I would like to begin today with a story. It's a story about a distinguished professor - Professor Don Redden - who was giving a talk to a group of students at a tertiary institution just outside Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland. In his presentation, Professor Redden asked his audience a number of questions emanating from some visual aids he had brought with him. Showing first an opaque jar, he put as many rocks as he could into it and asked if it were full. The students answered a very positive 'yes.'
Without saying anything the distinguished academic, now put as many pebbles as he could into the jar and then asked the same question. The response was again 'yes' but there were some reservations on the part of the audience. Professor Redden then filled the jar with sand. On asking the same question, this time there was no response. The professor next added as much water as he could to the jar from a jug. 'Is the jar now full,' he asked. The silence was deafening.
Professor Redden next dissolved salt into the water, over the sand, the pebbles and the rocks. . 'Well, is the jar now full,' he asked. A brave student near the back of the hall broke the silence by answering, with great confidence, 'No,, Professor, no. The jar is not full.' Professor Redden looked around the hall and said, 'Ah, but the jar is full' and with that he invited the audience to do some reflecting-on-action and to consider both the purpose and the meaning of his demonstration. After a moment, he invited the students to offer their interpretations and he allowed each and everyone one of them to speak. When they had finished he thanked them and said that he was not surprised that each of them had their own different interpretations for, he said, each of them was a unique individual, with unique experiences of life.
Finally, he asked them if they would like to know his interpretation of the demonstration. With great enthusiasm they said that they would. 'Well, I will give you my interpretation, then. But remember. My interpretation is no better nor worse than any of yours,' he said looking round the hall as he spoke. 'My interpretation is this: whatever you do in life, whatever the context, always remember to get your rocks in first.' And with that, Professor Redden left the podium.
Well, that's the story. The story will have touched you all in different ways - some of you might be happy with it (after all, many of us like listening to stories) but some of you will almost certainly not be happy. There might be those among you who think that it is a boring story, one that had a disappointing ending - it might even have agitated some of you. Well, there's nothing I can do about that, I'm afraid - that's the way the story goes: the story stands as it stands.
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6 comments:
The story is rather interesting and I think itis very useful to tell such stories because they make students analyse different events in their life.
A.Groznova
I like the story as I think it shows how a teacher can ecourage his students to get involved into the activity, to think and to realise what they do and why they do it. The end of the story made me compare the rocks to our purposes, I mean our teaching purposes. So we can say whatever we teach, whatever the context, remember about the aims first.
A.Plechkova
The story provides some food for thought(reflection:-))).Undoubtedly,it doesn't matter what where and how students study...what is more important-why...rocks are something global and meaningful
The professor is distinguished because he knows what communicative approach is and he can apply method of critical thinking development in class. Besides, he doesn't forget about reflection!
What does he teach? Philosophy?
And to be serious, students won't forget this lecture, I think. They will return to it's meaning all their lives.
The professor involves and provokes them really brilliantly.
But the story illustrates not only the way or the method of teaching. It proves that there are no limits for development. If we think that we are full of knowledge and experience, we can be wrong.
The story is just beautiful!
I guess that Professor Don Redden made a good job of it! The audience was captivated, perplexed, carried away by his experiment... because there was smth. more about it than met the eye, the implication of the experiment was not evident. Each student had to figure it out by himself. And his way to present things appeared to be pretty effective. People got really involved! And this is something that really matters in teaching...
Another important thing is that he treated each student as a unique individual whose opinion and vision of things was not less important than his own interpretation. He cultivated individuality in students, showed respect for their opinion and it gives him credit as a professor.
As far as the experiment itself is concerned, it was absolutely amazing. The audience was involved both emotionally and mentally. I think that by filling the jar with different stuff and asking the students if it was full, professor demonstrated that everything is relative. And the experiment clearly showed it. Everybody had his own vision of the same things. No absolute or perfect things. I mean even when it seems to us that the jar is full enough, still there sure to be some empty space to be filled. And the jar may be regarded as an image. Try to imagine that it’s not actually a jar we are dealing with, but some reservoir, may be something that we associate with human mind potential. Can this potential be really exhausted? Is there any limit? Or there’s always some empty space to be filled...? In other words there's always room for improvement! And mastery of this or that subject is also smth. relative. It is noteworthy that a really intelligent person will never say that his "mental reservoir" is filled up to the brim.
And finally the gist of the experiment. According to Don Redden, whatever you do in life, whatever the context, it’s very important to get your rocks in first. And it's just too true!!! No matter what you are dealing with you have to proceed from fundamental things. There’s no other way to make real progress in smth. The same goes for learning and teaching... it’s essential to make a basis first and then step by step move further obtaining some specific knowledge, little by little filling that "empty space in the jar" if there is any... :)
E. Kiselyova
The story really gives us a lot of food for thought. For our teaching practice it's very important "to get rocks (basis) in first", I think.
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