If our family had moved there one year prior, then I would have had to learn Irish (my younger sister did and she remembers nothing more than “ta” and “nil”).

I think the Welsh folks had picked up a better scheme: game shows. These showed adults making complete fools of themselves with vocabulary that was beginner level. I couldn’t remember the name of the show, but like all things Welsh, I think it lacked vowels (that we would recognize). Sort of like Russian – another vowel deficient language. The shows were so silly that I’d even watch them (for the American audience, folks on the east coast of Ireland could pick up some channels broadcast from Wales so that RTE wasn’t the only thing viewable). Hmm. After writing that sentence, perhaps I watched them just to avoid RTE. But on the gripping hand, Welsh was pleasing to my ear, being rather sing-songy when spoken by an native speaker, so if that had been readily available, I would have picked that language up (rather than the German and Spanish that I did learn in HS which I couldn’t evade; versus the Latin, Irish and French that I successfully evaded).

For that matter I don’t remember learning anything in high school either, just getting in trouble all the time. And also learning about sex.

The teacher gave each team a piece of cardboard with the spots marked where the bridge should touch the ground, and a hole chopped in between the two spots, and a box of toothpicks and a tube of glue. We then had a day (or so, I don’t remember exactly) to build our bridge. At the end, all the bridges would get loaded with weight on a tray dangling from the center, whichever broke last won. The pedagogical point was the structural stability of triangles.

As far as phonics and such things taking over, it’s interesting to note that in Scandinavian countries, where literacy is of a fabulously high standard, they do not even approach teaching their kids how to write formally until they are six. Instead they focus on pre-writing /emergent writing skills and have a huge push for linguistic development. We could learn a thing or two from them….

Martin: given the build-up to this phrase, I was half expecting the next word to be “pills”.

One activity I remember well from primary school was a times table game we played. It was a knock-out competition intended to help us to memorize our tables and the winner got a bar of chocolate… it was always quite fun.

and

I had a 2nd-grade teacher who simply demanded more of us. We were learning multiplication tables by rote, and each time you memorized one you had to stand up in front of the class and recite it to get it checked off on a big board. So it was kind-of a race.

remind me that kids can differ a lot in what they find fun.