adults as well as children can learn better by doing things rather than being told about them.
"If they read about it, it will be deformed, as is all learning that is not the result of the subject's own activity."
prospective teachers ought to spend some time questioning children in a one-on-one situation in order to realize how hard it is to understand what children mean, and even more, how hard it is to make oneself understood by children.
each prospective teacher should work on an original investigation to find out what children think about a problem --- thus be forced to phrase the problem and establish communication with a number of different children.
facing the difficulties of this type of research will have a sobering effect on a teacher who things they are talking successfully to a whole class of children at once.
from: eleanor duckworth : JRST 1964 pp 172-75
the principal goal of education
is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done ... those who are creative, inventive, and discoverers.
the second goal of education ...
is to form minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered. The great danger of today is slogans, collective opinions, ready-made trends of thought. We have to be able to resist individually, to criticize, to distinguish between what is proven and what is not. So we need pupils who are active, who learn early to find out by themselves, partly by their own spontaneous activity and partly thru material we set up for them: who learn early to tell what is verifiable and what is simply the first idea to come to them.
1. develop creative thinking, not just memory
2. encourage critical analysis
3. stimulate active participation of learning
if you accept the goals about as above as being important, then is it not also important to teach children to question?
it is the art of questioning by which people develop knowledge. The true test of intelligence is not a list of the things that a person can do ... but how they behave when placed in a situation where they donŐt know what to do.
knowing what to do ...
when you simply don't know ...
what to do
johnathan kohl (?)
Leyden note:
Duckworth is the person who wrote the article on "helium balloons and mirrors" -- and the other article about "piaget rediscovered"
rockcastle is the guy who wrote about "the lazy student" - - - and a friend from whom i have stolen many ideas
( hang around smart people )
6/23f/95