As an avid organizer myself, I completely understand the human need to categorize, calculate, and classify. But as a teacher (ie, a laborer among messy human beings), I also completely understand when “the human need to calculate runs into messy reality.” When we act like everything can be neatly sorted and identified — even the content within our curricula — we do our students a major disservice.
Because the truth is, every field still has its frontiers, its disputed claims, its square-pegs-&-round-holes. Inquiring into this concept can help our students think more deeply and with more nuance as they navigate the sometimes rough seas of human wisdom.
Resource #1: What Counts as a Mountain? (via The Kid Should See This)
Resource #2: Icelandic is Untranslatable by New Age Creators
#Resource 3: The Little Prince (the book or the beautiful new movie!)
Provocation Questions:
- How has human knowledge changed over time? How does it continue to change?
- What is our responsibility in understanding the limitations in human knowledge?
- Why is reality sometimes “messy?”
featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto