intimacy

…teachers should teach and accept that they do not necessarily know what it is that children learn from their teaching. This is a form of negative power, refusing to try to know what children learn, accepting that they will learn something of importance to them…...

I have always felt that what I know, think, and understand (my learning) is private and personal, and I want to keep it that way. Perhaps this is why I didn’t engage in education in a way that my teachers wanted! “Anne should participate in class activities.” It is something that I also don’t want to know about any students. I would like to have an understanding with a student when they ask me something like, “How do you tell the time on an analog clock?” that they are asking me a specific thing that I can then show them different ways they could approach learning this – worksheets, physical equipment etc… I would like it if the child felt able to ask others if they didn’t understand my explanation. I am open to them not learning this after my explanation, and unless they want to, I would not test them. If, from my interaction with me, they learned Anne is really into fractions and is pondering dumb things like why 60, and I am not, this is totally valid thing to learn and not something I should test, know…

I like this idea. Excellent.