xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
Andy scrobe:
i found what you wrote terrifically interesting - for me a multiple
series of "ahahs" - thank you.
>
>
>
>In short, in childhood, the money relation exists on the periphery of her
>world, but it is the periphery that leads to the real world, the world
>outside of family and teachers, the world into which she will one day
>"grow
>up".
this comment about the 'real world' or money relationships being on a
child's periphery struck me so directly - like the obverse of Lave &
Wenger's notion that one is on the periphery of an activity, moving more
into greater and greater participation - yet the way you've described it
from the participant's - the individual's - perception, it is the
activity that is peripheral - i like this - especially as a classroom
teacher - it also for me reflect's on a batesonian notion of context
being so critically important in perception and activity.
>
>
> It is ironically mostly among
>poor kids that this kind of street education is found; kids from well-off
>households don't have to do odd jobs, swap trinkets for cash and so, and
>approach the conception of value by a different route.
this interests me too - mostly because while the research i've read
supports this position that it's street kids who get 'hands on education'
(forgive the jargon), yet there is something about, again, cultural
context since the kids in my classroom while poor don't actually have very
much experience with money at all - and this may be that they're not poor
enough, they don't have to work on the streets - instead they're at
school.
>
>
>: money is the symbol through which she may make sense of
>the world beyond.
my kids are beginning to make sense of this as third graders - one
student revealed that last october on halloween when she went
trick-or-treating that she and her family drove to another neighborhood
labeled "snob-hill" because the treats there were of a higher quality and
when the inhabitants ran out of candy to give one then they produced money.
>
>
somewhere you asserted that the poor students can learn to do well with
math if the teacher is able to incorporate the child's knowledge about
street education & money.
this is of course true in the teaching of any subject regardless of the
child's economic status.
>
>Does this make sense?
>
>
well, for me, Andy, it all made lots of sense.
phillip
* * * * * * * *
* *
The English noun "identity" comes, ultimately, from the
Latin adverb "identidem", which means "repeatedly."
The Latin has exactly the same rhythm as the English,
buh-BUM-buh-BUM - a simple iamb, repeated; and
"identidem" is, in fact, nothing more than a
reduplication of the word "idem", "the same":
"idem(et)idem". "Same(and) same". The same,
repeated. It is a word that does exactly what
it means.
from "The Elusive Embrace" by Daniel
Mendelsohn.
phillip white
third grade teacher
doctoral student http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~hacms_lab/index.htm
scrambling a dissertation
denver, colorado
phillip_white@ceo.cudenver.edu
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