I was struck when I got here by the fact that my room seems to be designed for an air conditioner. Strictly speaking, I can get some airflow going if I open the balcony and bathroom doors, but not much. Suffice it to say, it was not designed with airflow in mind. Not that most buildings in Canada are designed with staying warm in mind either (without a heater). Then I realized that the apartment building that a friend of mine lives in in Havana was designed to be cool without air-conditioning. I remember her daughter's bedroom wall had lots of vents, that sucked in air from an interior 'courtyard' which was really way too small and narrow to be a courtyard ~ it was really just a shaft. But, boy, did the wind ever suck through that thing!
The building had no first floor, just an open (mostly concrete) space with the necessary columns and the two elevator shafts (and stairways). It's quite an odd construction for a 20 or 30 story apartment building, to have the whole thing resting on an 'empty space'. It could have been nice, too, if it hadn't all been concrete. The ground would have gotten some sun in the morning and evening, so there could have been some grass at the ends, shade-loving plants and even a pond.
But I realize now that the design of the whole building was based on traditional housing designs from tropical countries, and this 'empty space' was meant to provide shade (as well as air for the air shafts).
Traditional housing design across much of south-east Asia is on stilts. Having the house on stilts creates a shady area underneath the house to do work outside of the sun (as well as protecting from flooding). 'Upstairs' the house is built in such a way that the air easily flows through. I learned to love houses like this when I lived in Indonesia. The house I lived in had a metal roof, which created a holy cacophony when it rained and caused one to melt from the heat when it didn't. The house across the road wasn't on stilts, but it did have a grass roof and oh ~ the calm, cool, coolness of that house! There were also houses on stilts in that village, which were absolutely wonderful.
So ~ my friends in Cuba might wish they had air-conditioning, but to be honest ~ myself ~ if I lived in a better designed room I would forego the aircon. Sometimes when I open the door it's like a hurricane ripping through here, so I know this room could be very comfortable if it had been designed with that in mind. In the event of a blackout, you know who's going to be laughing in breezy comfort (the Cubans) and who's not (me!)
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Waldorf in Thailand
I know I haven't written on this blog for a looong time ~ even so much of my time in Timor is not covered here. However ~ I'm glad I did this blog because my camera was stolen about six months after I arrived in Timor, so I only have the pictures here because I posted them to this blog.
Now I am in Thailand. To be honest, I've never been interested in coming to Thailand, and I wasn't super-excited about the idea of living in Bangkok. The main reason I accepted this job is because it is at a Waldorf school, and I'm interested in Waldorf. So this blog may be about Waldorf just as much as it's about Thailand ~ we'll see. Another good thing about Thailand is that it's close enough to Timor that I will be able to go back there during the break. Also my friend Faruq is living in Dhaka now ~ I don't know if I'll go there! ~ but I should get to see him over the next two years :)
Not that Thailand is some kind of hell on earth ~ of course it isn't. I expected it to be like Denpasar in Bali ~ urban, dirty, polluted, with six-lane highways etc....but the more supermarkets, malls and department stores I'm taken to (partly because no-one will take me downtown because of the Red Shirts), the more it reminds me of Seoul or Tokyo. I was in the basement foodcourt of a mall yesterday that looked just like a foodcourt in Seoul ~ a very chi-chi one too. (Much nicer than anything you'd see in Toronto). Anyhow ~ I don't expect anyone to get too excited by discussions of foodcourts...
I don't have a camera yet ~ I hope to buy one in the next month. But, in preparation for teaching I am reading some of the works of Rudolf Steiner (the creator of the Waldorf schools) and I just found this interesting, so I will share it here;
(It's from the book "Rhythms of Learning" by Roberto Trostli) and it's about teaching math to first-graders.
"The 4 arithmetic operations - adding, subtracting, etc - are also introduced in the first grade. Steiner placed great emphasis on the introduction to these operations, for he asserted that the way children learn to think about them will help determine whether they will achieve true freedom of thought as adults [!?]
