Confucius said: What is knowledge? If you know something, you know it and if you dont' know something, you realize you don't know. that is knowledge. I opened up Tuesday afternoon with my seventh graders with this questions and had them write a few sentences about what they thought knowledge was. They came up with some interesting ideas like being both street smart and book smarts, being intelligent, being able to show and tell people things, a bunch of really great ideas. then I talked about what Confucius said about knowledge and asked them what they thought it meant. They talked about how Confucius meant that you should share what you know and not say anything if you didn't know. So I asked them if they agreed- if they thought you shoul
d share when you know something. The class was definitely divided almost in half. The group that said you should shae said things like "if you know the cure for cancer, you should share it". The main idea they were mostly getting at was that you should share because it could be beneficial for others and that your knowledge can help others out. One student said that if you have a talent, you should share it with others because it's something that you're good at. Then one of my favorite students, we're going to call him Earl (because that's what I'm watching right now and because his name has four letters in it too), pops up and says "hey! I have a talent?" So I say, "OK Earl, what's your talent?" And Earl replies matter-of-factly, "Sleeping." Well, at least he's honest.
d share when you know something. The class was definitely divided almost in half. The group that said you should shae said things like "if you know the cure for cancer, you should share it". The main idea they were mostly getting at was that you should share because it could be beneficial for others and that your knowledge can help others out. One student said that if you have a talent, you should share it with others because it's something that you're good at. Then one of my favorite students, we're going to call him Earl (because that's what I'm watching right now and because his name has four letters in it too), pops up and says "hey! I have a talent?" So I say, "OK Earl, what's your talent?" And Earl replies matter-of-factly, "Sleeping." Well, at least he's honest. Then the other group gave their ideas. One said that it wasn't good to share what yuo know because you could become conceited. Another student asked what conceited was and Earl jumped to life. "I know what conceited it!" he exclaimed. What I asked him to share he again said matter-of-factly, "conceit is when you have a Myspace and you have forty pictures just of you." The class, and I, to be honest, cracked up but in all honesty, he was right. It was pretty excited to see their unconventional methods but they seemed to get it, which was great.
Plus, the myspace quote was amazing....
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