I don’t think I completely missed the metaphor in Tom Johnson’s post Don’t Let Them Take Pencils Home. Dr. Strange commented on my reflection on the post that I “had it but didn’t know it”. While I did comment that students should be allowed to express their creative side and teachers shouldn’t just come up with easy solutions to problems, I did understand that this whole post was a metaphor.
I have actually been trying to be more aware of metaphors so I could comment on their use in our everyday life. Some of the ones that I have noticed either myself or someone else saying in the past week include: a heart of gold, she’s heartbroken, her knight in shining armor, stabbed in the back, icing on the cake, the world is your oyster, hot as heck, a day late and a dollar short.
I think as educators, the concept of metaphors and similes could be a hard one to teach. I think it would be best taught as a long-term lesson. By this, I mean that I think students need to be asked to always have concepts like these in the back of their head so they are always analyzing their speech and their life. I think lessons like this help students with their critical thinking skills and help them realize the importance of always keeping your mind peeled and sharp.
I think that we use metaphors because it helps us understand things better. We can express something in just a few words that might otherwise take a great deal of words. We are able to easily compare to something that we already know so it makes it easier to understand. Also, I think we use metaphors to explain things in a different way and give ourselves a mental image. For example, everyone basically understands the metaphor “the world as your oyster” but everyone probably takes their own spin on it and it means something slightly different to everyone. I think this possibility to appeal and be understood slightly different by everyone is another reason that we use metaphors.
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