So I bring
the story of Thomas Sudhof,
who shared the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology this year. And who was
his greatest teacher? His bassoon teacher who, in Sudhof’s words,
“taught me that the only way to do something right
is to practice and listen and practice and listen, hours, and hours, and
hours.”
You know,
it may be true. Anyone playing a double reed instrument like the bassoon or the
oboe is openly flirting with madness; at one moment you’re playing music, the
next moment you’re squawking. Oh, and you neither have any control nor any
warning….
And I’m
thinking about teaching, lately, because I did it for a large part of my life.
In fact, I still do it, and like it. My problem, however, is that I had and
have absolutely no idea of what I’m doing—I am perpetually improvising.
Other
teachers know what they’re doing, as I saw yesterday when I was reading a New
York Times article
on schools which are “flipping.” And that is? Well, here’s the Times:
Students
watch teachers’ lectures at home and do what we’d otherwise call “homework” in
class. Teachers record video lessons, which students watch on their
smartphones, home computers or at lunch in the school’s tech lab. In class,
they do projects, exercises or lab experiments in small groups while the
teacher circulates.
Oh, and
guess what? Everybody, for once, is completely on board with this idea! From
the same article:
The
flipped classroom is a strategy that nearly everyone agrees on. “It’s the only
thing I write about as having broad positive agreement,” said Justin Reich, a
fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard who studies
technology and education.
Well,
it’s familiar territory: there’s Marc and there’s the rest of the world.
Because when I saw the video that a flipped teacher had prepared, I was less
than impressed. In fact, I was half appalled. Check it out:
Full disclosure—I am perhaps one of the few people who really enjoys a vigorous discussion of subject / verb agreement. And in fact, the topic drops by for dinner occasionally, usually in the form of Mr. Fernández sputtering about the capricious way that English handles collective nouns. Spanish, of course, is completely logical—all collective nouns in Spanish are singular. But what fun is that?
All
right—about the video. First, the teacher states that singular verbs have an
added “s.”
Little
Marc (seated in second desk, third row—and very cute): I works? You works?
Teacher
(exasperated): No, Marc….
Marc:
But aren’t “I” and “you” singular?
Teacher:
Yes, Marc, but we’re talking about “he /she / it.”
Marc:
Oh, the third person singular in the present simple indicative?
Teacher:
Ummm?
Next,
the teacher discloses a trick—something he calls the “it / they” rule. Big
question: “Tony works” or “Tony work?” Well, we can replace—so sez Teach—“Tony”
with “it.”
Yeah?
Marc:
But isn’t Tony a “he?”
Teacher:
Well, yes, but to make it simpler we’re using just “it.”
Marc:
How does that make it simpler?
Next,
the teacher suggests that we simply count the nouns, using the example “Marc
and Mary”—that’s two, see? Plural.
Marc:
What about the sentence “Neither Marc nor Mary?
Teacher
(nervous—he sees what’s coming): What about it?
Marc:
Well, there are two subjects, but should the verb be singular? You wouldn’t say
“Neither Marc nor Mary work in the mill,” would you?
Then
there’s the problem—the teacher gives it away when he says “that doesn’t sound
right,” in discussing the “it / they” rule.
Marc:
But what if someone doesn’t know what “sounds right?” Maybe he’s never heard it
right, and so he can’t tell what sounds right? Or what if he’s learning English
as a new language?
Teacher:
Well, I think we can assume….
I
hate to say this—no wait, let’s be honest, this causes me no pain whatsoever to
declare—but the teacher in this video doesn’t seem to be too bright. How would
he handle the question that I, even as a child, would have asked?
Marc:
What is a subject, anyway?
Teacher:
Well, the subject performs the action of the verb.
Marc:
What about the passive voice? What about, “the patient is examined by the
medical team?” Is “medical team” the subject?
Teacher:
No, the subject is “the patient.”
Marc:
But is the patient examining?
That
would have lead to the old and mostly true “the subject is the noun before the
verb.” A possibly useful rule of thumb, yes—but it does beg the question.
Maybe
it’s time to do two things. First, I seriously think that we need to
reinstitute Greek and Latin into our schools, and yes, in grade school, when
those young minds can soak up the rigor and the discipline of the languages.
Because then kids will be able to decline nouns and conjugate verbs, which
means that he or she will be able to give an example of the third person
positive singular present perfect active indicative using the verb “to see.”
(“he
has seen” is the answer, by the way….)
Second,
why can’t all kids learn a musical instrument? You know, I’m back to playing
the cello now, and looking at YouTube clips of musicians speaking and coaching. And
guess what? We’re a bright, talented, funny and quick group. And it occurs to
me—have I ever met a stupid musician? If I have, I’ve forgotten him or her.
The
video of the subject / verb agreement has gotten 57,000 hits, and the comments
are almost all positive. Some people say that he’s really helped them. But
check out the video below, of the legendary Dorothy DeLay. Then tell
me…
…who’s
the better teacher?
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