Word: mckibben
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Gardner is first to decide on the facts and procedures a teacher wants a student to understand, and then to figure out how best to present this information, given the student's strengths and weaknesses. Jean McKibben, a fifth-grade teacher at Coyote Creek, provided an example of such an approach when she described a project her students did about the European settlement of the Americas. Among other things, she wanted them to learn about the boats that were used...
...Dave has a lot of trouble getting things down on paper," McKibben said of one pupil. "His main emphasis is doing things with his hands. His model of the boat was fantastic. It showed he really knew the information. If I asked him to write it down, it would have been very short." This is just the kind of application Gardner envisions: because McKibben knew that Dave understood the world in a kinesthetic way, she was better able to teach him and assess his knowledge. Dave must still learn to write well, McKibben said, but what counted here was that...
...fret over McKibben's projections of population and resources. U.S. population growth is slowing, but at the current birth rate of just under two children for each woman--a bit under replacement rate--the population will swell from its present 270 million to about 400 million before it levels off around 2050. That is a horde of people, too many for anyone who worries about future food and water supply, air quality and energy depletion (but not too many for contrarian scientists, energy-company spinmeisters and idealogues who rejoice that each new human being is a potential Mozart...
...half of U.S. couples had only one child, and the rest none, two or more, then, says McKibben, the population would plateau around 2020, and drop by 2050 to about 230 million, which was the figure two decades ago. McKibben says this plan would require cuts in immigration too. And it wouldn't save the world, but in McKibben's view it would give the nation some breathing space in what he sees as the cramped and critical next half-century. He cites familiar horrifying statistics: each year the nation paves over an area the size of Delaware; the average...
...McKibben can sound preachy; he and his wife agonized over having a child and decided to have just one ("the light of my life"), after which he had a vasectomy, which he describes at great length. Journalist Margaret Talbot, who erupted at this in the New Republic last week, is unconvinced by "population doomsayers" and rejects a "politically correct family size." Of the author, whom she describes as a "yuppie yogi," she says, "He is irritating not only because he is so wrong, but also because he is so sanctimonious." Irritating but driven by an impulse to keep us from...