Paper Clips and Teaching

Good teaching eh?

I would say that they were of noble intention, and that the message was a good one. However, other than the preliminary teaching involved that addressed the perpetual prejudice in human society, I think that the teaching rapidly became sidetracked... Not long into the movie, it was clear that the purpose of the class had digressed. It became less about analyzing the human condition, and more about collecting paper clips, and not so much putting meaning into what they were doing. The initial project goal, was to collect 6 million paper clips, to approximately account for every single Jew that was killed during the holocaust. But what it turned into, was a lesson in sorting mail, and starting a paper clip collection. The idea was to show what 6 million was, so that the children could rap their heads around the magnitude of the atrocity. But the way it was set up, the more paper clips the received, the happier they got. If my memory serves, they ended up with somewhere around 24 million paper clips.... An impressive collection to be sure, but in no way relevant to the initial goal of the project. Not to mention, the children were not given full disclosure on the holocaust. They didn't so much as mention the 250,000 "gypsies" that were selectively exterminated during this time, as well as other groups that were singled out (homosexuals/disabled ect...).

I think that the children learned valuable lessons in this class, I truly do. But I think that it was not a result of good teaching. A good teacher would have had the thought, "you know what? I think if we collected a bunch of paper clips to represent the magnitude of the holocaust, we could get some survivors to come and talk to our children!" Sufficive to say, I do not think there was a thought process working on this level when the idea was c0ncieved. I think that being able to put a face with the numbers was the most valuable thing they learned. And yes, I do believe that they learned quite a bit. That being said, I also believe that learning and teaching are not synonymous. Yes... In an indirect way, the teaching was the source of learning. But I do not believe that is was the result of any premeditated strategy.