Bird Droppings July 5, 2012 What is normal?   “Normality in fact has nothing to do with statistics. It refers to a norm, a model of perfection, an example to be followed. It indicates what we should be. Normality is therefore something to strive for, something at which to aim, it is not what most…

Bird droppings July 4, 2012 Do we learn from a ripple or a wave?               I will spend most of the morning digging and planting, transplanting and repotting various flowers and herbs in our yard and also cutting grass now that we have had some rain. I have several in dire need of planting…

Bird Droppings July 3, 2012 Can we really be who we are?   It has been nearly ten years since I was directly involved in Foxfire teaching at Piedmont College. I sat through my own training program which at the time was an experimental approach in the Piedmont Specialist program. One of the reasons I…

Bird Droppings July 2, 2012 A reflection on a pond or window of two   I boxed up a couple of boxes of junk from my class room Saturday. All have been teachable moment items for some time or other collected from my father and mother’s house. My mother had been getting his things sorted…

Bird Droppings July 1, 2012 Learning and teaching are inevitable if we really try   “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.” Dr. Mortimer J. Adler   Dr. Adler founded the Center for the…

Bird Droppings June 29, 2012 Researching Education a bit   With the bulk of education in the early 1900’s following closely the Industrial Revolution and mass production, a few great thinkers took the concept of the individual child in psychology and education in new directions as to its relationship to children. How children were viewed…

Bird Droppings June 28, 2012 Should I even be pondering the idea of faith?   “Modern technology advanced in such tiny increments for so long that we never realized how much our world was being altered, or the ultimate direction of the process. But now the speed of change is accelerating logarithmically. It is apparent…

Bird Droppings June 27, 2012 Should we be trying to fill a liter bottle?               The current educational trends are analogous to trying to pour five gallons of material into a liter bottle using a funnel. As you try obliviously a large portion of material spills out and is discarded or lost. I use…

Bird Droppings June 26, 2012 What am I doing looking for clues?   We all enjoy mysteries and trying to solve the secret before the end of the movie or novel. We all seem to go through life looking for the one big clue and answer to all of the mysteries that surround us. I…

Bird Droppings June 25, 2012 Is it about what we know?   “The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.” Booker T. Washington   I have spent the better part of two weeks up on Black Rock Mountain…