Anti-government protesters prepare catapult that will fire flaming debris. Image from Al Jazeera English.This ID is of an undercover security officer who tried to start a fight, he was apprehended but not hurt, however, he said he was paid to come and start trouble. (via Al Jazerra English)
Anti-government protesters, who’ve been occupying Tahrir Square for the last week, fought off pro-government protesters yesterday in a vicious turn to the insurrection in Egypt. The army stood out of the way, and the police were no where to be found, except for reports that some captured pro-government rioters had police identification cards on them.
Although there was some shooting, the battle was mostly fought with impromptu weapons: rocks, Molotov cocktails, knives, and swords. Then there were the horses, camels and catapults.
Pro-government camel-man charges photographer and anti-government protesters. (via the Daily Dish)
A number of horsemen were pulled off by the anti-government portesters and beaten (WARNING: the video below is quite vicious).
A main street leading into Tahrir Square by the Egyptian Museum was completely covered in broken rocks, which had been used as weapons. (via Al Jazeera English).
What happens when you’re arrested by the state security service. (warning: contains one quote with vulgar language)
UPDATE: We just watched the video over lunch, and it actually resulted in a very good discussion. Our morning novel discussions have been useful here, in helping us see the multiple perspectives of the actors in the street protests: the protesters and the police. After all, the police have families too.
I gave a little spiel at the beginning, to set the stage and to point out the potentially historical nature of these protests. Democracy spreading through the middle east has huge implications for a country fighting two wars in the region; not to mention the blowback from these conflicts.
The truth of the anger of the protesters in the video seemed to resonate, making poignant what could have appeared farcical. The music and the Kennedy quote also helped my students identify with these events in such a far off place.
We also touched on the role of the U.S. in supporting the Mubarak government, and the potential of the uprising to lead to an anti-US, muslim fundamentalist government (via the Muslim Brotherhood). We still need to talk about what the US should and can do to support democracy in this situation, which is so full of conflicting imperatives.
Teasing can be a way to diffuse embarrassing situations, but its effect depends very much on the context and the culture. The outstanding question is how we differentiate positive teasing among friends from verbal attempts to bully. Part of the answer to this question lies in the effect: does the teasing contribute to group cohesion, or does it isolate and exclude?
The innate will to learn is the basic premise of the Montessori philosophy. So we emphasize giving students the freedom to explore the Montessori works, and allow them the time an space to teach each other, rather than intervening all the time. I know I find it hard to shut up sometimes and let them make the obvious mistakes, but they learn so much better that way.
Sugata Mitra wondered what would happen if you gave a computer to bunch of developing-world kids and let them use it as they would. As with Montessori, it turns out that the kids learn a lot, especially because they end up teaching each other.
Mitra’s TED talk is quite interesting in that it’s amazing just how much students will learn from a computer, even if unmediated by a teacher, if you just let them at it. Based on this work, he wants to add more computers and more unmediated spaces, all around the world. I think it’s a good idea.
In middle school we don’t have all the Montessori works students use in pre-Kindergarten through Upper Elementary. Students and their studies are getting more abstract. Instead, there are lots of individual and group projects. I like to view it as a set of apprenticeships: learn to be a scientist, learn to be an author, learn to be a geographer, and so on. One of the key questions I juggle is how “real” should their projects be. Should I give them a basic assignment and have them figure out the questions on their own, or should I point them toward specific resources, like chapters in the textbook. The answer is somewhere in between, but there is a constant tension. I also just try to mix it up a bit.
At any rate, Mitra’s work is interesting and I think its long-term results will probably affect the way we teach Montessori middle schools.
The group OK Go set up an excellent Rube Goldberg machine for their music video, This Too Shall Pass. Thanks to Sage B. for pointing this one out to me. She’ll probably get to see it again next year when we get into physics and electricity and they need a little inspiration for their own machines.
Last year I used Honda’s The Cog advertisement, which is much simpler (and shorter) than OK Go’s.
If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’re not going to be creative. But when do we give kids the chance to be wrong. Ken Robinson’s argument in this TED talk, is that schools are designed to produce workers good at automatic tasks and bad at creative, heuristic ones. This may have worked well during the industrial revolution, but is painfully deficient in the modern world. It’s the same argument made by Daniel Pink in Drive.
Robinson is a most entertaining speaker, so the presentation is a joy to watch. It’s a great reminder that we need to foster some risk-taking, and students need to know that sometimes the ultimate consequence of failure is learning.
