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Teaching, Learning and Schooling
By
Anne Carpenter
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Changing the way we currently teach only to the good, quiet, well-behaved child
(Mooney & Cole, 2000) and teach to all children; we will be more successful as a
society in the education of our youth. “Quality education encourages a wide-open,
creative problem –solving approach, thereby exploring alternative thinking options,
multiple right answers, and creative insights” (Jensen, 2005, p.153). Children learn best
with individualized learning, teaching and schooling. “Until we can tell what factors
contribute to brain development, we should focus on accommodating all learners”
(Jensen, 2005, p.151). To learn is to internalize the process of knowledge accumulation
through experience. To teach is to plan; guide and nurture experience to help students
became socialized members of society. To school is to bureaucratically, ensure that the
institutions, the environment and the schools are designed to help the student learn.
Individuals learn through their prior knowledge and bring into the classroom their
emotions.
Brains vary from individual to individual, as a result of both genetic
makeup and the influence of environment and life experience. Expect
what works for one student may not work for another. Make differentiation
and customization the norm in your classroom not the exception (Jensen,
2005, p. 154)
Mooney and Cole (2000) figured out through their previous experience how they
learn best. “Our skills are alternative learning skills. In every section, we explore multiple
entry point to information, integrating color, verbal processing, pragmatic learning, and
project based learning (p.83)”. However, to learn in an alternative method goes in direct
opposition to current system. “Students need privacy, reflection, and thinking time. We
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ask student to either suppress those needs or to reflect and think in workspaces that
would strain our sensibilities” (Jensen, 2005, p.90). Existing systems use isolation to
teach individual subjects, there is no link between one subject and another or even the
relevance of the subject to the adult world (Dewey, 1916). According to Jensen (2005),
a study at the University of Arizona showed that students with a background in statistic
and math could not transfer these skills to new situations in the real world. “Learning - to
- learn strategies are far more essential to real world success than are amassed facts”
(p.152). Students taught in multidiscipline programs will enable the students to connect
several different subjects to real life; thus, eliminating the compartmentalization of single
subject lessons. “Enforced quiet and acquiescence prevents pupils from disclosing their
real natures. They enforce artificial uniformity. They put seeming before being. They
place a premium upon preserving the outward appearance of attention, decorum and
obedience” (Dewey, 1938, p.62). Quiet, well-behaved students do not let their teacher
know who they are or what they are thinking. Therefore, the teacher by not having
knowledge of the students experience cannot teach to the individual.
Independent communities place value on and reinforce specific information
regardless of academic achievement. Rogoff (2003) stated each community may have
different end goals in the education of their children:”… learn to attend to the nuances of
weather patterns or of social cues of people around them, to use words cleverly to joust,
or to understand the relation between human and supernatural events” (p. 22). To
make all children learn the same information is a disservice to the child and waste of
valuable resources. ”It is important to have realistic expectations about what can and
should be recalled and to appreciate the differences among learners and their preferred
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style of learning” (Jensen, 2005, p. 131). We have let money get in the way of teaching
our children. However, by not educating children individually we have young people who
are required to be part of an artificial community, school. Enforcing students to be quiet,
sit still, no talking to preserve out ward appearance created an artificial environment to
the detriment of the child. The child becomes discouraged and eventually drops out of
school. With three and a half million dropouts in America, they are more likely to be on
unemployment, live in poverty, depend on social services and go to jail. Because these
young people are not educated, they are costing the American society billions in social
services and lost wages (Milliken, 2007).
Teach with the socratic method , Socrates questioned Meno’s knowledge of
virtue, and rather than answer Meno’s question, Socrates allowed Meno to discover for
himself what he knew or did not know. In other words, he debated with Meno, Socrates
provided individualized teaching to Meno even though Socrates declared that he does
not teach. “I shall only ask him, and not teach him, and he shall share the enquiry with
me: and do you watch and see if you find me telling or explaining anything to him,
instead of eliciting his opinion” (Plato, trans. Jowett, 1995). Socrates used deductive
reasoning to allow Meno to experience for himself the idea that knowledge is learned.
Schooling is a wide-ranging institution made up of buildings, bureaucracy, social
thoughts and cultural values. Rogoff (2003) stated, “…segregation of U.S.
schoolchildren by age became formalized with the advent of compulsory schooling,
which required a standard starting age to verify that children were not truant. Agegrading served bureaucratic needs in the face of great increases in the numbers of
schoolchildren, due in part to industrialization, urbanizations of the population, and huge
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influxes of immigrants” (p. 126). To accommodate all participants equitably current
systems must evolve. “Schools with shattered windows, broken-down restrooms, leaky
roofs, insufficient lighting, and overcrowding have a significantly negative impact on
cognition” (Jensen, 2005, p. 91).The thoughts and values of current society must
progress and accommodate all styles of schooling. “Research indicates that wellplanned learning environments stimulate learning and reduce discipline problems”
(Jensen, 2005, p.91). Granted, it will take time to change and become more open to
teaching all children individually, however we must begin somewhere and we can
initiate the change.
Individualizing learning teaching and schooling brings out the best in all children.
“Physical environments influence how we feel, hear and see. Those factors, in turn,
influence cognitive and affective performance (Jensen, 2005, p.82)”. New school design
should be with young people in mind. Chairs, tables and bathrooms need to fit the size
of the child. Most buildings have poor lighting, are noisy, have bad air quality and are
not conducive to learning. Success as a society in educating our youth will occur when
we change the way we currently teach and accommodate the whole child.
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Brains vary from individual to individual, as a result of both genetic makeup and
the influence of environment and life experience. Expect what works for one student
may not work for another. Make differentiation and customization the norm in your
classroom not the exception (Jensen, 2005, p. 154)
Children learn best with individualized learning :“It is a loss and a crime when
creativity, alternative learning skills, and an individualized education take a back seat to
rote memorizations, standardized testing, and the misconceptions that all people learn
the same way” (Mooney & Cole, 2000, p.20) This was true during Plato’s time and it is
still true now.
Unfortunately, our children are the ones that are being hurt by using assessment
based punitive labeling to pigeonhole kids.
Jensen comments that children’s brains develop at different age ranges, some
children may be ready to read by 3 or 4 years old others not until 7 or 8 (p.151)
“Physical environments influence how we feel, hear and see. Those factors, in
turn, influence cognitive and affective performance (Jensen, 2005, p.82)”. New school
design should be with young people in mind. Chairs, tables and bathrooms need to fit
the size of the child. Most buildings have poor lighting, are noisy, have bad air quality
and are not conducive to learning.