretty proud of how my daughter held her ground because she knew she was in the right.
Just something I thought I'd share.
When the teacher got to my daughter and looked at her chart she obviously thought she misunderstood the instructions. In the common space she had classified water, food, shelter, heating and cooking.
The teacher, trying to correct her perception, got a lesson in that not everyone in the world today lives like an urbanite. She explained to the teacher that we don't need water from the town because we have our own well water. Then the teacher said, "but you get all of your food from a grocery store in town". My kid told her that all the red meat and fish in our house comes from the bush and only chicken and pork are purchased, and that dad grows all of our potatoes, carrots and summer vegetables.
Determined to set her straight, the teacher rebutted that shelter was in the wrong spot, because we bought our house. Only to stand corrected. My daughter explained that dad built the house himself, and that the cottage was not only built by me, but that all of the timber was logged, and milled on site.
Not to be proven wrong, the teacher took a last shot at contesting the heating and cooking, stating that pioneers didn't use delivered petro products to heat their homes and that cooking was not done in an oven. Once again, she was informed that we heat with wood and that we can, preserve and smoke a certain amount of fish/meat.
It was a good exercise for both the teacher and the student. It gave my daughter a chance to realize something that she took for granted because that is all she ever knew, and the teacher (hopefully) realized that not everything in the world is congruent with her little world. I kind of felt sorry for the kid when she was telling me the story. Here she was matter-of-factly connecting the dots, and this teacher, due to her own ignorance, was trying to discredit everything she was saying. I explained to her that because the teacher encountered a situation she was not expecting and did not understand, she didn't really know how to respond. I was pretty proud of how my daughter held her ground because she knew she was in the right.
Just something I thought I'd share.