Education: On what is relevant what is not

Education: On what is relevant what is not

Janpha Thadphoothon Ed D

The genesis of the title comes from the many bewilderments I have had on several educational issues, including this recent one. This recent puzzlement is this --- what should be taught to the students or what the students should learn and master. Simple and straight forward as it may appear, many of us get into it and may not realize how complex and ancient the issue has been around in the academia.

Some academics argue for the practicality of what should be mastered. Weed out what is irrelevant and only focus on what is essential. But this belief and conviction has several flaws. I once talked to a university lecturer about this. She told me that calculus and the like is not necessary for business students. "What's the use of calculus?" I asked her, 'but what should they learn?' She said "mathematics is okay, but not calculus." She added, "they won't need it."

Even though I was not a math teacher, I was stunned and uneasy by such the belief. Another example is from my own experience. Recently, may literature courses have been either been ignored and put aside as outdated subjects. They argue that literature does not have any relevance to the modern world. Surely, the fail to appreciate the fact that literature is the mirror of one's society.

This linear thinking paradigm is spreading wide and fast. What's wrong with this? Many may wonder. Isn't it natural and commonsense that we should only learn what will be needed in the future in our workplace? The obvious flaw in this assertion lies in its flaw to assume the existence of a static future. The future is slippery. Factors beyond control are abundant. The cheese might have been moved or the rules might be changed.

A seasoned professor of education has this to note: Teachers, nowadays, cannot tell their students what will happen what what they students will be doing. In short, they do not know the future. In fact, nobody does. The best bet teachers can do is to help the students to become what he calls 'self-taught learner' - a person who is capable of teaching him or herself.

Sadly, many do not regard calculus and literature as thinking-enable subjects or sciences. The future-oriented pedagogy or education-for-the-future mentality is perhaps counterproductive. Literature, like history, cannot be overlooked or ignored.

การใช้เครื่องหมาย Hyphens และ Dashes

การใช้เครื่องหมาย Hyphens

เครื่องหมาย (-) หรือ Hyphens  คือ เครื่องหมายวรรคตอนประเภทหนึ่ง เป็นขีดสั้นๆ ใช้คั่นคำที่มีความเกี่ยวข้องกัน เช่น 

an up-to-date magazine นิตยสารที่ทันสมัย 

a one-way ticket

a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

an off-campus apartment

state-of-the-art design

เราใช้ Hyphens เมื่อไร

1. Use to form multiple-word adjectives

This is a one-way street.

2. บางครั้งเราสามารถใช้สร้างคำยาว ๆ ได้ เช่น

She’s a two-year-old child.

3. ใช้ในการสร้างคำนามผสม เช่น

I love chocolate-covered peanuts.

4. ไม่ต้องเติม s หลัง Money, distance, or time เช่น

We had a five-minute break.

I went for a five-mile run.

He gave me a hundred-dollar bill.

5. ใช้คั้นการเขียนจำนวนตั้งแต่ 21-99 เช่น

thirty-five children

one thousand two hundred twenty-seven dollars

I changed my diet and became a no-meater.

the friendly-looking dog

a family-owned café

การใช้เครื่องหมาย Dashes (---)

เครื่องหมาย Dash จะยาวกว่า เครื่องหมาย Hyphen ดังนั้นจึงนิยมขีดให้ยาวๆ เช่น I went to see her --- but she had gone.

She offered him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity --- he refused it.

1. ใช้แนะนำรายการ เช่นเดียวกับหน้าที่ของ  colon (:) เช่น

She bought many things---sugar, chilies, bananas, and honey.

2. ใช้ทำหน้าที่เช่นเดียวกับเครื่องหมายวงเล็บ ( ) เช่น
His father --- whom we met yesterday --- was a WWII veteran.

3. 2. ใช้ทำหน้าที่เช่นเดียวกับเครื่องหมาย ; หรือ semicolon เช่น

Tim couldn't go to the party; his car broke down again. 

Tim couldn't go to the party --- his car broke down again. 

