The Education Column

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Or can you? I hope so. I subscribe to the philosophy that you can always learn something new no matter what your knowledge or experience.

I’ve never really been into reading #bellringing theory books. I get too easily distracted and find I skip bits that I think I already know. I also have the attention span of a gnat so find it hard to read theory books for too long. I usually skip through to the chapter I’m most interested in then skim read it for some golden nugget.

I expect that because of this, I skip right past the bits I should actually take notice of, and if I’d bothered to read the whole thing from beginning to end, I might have actually understood it a lot better.

For Christmas C bought me (at my request) the entire five series of The Ringing World’s Education Columns, written over a number of articles, over several years, by the eternally patient and thoroughly nice bloke, David Smith.

Series 1 covers Rounds to Plain Bob Doubles. Series 2 introduces us to Surprise methods. Series 3 is entitled the Lightweight Conductor. Series 4 is about extending methods and Series 5 is a collection of Christmas articles. Each series is very well presented on high gloss paper and the collection of articles in each series is in a plastic wallet. There are quizzes and worksheets to accompany them too. You can buy them individually depending on what stage you’re at, or as the entire set.

I’m looking forward to reading through them and thoroughly intending to go through each one, start to finish, no matter if I’ve already surpassed that level. There’s always something to learn and a different way of seeing it. It will also help explaining it to learners as well.

Did anyone else get them for Christmas? Or what #bellringing gifts did you get this year?