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Knowledge is the Key: How to Learn and Study (Workshop)

Dawn Baird, Partner — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:00:12 +0000

Are you frustrated no one ever showed you how to learn? This workshop will teach you the skills of study. How do you ‘speed read’? Are there writing conventions and guidelines?

How do you influence, argue and analyse when reasoning? What is the value of learning styles, mind maps and memory techniques? This workshop is for lifelong learners and students of all sorts.

We are running a workshop on Saturday, 01 May at 09:30-16:30 at QUB. Speaker: Allen Baird.

To book a place, phone the School of Education (Open Learning) on 028 9097 3539/3323 or email openlearning.education@qub.ac.uk.

Never Mind the Three Rs – What About The Three Cs?

Dawn Baird, Partner — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:00:38 +0000

So I’m sick to death of hearing about the golden age of learning when pupils were taught the ‘3 R’s’ of reading, writing and arithmetic… even though only one of them starts with ‘r’. So much for the golden age.

I’ve got a better idea. What about the ‘3 C’s’ of comprehension, calculation and confidence?

Comprehension is more important than spelling or grammar, because it deals with meaning, with ideas, which should be what language is all about. It’s not an end in itself; its purpose is to carry thought from one brain to another. I had a teacher who made us memorise multi-syllablled words when we had no notion of their sense or significance. What a complete and painful waste of time!

Calculation because there’s no need for us to learn dreary times tables anymore. We’ve got calculators. Let’s teach kids how to use them. Teaching kids tables is like training a soldier to use a crossbow – interesting but useless.

Then there’s confidence. The National Education Trust made the dazzling insight recently that some pupils don’t get on in school because they’re too shy to ask questions or make contributions. They’re offering to teach such pupils basic skills in ‘confidence and resilience’ to help them participate in the learning process. By raising their self-esteem, it enables shy pupils to interact in group activities and overcome the fear of being wrong.

Fabulous! I wish I’d such help when I was at school. But I’m glad now that someone is taking the ‘confidence-as-skill’ idea seriously enough to introduce it to schools from the earliest age.

Confidence is essential for the whole of life and should be taught throughout the school system. As it is now, confidence seems to be the reserve of the (conventionally) clever pupils i.e. those who are successful exam-passing machines. The rest of us can rot, as far as traditional education is concerned.

Well maybe its time for a revolution in education! Anyone up for it, comrades?

Sensei » school

Knowledge is the Key: How to Learn and Study (Workshop)

Are you frustrated no one ever showed you how to learn? This workshop will teach you the skills of study. How do you ‘speed read’? Are there writing conventions and guidelines?

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Never Mind the Three Rs – What About The Three Cs?