Let's have a productive and refreshing vacation

Having a long holiday or a vacation is blessing; it's even more so if we can make it 'joyful and productive'. How so? Dorie Clark argues that 'a productive vacation' is more desirable. Read her article and find out how and why.

"How to Take a Productive Yet Refreshing Vacation"

Dorie Clark, JUNE 04, 2015

Some people will bristle at the seemingly oxymoronic notion of a “productive vacation.” But as an entrepreneur for the past decade, if I’m going to take a vacation at all, it needs to be productive — otherwise, without the safety net of paid vacation days and coworkers to cover for me, I might as well keep working. That’s not to say I don’t take lengthy, enjoyable vacations; I previously wrote for HBR about my month-long, unplugged sojourn traveling in India. But we all have limited time off, so we have to choose wisely. Here’s how I balance having a productive yet refreshing vacation.

Define success upfront. Some might ask: Why should you define a successful vacation? Isn’t just relaxing enough? Maybe. But as an executive or entrepreneur, you probably have success metrics in most other areas of your life. You know the sales target you need to hit, and how much you need to raise for the charity board you’re involved with, and you may even have personal success goals, like having dinner with your family every night. Especially if you’re trapped in the typical American situation of only two weeks’ vacation per year — much of which we don’t take — it pays to know upfront what success looks like in a vacation, so you don’t end up frittering away limited time. Your goal may be to reconnect with your spouse, spend quality time with your kids, catch up on reading, kickstart a new fitness regimen, make progress on a novel you’re writing, or literally just vegetate. Any of those are worthy goals, but they should be articulated upfront so you can prioritize them.

Choose a destination that does double duty. A few years back, I was dating someone who desperately wanted to go to Hawaii. Her perfect vision was a cabin in Kauai, reading and painting on the beach. That sounds great, but at that point in my career, having just finished writing my first book, Reinventing You, I didn’t need a quiet retreat — I needed to be networking. So we went to her other favorite destination, Paris, where (out of a two-week vacation) I could spend a half-day in business meetings at HEC-Paris, which rendered part of our vacation tax-deductible and led to a teaching contract.

YOU AND YOUR TEAM

Vacation: Make the most of your time away.

Make time to rekindle old connections. It’s impossible to cordon off “work” and “life.” We experience the downside of these blurred lines every day, as coworkers and clients assume we’re reachable 24/7 thanks to our smartphones. We might as well leverage the upside by building real, meaningful, gratifying relationships with our business contacts while we’re away from the office. I just spent the last 3 ½ weeks traveling the country, giving talks at bookstores and corporations to launch my new book. But in between, I made sure to load up my schedule with dinners and coffees with friends — and by “friends,” I often mean current or potential business contacts whom I enjoy spending time with. In the past week alone, I’ve dined with a podcaster who’s had me on his show, a former boss from 15 years ago who now runs a large nonprofit, a woman I profiled in Stand Out, and a business owner who hosted the San Francisco launch party for my first book. I had a blast, and reignited dormant ties, which is one strategy for maximizing the value of your vacation.

Vacation time is meant to be refreshing, so you can arrive back at work with renewed vigor. But that doesn’t mean you can’t also be productive, cementing important connections, meeting people in strategic new locations, and achieving the goals that are most important to you.

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategist and professional speaker who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She is the author of Reinventing You and Stand Out.

Source: https://hbr.org/2015/06/how-to-take-a-productive-yet-refreshing-vacation

Questions

1.       According to Dorie Clark, is it possible to be productive when you are on vacation?

2.       What are some of the things we can do when we have a vacation?

3.       What is the first thing we should do to make our vacation ‘productive’?

4.       Why did the author (Dorie Clark) choose Paris instead of Hawaii for her vacation?

What does 

สงกรานต์ ในบริบทของอาเซียน (Songkran in the ASEAN Context)

Did you know that Songkran (Thai) and Thingyan (Burmese) are actually the same word with the same meaning?

สงกรานต์ กับ Thingyan คือ คำเดียวกัน

Brain Research and ELT

Brain is important.