the tyranny of words
victor a. parks s / c sep 71
a word can be a capstone which conceptually draws together, categorizing similarities in apparentl dissimilar events. "Mammal" at times serves as a useful label in thought and communication to differentiate those animals whose females possess the unique feature of milk producing glands from those which don't. " A system of objects," representing a physical or mental collection of seperate or distinct objects for various reasons, is a useful construct for extracting portions of reality for finer study. After disecting and planting seeds and other small objects, children might generate an operational definition of "seed," e.g., 'when a seed is planted... a plant will grow from it'; when the seed is broken open a small plant can be found; the plant which grows from the seed is like the plant from which the seed came. The word 'predator' may serve a useful function after children have observed a frog eating crickets; a ladybug devouring aphids; a cat disemboweling a mouse. Words so generated in the experimental milieu of concrete science activities can be essential aids in serving as structural elements for thought and communication.

unfortunately, in teaching, words can bring about an unwanted outcome:

pseudo-explanations -- verbal nonsense poured on an excited, naive, boldly curious child.

For example: "look at the red, red sky. why is it red?"

"because of what's in the air. dust and moisture makes the sky red."

"how come that tiny wire in the electric bulb glows?"

"ELECTRONS are flowing thru the wire from the battery and returning to it through the bulb. The ELECTRONS are squeezed and pushed through that smaller wire causing FRICTION which makes the wire glow."

"Gosh, my plant is getting big! Where is it getting all the stuff to grow with?"

"the plant is PHOTOSYNTHESIZING its food from carbon dioxide, water and sunlite."

what have the reply statements accomplished?

a questioning child might be left with a set of new words, e.g., molecule; evaporate, electon flow, photosynthesis. But do these words make sense to the child in the context they are used?

Are they unambiguous?

Uncontradictory?

or have we not shoved nonsense at the children as if it were sense; as Holt states, "...cutting them off from their own common sense and the world of reality by requiring them to shove around words and symbols that have little or no meaning."

do these PSEUDO-EXPLANATIONS have any function in the child's quest to understand his surroundings (as suggested by the example above)? Or might they not bring the child to question his own adequacy to cope with that which he perceives as problematical or temptingly curious?

instead of heaping verbal nonsense on a child's inquiry, we might ask him to look again at the problem he posed, cueing him to observe again; signaling him that it is certainly permissible and most desirable to speculate and to test his conjunctures, to draw his own analogies, to structure his own explanatory models about phenomena-models which seem to make conceptual, logical, or functional sense of the events he has observed.

assume that a second grade girl is rubbing the hair on her arm with a piece of vinyl. Holding the vinyl strip about a half inch above her arm, she moves it back and forth. The hairs on her arm bow and bend toward the plastic strip as it is moved across the arm. She asks the WHY question; i.e. "Why do the hairs stick up?" The latch to close this play would be to say, "static electricity causes it" -- and true -- children often will accept this much as they accept ON FAITH the childhood myths of Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.

instead of giving the child a nonsense word, she should be asked to look again.

"in which direction do the hairs point?"

"towards the plastic."

"do all the hairs?"

"no, just those close to the plastic."

"what might be happening?"

"the hairs are being pulled?"

"what would be pulling them?"

"invisible hands."

certainly an intriguing and vital analogy.

the child's world of reality and her common sense appears to come to focus here. Implicitly, she has proposed the existence of a force which exists between hair and the vinyl strip -- a force which can't be seen, but is evident by its effect. She draws from her own experience (e.g. hands pulling wagons, ropes, hair, etc.).

the child's next quest can be aimed to find which other materials have invisible hands and which do not. She will display a spirit to gamble, to try, to experiment with the unknown -- those qualities Holt believes education tends to destroy. This inquiry can be continued and expanded given form and shape by the child, and the support of materials and cues from the teacher.

verbal purists argue that certain terms must be learned by scientists and a scientificly literate citizenry. This position is not questioned. Obviously, words are common denominators of communication. The question teachers should ask is, "WHEN should vocabulary be introduced?"

The question can be answered only by honest evaluation of the context in which the terminology will be introduced and what purpose it will serve. Does the word introduce a complex synonym for a term that a child has found functional? e.g. viscosity vs. sluggish flow? Does the word appear to explain, but upon careful analysis from the child's embryonic conceptual framework, really serve as a senseless unassimilatable chunk? Does the term provide an apparent but unreal explanation, causing an end to an inquiry, producing a premature closure?

children enter school curious, eager to devour life, to tackle the new. We must attempt to sustain their curiousity, avoiding the tyranny of words. By word and deed, we must convey the message that the unknown is a challenge, not to vanish with the utterance of a word.