Summary of Chapter 3: "The Inquiry Method" :
Teaching as a Subversive Activity --by Postman/ Weingartner -- 1970's
It is a new medium, and ...
its messages are different from those usually communicated to students ...
the inquiry method IS NOT DESIGNED to do better what older
environments try to do.
It works you over in entirely different ways.
It activates different sense, attitudes and perceptions: it generates a
different, bolder, and more potent kind of intelligence.
Thus, it will cause teachers, and tests, and grading systems
and curricula to change.
It will cause college admission requirements to change.
The focus of intellectual energy becomes the active investigation of
structures and relationships, rather than the passive reception of
someone else's story ...
"once upon a time, there was a man named
Newton"... ( but ) ... authorities get nervous when learning is conducted
without a syllabus...
>
... this is called the "sequential curriculum" ... and one has to visit the Ford Motor
plant in Detroit in order to understand fully the assumptions on which it is
based. In fact, the similarities between mass production industries
and most existing school environments are striking:
the inquiry method of teaching and learning is an attempt at re-designinng the
structure of the classroom.
It will cause everything about education to change.
l. they have CONFIDENCE in their ability to learn. This does not mean that they are not sometimes frustrated and discouraged. They are, even as are poor learners. BUT they have a profound faith that THEY are capable of solving problems ...
2. they tend to ENJOY solving problems.
The PROCESS interests them, and they tend to resent people who want to
"help" by giving them the right answer ...
3. they seem to know what is relevant to their survival and what is not. They are apt to resent being told that something is "good for them to know"... thus they tend to rely on their own judgment and are...suspicious of "authorities"...
4. they are usually NOT FEARFUL of being wrong. They recognize their limitations and suffer no trauma in concluding that what they believe is apparently not so. In other words, they can change their minds. Changing the character of their minds is what good learners are most interested in doing...
5. they are emphatically NOT fast answerers. They tend to delay their judgments until they have access to as much information as they imagine will be available...
6. they are flexible While they almost always have a point of view about a situation, they are capable of shifting to other perspectives to see what they can find. They know that "answers" are relative...and frequently begin their explanations with the words..."it depends"...
7. they have a high degree of respect for facts ( which they know are tentative ), and are skillful in making distinctions between ... observations and inferences.
8. they do not need to have an absolute, final, irrevocable resolution to every problem. The sentence, "I don't know," does not depress them ...
WE say:
THERE CAN BE NO SIGNIFICANT INNOVATION THAT DOES NOT HAVE AT ITS CENTER THE ATTITUDES OF TEACHERS, AND IT IS AN ILLUSION TO THINK OTHERWISE.
The attitudes of the inquiry teacher are reflected in his behavior. When you see such a teacher in action, you observe the following.
1. their basic mode of discourse with students is questioning. They believe divergent questions are more important than convergent questions, but uses both.
They do not view questions as a means of seducing students into parroting the test...but as instruments to open the mind...
2. generally, they do not accept a single statement as an answer to a question. In fact, they have a persisting aversion to anyone, any syllabus, any text that offers "the right answer". Not because answers and solutions are unwelcome ... but he is trying to help students be more efficient problem solves. Right answers only terminate further thought.
3. they encourage student-student interaction as opposed student- teacher interaction. And generally they avoid acting as a mediator or judge of the quality of the of the ideas expressed. The student must judge for himself the quality of work that is done...
4. they rarely summarize the positions taken by students and on the learnings
that occur.
Such summary "closes the topic".
The only significant terminal behavior that they recognize is death ...
and sees that learning does not occur with the same intensity in any two people ...
5. their lessons develop from the responses of students and not from a previously determined logical structure ... does not feel compelled to "cover ground"... or exclude any answer that is not germane...
6. generally, each of their lessons poses a problem for students ...their goal is to engage students in those activities which produce knowledge: defining, questioning, observing, classifying, generalizing, verifying, applying ... true knowledge comes from such activities.
7. they measure success in terms of behavioral changes in students ... the frequency with which they ask questions ... the increase in the relevance and cogency of their questions their challenges to the text as an authority...
these behaviors and attitudes amount to a definition of a different role for the teacher from that which he has traditionally assumed. The inquiry environment, like any other school environment, is a series of human encounters ... the teacher should be set in quotations ( e.g. "the teacher" ) because its conventional meanings are inimical to inquiry methods.
It is not uncommon, for example, the hear "teachers" make statements such as ...
"Oh, I taught them that, but they didn't learn it."
There is no utterance made in the Teachers Room more extraordinary than this.
It is like a salesman saying:
"I sold it to him, but he didn't buy it."
It seems to mean that "teaching" is what a "teacher" does, which, in turn, may or
may not bear any relationship to what those being "taught" do.
... here we want to stress that
WHEN THE TEACHER ASSUMES NEW FUNCTIONS AND EXHIBITS DIFFERENT BEHAVIORS, SO DO THE STUDENTS. IT IS IN THE NATURE OF THE TRANSACTION.
And nothing is more important to know about inquiry methods than this...
Leyden note:
20 years after the above passage was written -- i experienced teaching such students. This is the last 'section' of the document called "jordan - a post script" -- which is on the home page.
It was the most amazing teaching experience i have ever had. --
The 51 guys and 38 gals -- the future leaders of Jordan; were chosen from an eighth grade class of 34,000.
All government ( nee: public ) schools are either male or female - because it says so in the Koran, but this one is coed. The principal is a native son with a PhD from Purdue. It was tremendous to go in for a couple hours and then disappear, but the "poor" teachers who have to face them every day would be pressed to come up with something new and challenging. Whew ! What a gang ! This fall the school will have grades 9-10 and plans call for a 9-12 HS campus adjacent to U. of J. with dorms and students from the entire Muslim world.
Two analogies from the animal kingdom describe this experience. One comes from my visit near the North Pole and the other originates south of the Equator.
Sled dogs constantly lunge against their harnesses before, during and even
after the race.
It's a trained behavior: pull-pull-pull.
And then there was the experience of feeding the piranah from the dock of our jungle hut hotel in the Amazon Jungle. With lightning speed and from every direction the carnivorious fish would attack the pieces of ham thrown into the river. This is a natural behavior.
The smiling, beautiful, humerous kids at Jubilee School were a cross between the sled dogs and piranah -- nurture and nature -- their piqued curiosity lusting to know who, what, where, when and why.
We presented them with a variety of problem-solving activities, and while their answers were not always correct --- ( heck, they are only 14 years old ) --- their confidence and willingness to risk was overwhelming. Some students at EIU might pale in their mental glow. When the workshop concluded they wanted us to --
Kids -- was the highlight of the trip.