Thinking has two major aspects: synthesis and analysis. When we synthesize, we add things together, building something up from parts; when we analyze, we seperate or divide a whole into its parts. According to Steiner, the process of synthesizing does not leave a human being completely free...he explains:
"If I have to add two and five and three in order to find the total, I am not free, for the answer is fixed by an underlying law. But if I begin with the number ten, I can view it as consisting of nine and one or five and five; or I can arrange it into three, 5 and 2 & so on. When analyzing, I am able to act with complete inner freedom..."
Although children are much more disposed to analyzing than synthesizing, most modern educational practices stress synthesis over analysis, especially in the early grades. According to Steiner, such overemphasis may have profound implications for later life: if children's urge for analysis is not sufficiently satisfied, as adults they may become overly materialistic in their thinking..."
Interesting. It's quite a conclusion to make, but I have to admit, I can't ever recall being asked to divide 10 (or any number) into parts when I was little; that way of thinking about it (as having many different possibilities), and teaching it, is new to me.
OK ~ Stay tuned! Tommorrow is the beginning of Songkran, the Thai New Year festival. Apparently the whole city turns into one massive waterfight ~ we shall see :)
Now I am in Thailand. To be honest, I've never been interested in coming to Thailand, and I wasn't super-excited about the idea of living in Bangkok. The main reason I accepted this job is because it is at a Waldorf school, and I'm interested in Waldorf. So this blog may be about Waldorf just as much as it's about Thailand ~ we'll see. Another good thing about Thailand is that it's close enough to Timor that I will be able to go back there during the break. Also my friend Faruq is living in Dhaka now ~ I don't know if I'll go there! ~ but I should get to see him over the next two years :)
Not that Thailand is some kind of hell on earth ~ of course it isn't. I expected it to be like Denpasar in Bali ~ urban, dirty, polluted, with six-lane highways etc....but the more supermarkets, malls and department stores I'm taken to (partly because no-one will take me downtown because of the Red Shirts), the more it reminds me of Seoul or Tokyo. I was in the basement foodcourt of a mall yesterday that looked just like a foodcourt in Seoul ~ a very chi-chi one too. (Much nicer than anything you'd see in Toronto). Anyhow ~ I don't expect anyone to get too excited by discussions of foodcourts...
I don't have a camera yet ~ I hope to buy one in the next month. But, in preparation for teaching I am reading some of the works of Rudolf Steiner (the creator of the Waldorf schools) and I just found this interesting, so I will share it here;
(It's from the book "Rhythms of Learning" by Roberto Trostli) and it's about teaching math to first-graders.
"The 4 arithmetic operations - adding, subtracting, etc - are also introduced in the first grade. Steiner placed great emphasis on the introduction to these operations, for he asserted that the way children learn to think about them will help determine whether they will achieve true freedom of thought as adults [!?]
Thinking has two major aspects: synthesis and analysis. When we synthesize, we add things together, building something up from parts; when we analyze, we seperate or divide a whole into its parts. According to Steiner, the process of synthesizing does not leave a human being completely free...he explains:
"If I have to add two and five and three in order to find the total, I am not free, for the answer is fixed by an underlying law. But if I begin with the number ten, I can view it as consisting of nine and one or five and five; or I can arrange it into three, 5 and 2 & so on. When analyzing, I am able to act with complete inner freedom..."
Although children are much more disposed to analyzing than synthesizing, most modern educational practices stress synthesis over analysis, especially in the early grades. According to Steiner, such overemphasis may have profound implications for later life: if children's urge for analysis is not sufficiently satisfied, as adults they may become overly materialistic in their thinking..."
Interesting. It's quite a conclusion to make, but I have to admit, I can't ever recall being asked to divide 10 (or any number) into parts when I was little; that way of thinking about it (as having many different possibilities), and teaching it, is new to me.
OK ~ Stay tuned! Tommorrow is the beginning of Songkran, the Thai New Year festival. Apparently the whole city turns into one massive waterfight ~ we shall see :)
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