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Cricket Anyone?
February 19, 2015 @ 5:00 am - 7:00 am
Hosted by Dr. Benjamin van Wyk der Vries and Family
NMHU’s 2015 Visiting Ballen Professor
(Lunch Provided)
Cricket is often considered to be a very English game, but most participants come from the Indian subcontinent, Australia, Caribbean or Africa. Cricket is often considered to be a game full of complicated rules and obscure terminology and just damn hard to understand, but actually it is very easy. So I’m going to introduce you to cricket in its most simple and accessible forms – ‘French’ Cricket, and Beach Cricket. As the World Cup is being played, we’ll be able to watch, or at least follow a game or two. Maybe it will catch on at Highlands, maybe not, but the purpose of this also has an educational message that I have used in France: that doing something is better than being taught it if you want to learn it.
‘I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand’
-Confucius
The cricket fun and the staff seminars that follow deal with my attempts to help my university to deal with teaching a multi-lingual, multi-cultural audience – using English, and my work to change teaching practices from pure ‘professor who lectures’, to a more student oriented method – in the context of a very deeply rooted, conservative, hierarchical culture. France is full of innovative teachers who are challenging the old methods, and slowly the old system is beginning to change. The new methods are often decried as being ‘anglo-saxon’ or ‘american’, and the seminars will be an opportunity for me to interact yet again with the other side. The cricket is a perfect way to break the ice.