Natalie Thinks

I wrote this 4 years ago, but didn't publish it. Still true. I want to start a movement called ‘Slow teaching’ in the same spirit as the Slow Food Movement. Because we’re starving our children, serving them superficial and contrarily highly complicated information instead of soul-building, sustaining basics. I speak as someone who has just moved from a very small, very unique school where ‘slow teaching’ is mostly standard fare; to a large government school, a very good government school; where compliance to the education department syllabi is adhered to. Now I must take a group of students through a beautifully written book with several complex themes in a matter of six to eight 30 minute lessons. It’s a thin-ish book but this is a second (or third) language for my students, so they barely understand the story. And I don’t have the time to go slowly enough to explain all the words, or to re-read paragraphs. I can’t take time out to discuss the setting of South Africa and...