Another one from the labyrinthe (January of 2009):
Students don’t want to ponder over the structure of language, they want to know what it means. The structure of language is no more interesting to them than the bowl that holds the ice cream is interesting to the enjoyer of desserts. The kids can’t eat the bowl, but they are made to every day in the form of tedious grammar study. After a time, the shards of the bowls start cutting their mouths, and they lose their taste for ice cream.
If people new to storytelling ask us about the major difference between storytelling and other methods, the answer would be that we offer our language students the ice cream and not the bowl. The sadness is that ice cream melts fast in the hot and uncomfortable environments that we call secondary schools.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and