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oh man, just realized from reading about common core reading comprehension pedagogy why students freak out when Aristotle considers a counter argument for a page or two then doubles back to the other side:
if they're using what they were taught to "find the most important sentence" in a three page Aristotle chapter, they won't have any practice at comprehending how he moves through several stages of argument. it'll just seem like the whole thing is a mess
true of any philosophy, really
they're not upset about this being a harder mode of writing, it's that it's fundamentally other than what writing is supposed to be: containing one condensed worthwhile sentence, with the rest safely left aside
I do actually get many students who follow Aristotle into his prose and have a grand time, but it requires more than just intelligence, but willingness to shoot the hitherto rational world in the foot
again, this is usually what reading philosophy asks of you the first time (and always), but this is an extra layer of unnecessary difficulty. that we have brought upon ourselves!
reflections from my new days of not just helping with elementary school homework, but trying to follow the pedagogy given to introduce new material.
my theory of conceptual pedagogy, which I first started thinking about while using a complicated branded pedagogy to teach spelling/reading/reading comp, is that "methods" like this are ossified practical judgment,
and so often work for a while, or for some, and most especially when still tied to the charismatic personality responsibility for pushing the "method" as the next solution
but don't work, obviously, as a universal rule for all students or for their reading lives in general. the real problem I'm having is the confusion of "helpful reading strategy!" as "the text itself!"
a "method" advertises itself as something that gets you over a hump and can be later altered, but of course children don't make that distinction, to this day I'm contemptuous of Suzuki for no reason, because my Kodaly teachers hated it
