Wednesday, September 15, 2010

"What is this GOOD for?"

When I was a student I often asked why something was important to learn, but my teachers rarely had good answers.

When I was a teacher, I was asked those things too.

Then one day, the question came phrased a new and better way: "What is this GOOD for?" The answer I gave then changed my life and thinking. I said quickly "So you can get more jokes." I think we were reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet at the time. I could've gone into literature and history and fine arts, but the truth is that the best and most immediate use of most random learning is that it illuminates the world. The more we know, the more jokes we will get.



The larger paragraph above is from:
To Get More Jokes
or
"Thinking and Learning and Bears"
by Sandra Dodd, 2007

3 comments:

  1. Someone wrote "Never understood this picture... is it a banana and a superwoman? Thats Marty right? and the girl?"

    The picture is on the webpage. It's Sadie Yurista and Kirby Dodd, both unschooled, dressed up for some party a few years back. Kirby is being a moment from Family Guy. Brian the dog dresses up in a banana suit and sings, shaking maracas. So Kirby was dressed as a dog in a banana suit.

    Prior knowledge helped. I didn't have it, at the time, but all the kids his age did.

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