Winter Patriot Community Blog

In my various forays into higher education over the many years, I always run into the dreaded practice of lecturers dividing students up into teams to undertake projects. I have hated it with a passion for all the reasons that the five legged stool exemplifies.
Leadership/authority matched together with responsibility/accountaility is problematical at best in most business situations and totally unworkable in these classroom type situations. But the lecturers persist with them anyway. No doubt for their own reasons or simply from a lack of imagination or observation or an equal lack of an inquiring mind. Or all of the above!

And I had better not start on the subject of believing in things that have simply been repeated ad nauseum till they become 'accepted wisdom'
Accepted, certainly, but wisdom, hardly.

It Is surprising how much we can learn from our children, especially about ourselves. And it doesn't end once they grow up and leave the nest.

I too, always hated the group projects. If memory serves me, I generally ended up doing the bulk of the work. And it was the same when my kids were going through school.

Your stories about your children reminded me of my youngest when she was a toddler. We had a rule that you needed to eat most of your supper before you got any dessert. If she didn't like her supper, she wouldn't eat it. She would leave it on her plate or throw it overboard for the dog. If you reminded her there wouldn't be any dessert if she didn't finish some of it, she would simply state, "I ate it." No amount of pointing out the evidence to her, that the food was still sitting on her plate, would make a difference. She would continue to say that she had eaten it. Needless to say, she could become very insistent that her version of the truth was the correct one despite all the evidence in front of her. Seems to me, a lot of the public takes a similar tact.

I am enjoying having you back blogging, Winter.

Very happy to see you again!
Tomas Helander