I'm just waiting for the invention of the completely invisible cordless ipod headphone

[cimorene]

The last two weeks of classes have been some of the most boring hours of my life, I think.

Of course, basic knowledge of health and healthcare is a must for anyone filling a job description which deals largely with helping the disabled. Sure. But did we really need to spend over half an hour learning for the millionth time in our lives that tobacco and alcohol are bad? Did we have to have what an allergy is explained in detail lasting for about ten minutes? I'm not talking about the kind of potentially-interesting detail you could find in a high-school or higher-level biology textbook: this was basic Allergy 101 shit, the stuff I've known since before I can remember, the stuff that everyone already knew when Health was a required class back in high school.

For the first part of the lecture I was suffering in the resigned belief that everyone was just as bored as I was and that everything was equally unnecessary and completely devoid of new information for everyone (the only new information I gained in those three hours, in fact, was how to operate a single-use insulin injector, which took about 3 minutes).

But I was disabused of this notion when the lecturer asked if we all knew the difference between benign and malignant tumors and the woman behind me said she didn't and asked what they were. At this point, it seems quite possible that someone in the room didn't know that allergies can be potentially fatal, or that allergic reactions are caused by the immune system. Possibly even someone didn't know that alcohol is bad for the liver or that people with developmental disorders should be treated by the medical system as fully worthwhile human beings.

Comments

[laughingrat]

That's exactly it. There is a lot of real, genuine ignorance out there.

[cimorene]

;_;

[mecurtin]

One of the educational changes I think most worthwhile is that my kids get "pre-assessments" before they begin a unit in e.g. math, so teacher & students have a clue what baseline they're going in with and how much they actually learn during the course.

You maybe should have placed out of this course at the pre-assessment level, but it looks like *some* of the people actually NEED it.

lol, is that your official Dippy Hugbert icon? so worthy.

[cimorene]

The Dippy Hugbert course is supposed to be like that but it would be kind of a lot of trouble for me to find out in advance what each individual lecture will contain, in detail. Also, I mean, there are things I don't know about, like, epilepsy, and diabetes, and things like that, so if I looked at a description of last night's lecture I probably would have thought "Okay, but if I became the assistant for a kid with epilepsy I would want to know more about epilepsy than I do!" and would have decided to go, thinking that they would tell us about it in more depth and more with an eye to how they work from day to day. (To be fair, there was a tiny amount of that kind of thing, like the fact that during a fit epileptics may bleed from the mouth due to biting the tongue, or that in the event of an anaphylactic shock you should call 112 right away - it just was the stuff that was so basic I already knew it.)

[marshtide]

Amazing. In that "both boring and terrifying" kind of way.

[cimorene]

I keep thinking I'll never get these hours back.

Wow.

[sherrold]

I honestly don't know if that's better or worse than my current classroom hell. I'm taking wordworking from a guy who's been doing it for years, but has no information design/teaching skills whatsoever.

Here's 20 minutes of my class: He wanders over to the table saw. Says 8 random bullets points about the table saw -- no order of importance. No order at all. Wanders to another tool. Spews some random comments. Wanders back to the table saw. Repeats two of his previous comments while making five more. Can't tell if the two repeated ones are actually more important or not.

If I knew anything about these tools, and didn't fear losing an important body part, I would have completely given up trying to glean information from him. But the stakes are higher here than in most of my classwork, so I'm struggling to put his comments back together in some order. I'm tempted, in fact, to give him my notes at the end of class, so he'd have them in some kind of order.

Hmm, having written all of that, I think you have it worse; I'm despairing for me and him; you're having to despair for all ofthe people in your class who should *know* that stuff.

Or, in short: good luck.

Re: Wow.

[cimorene]

Hahhahahahah. Thanks XD

That does sound like a special kind of hell, though, since ignorance of wood-working tools could lead to much more concrete physical injury...