On “wasting valuable lesson time”
We must.
When ‘content’ is stripped of its context, which MUST include those pesky extraneous details, it becomes disconnected.
No wonder learners can’t remember stuff. Virtually all of the memory tricks we use to help us remember things involve some way to attach the thing we are learning to something meaningful to us. If ‘we trim the fat’ from our lessons in an effort to make it more efficient (i.e. if we take away the bits that are not directly relevant to our ‘content’) we also remove the context which is so crucial for anchoring learning.
Case in point:
I find politics tedious. I especially find American politics tedious (I’m not American). However, I have come to really (I mean REALLY) like the television show West Wing. While watching, I have learned WAY more about American politics and their political system than I ever really wanted to. It makes watching the Bush and Cheney show quite frightening. http://www2.warnerbros.com/web/westwingtv/index.jsp?frompage=sitemap
http://www.nbc.com/The_West_Wing/index.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200276/quotes
