Forrest Gen Forrest And His School Teacher One of my favorites. "Its Me Bedford"

Yes, Morton did that - had a lot of interesting times teaching the general about artillery! Forrest had to see the sense of something. If you tried to teach him Greek, he would evaluate it by what can I do with this? How do I use it? What do I need it for? If the purpose didn't seem practical, he saw no reason to clutter up his brain attic with it!

Teaching is full of that--showing kids why something is useful generally works. Do I give a hoot if I know how to multiply? Probably not. Do I want to be able to figure out how much money I'll "make" on Mrs. Nate's "Cattle Drive" if all my steers get through and I pick up some of someone else's herd? Heck, yeah!

Long story--my annual Texas History activity--getting the kids to wad up old paper without knowing why they were doing. Then they counted, initialed, and discovered it was their "trail herd". They got to kick the cows down the long hall while Mrs. Nate created stampedes and attacks--if a cow ended up behind them, it was lost. Then they counted what they ended up with and figured their profit in Abilene...winner gets enough $$ to buy him a ranch; one year the winner could possibly have bought Texas! (We figured out how much land they could have bought in 1870 dollars...).

Critical thinking.
Why are we doing this? What will happen if we do X,Y,Z or all three? Why I miss teaching. I do not miss making kids take ridiculous tests.
 
Teaching is full of that--showing kids why something is useful generally works. Do I give a hoot if I know how to multiply? Probably not. Do I want to be able to figure out how much money I'll "make" on Mrs. Nate's "Cattle Drive" if all my steers get through and I pick up some of someone else's herd? Heck, yeah!

Long story--my annual Texas History activity--getting the kids to wad up old paper without knowing why they were doing. Then they counted, initialed, and discovered it was their "trail herd". They got to kick the cows down the long hall while Mrs. Nate created stampedes and attacks--if a cow ended up behind them, it was lost. Then they counted what they ended up with and figured their profit in Abilene...winner gets enough $$ to buy him a ranch; one year the winner could possibly have bought Texas! (We figured out how much land they could have bought in 1870 dollars...).

Critical thinking.
Why are we doing this? What will happen if we do X,Y,Z or all three? Why I miss teaching. I do not miss making kids take ridiculous tests.

Now you're the kind of teacher Forrest needed! Most teachers in his day and in his region were lucky they knew how to read themselves - and they usually had the kids just memorize the one book they had by reading to them and them saying it back. I wouldn't be surprised if 8 year old Forrest thought what am I doing here when I could be swimming? I already know more than this here feller!
 
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