On Wed, 5 Jul 1995, Fred Reed wrote:
> And so, I am inclined to disagree with Bernard on the necessity of
> teachers. More importantly, I think it is time that we consider whether
> our traditional concepts of learning and "explicit" teaching are not just
> ineffective but counterproductive for human development, both children and
> adults.
And I likewise, on logical as well as observational grounds: in the history
of the human race, it is _learning_ that is logically presupposed by
_teaching_ ... not the converse. Until at least one human being has learned
something, there is nothing to teach.
--
Regards
Jim Michmerhuizen
web residence at http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
...........................................................................
. . . . There are far *fewer* things in heaven and earth, Horatio, . . . .
. . . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy... . . | _ .
> Replying to LO1925 --
>
> Bernard Girard wrote, in part:
>
> *begin quote*
> Doug Seeley writes about his children : "They were not taught explicitly
> how to read, and how to do math, yet at some moment they spontaneously
> started doing these things, much in the same manner in which (=8A) they
> rapidly began speaking French once they made up their minds to do it."
> (Doug is an Australian living in Geneva).
>
> We all know that children learn how to talk a foreign langage without
> explicit education (which does not mean "no education"), but I am very
> surprised to hear one can learn how to read without explicit tuition.
> Reading is a difficult task. It's not something you do in a community (you
> have to be two to talk it helps learning a langage without lessons), but
> something you do by yourself. And the motivation to read is usually low :
> children don't need to read to live and enjoy themselves (whereas they
> need to talk to play with friends). One of the firt tasks of a teacher is
> to give children the desire to read, to show them that one can find
> treasures in books=8A
> *end quote*
>
> Bernard's assertion concerning the need "to give children the desire to
> read" is relevant to a number of threads going on here of late. The
> *Motivation* angle and it "deconstruction", particularly by Mike McMaster,
> had substantially settled the issue for me. However, as Bernard points
> out, children are not exposed to substantial "environmental demands" to
> learn how to read. And so, one might reasonably ask why children do learn
> to read, if it is not dependent on a teacher pushing them to do so. Some
> light might come from a more social view of learning. According to my
> "mental model" of such things, learning is largely the habitual taking of
> effective acts, and socialization is largely the adoption of the effective
> habits of others (and rejection of ineffective habits). My guess is that
> children (based primarily on observation of my own) "emergently" learn to
> read while observing and testing out the habits of those they see around
> them (parents and siblings). I don't have evidence in front of me, but I
> believe it has been shown that children that grow up in households where a
> lot of reading goes on (not even necessarily involving them) tend to be
> better readers. While I wasn't in Doug Seeley's house, I surmise that his
> children observed sufficient reading activity to provide ample reason to
> believe it is an effective habit and one that should be adopted, *without*
> resorting to any "explicit" instruction or "giving" of desire.
>
> A second point to be made is with respect to the *Flow* thread. I am
> familiar with a rather extreme form of progressive school here in the US
> (called "democratic schools") that strongly avoid *any* attempt at
> "motivating" students to learn, relying instead on intrinsic desire in the
> social context of complete age mixing. That is, there are no "teachers"
> as commonly defined, no courses or curricula. I think it's a wonderful
> model for a Learning Org in general, but that line of discussion will have
> to wait for another time. With respect to learning reading, they find
> that the age in which an individual "emergently" learns to read (there is
> no other way at this school) varies quite widely (many years, say from 3
> to 9). The surprising result is that they have reported an essentially
> zero rate of dyslexia at the school, whereas other schools often expect a
> "normal" rate somewhere around 10 percent. They (and I am likely to
> agree) propose that many such "disabilities" are caused by forcing
> children to adhere to the same learning schedule, and thus out of the
> developmental "flow" that is unique to them.
>
>
> --
> Fred Reed
> freed@cc.atinc.com
>
>