Just last week was \u201cMeet the Teacher\u201d night at our local elementary school. This was the opportunity for the faculty and staff to introduce themselves to all the parents in town and to show off a little bit. It was a great night and the school did not disappoint. All the parents who showed were able to see some of the new construction that happened over the summer. We were able to see some of the new tech improvements. We even had the opportunity to tour our children\u2019s classrooms. But the most amazing part of the night was learning from the teachers how they plan to teach each different subject.<\/p>\n
Literacy was a focal point. Large portions of the morning will focus on creative writing, putting together critical thoughts, spelling. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, play a key part in the afternoon. But the way math will be taught was what fascinated me the most.<\/p>\n
I remember math in elementary school as being memorization. Flash cards, or Mad Minutes, would appear in front of my face and I would have to answer \u201c4+4=?\u201d and give the answer \u201c8\u201d as quickly as I possibly could. The same would be for subtraction, multiplication and division. The competition of answering the question before my peers was the motivation for learning. The faster I could spit out the reply, the more accolades I received. This is how I learned elementary math.<\/p>\n
This is not how children at the local elementary school are going to learn math. The teacher walked us stunned parents through new processes where instead of asking discussing \u201c4+4=8\u201d the question posed to the students would be, \u201cIn how many different ways can we creatively get to the number 8?\u201d In this model \u201c2+2+2+2\u201d would be correct. So would \u201c11-3.\u201d Many of us looked at one another in shock and pleasant surprise, knowing that this new method would better teach our children a more complete understanding of math and numbers.<\/p>\n
The idea of a \u201cnew way of learning\u201d is what struck me throughout Adler and Van Doran\u2019s How to Read a Book<\/em>. Sure I have been reading for years, (poetry and fiction being my favorite) but this text lifts up a new way to synthesize material that helps a reader better understand in a way that is more complex than just memorization. Different methods, or types of reading are described and the method that struck me the most was the fourth style (which is clearly the most advanced) titled syntopical reading. A reader here delves into a certain topic by reading numerous books on that topic to best understand the different opinions, ideas, critiques, and accounts of that certain topic. \u201cKnowing that more than one book is relevant to a particular question is the first requirement in any project of syntopical reading. Knowing which books should be read, in general, is the second requirement. The second requirement is a great deal harder to satisfy than the first.\u201d [1]<\/p>\n As I reflected on this concept, I thought that, perhaps, the best text I can try my hand at this syntopical reading would be on the four canonical gospels found in the New Testament (and in the suggested reading list found in the book). All intend to share the message of the life, ministry, and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and yet there are some major differences among the texts. Mark, Matthew and Luke are all \u201csynoptic gospels,\u201d all of which share a similar style and source material, while John has a different order and a distinct focus. Mark is written with the most enthusiasm, the author strongly desires the reader move at a brisk pace. Luke was written by someone with a base level of medical training from the Biblical period and many scholars believe was also the author of Acts. Matthew focuses on the divinity of Jesus, often emphasizing the supernatural elements of Jesus life and ministry. John is a very schematic text and is where we find all of the \u201cI AM\u201d sayings of Jesus in the Bible. Each text was written by certain authors in certain contexts with intended unique audiences living in their own unique contexts as well. My role as a syntopic reader would be to best understand the similarities and differences about each gospel and be able to explain how and why each is so unique.<\/p>\n The other field I immediately thought of regarding the concept of syntopical reading was music. Let\u2019s take the Beatles recorded catalog for instance. A Hard Day\u2019s Night is clearly different than Yellow Submarine, which is also different than Let it Be. To best read these musical texts from a syntopical standpoint, one would study, know, and fully understand what was influencing the artists during each recording, what was going on in the world that was inspiring them, and their intended outcome for the music, at such a deep level, all the material would be completely understood.<\/p>\n I was never a big fan of math. I was more a fan of The Beatles and the Bible. However, hopefully the children at the local elementary school better understand math because of the new way it will be taught. For me, may a more complete understanding, and a deeper reading of each text, be the result of this new way of reading, for this past week I met my teacher. His name was Mortimer Adler.<\/p>\n 1\u00a0Adler, Mortimer and Charles Van Doran. How to Read a Book; New York, Touchstone 1972. P 309.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just last week was \u201cMeet the Teacher\u201d night at our local elementary school. This was the opportunity for the faculty and staff to introduce themselves to all the parents in town and to show off a little bit. It was a great night and the school did not disappoint. All the parents who showed were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[660,1033,883,1321,881,1322],"class_list":["post-19011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adler","tag-adler-and-van-doren","tag-adler-doren","tag-dminlgp9","tag-how-to-read-a-book","tag-lgp9","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19012,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19011\/revisions\/19012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}