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Teaching, Learning and Schooling
By
Anne Carpenter
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Children seem to learn best with individualized learning, teaching and schooling.
Logistically and economically, this way of educating our children is currently impractical.
Changing the way we currently teach only to the good, quiet, well-behaved child and
teach to all children we will be more successful as a society in educating our youth.
According to Jonathan Mooney and David Cole in Learning Outside the Lines:
Education is one to the most beautiful and liberating things we can pursue in our
lives, but too often it is approached as a restrictive, punitive, linear, and moralistic act.
On our journey, there were not study guides that embraced alternative learning style, no
signposts that led to personal empowerment, and no avenues for an individualized
education. We needed an unconventional approach that respected our differences and
our individual goals. We were forced to create this approach for ourselves because we
couldn’t find it anywhere else. (2000, p.21)
Using Socrates method of teaching by questioning Meno’s knowledge of virtue
rather than answering his question allowed Meno to discover for himself what he knew
or did not know. In other words, by arguing with Meno, Socrates individualized teaching
Meno even though Socrates says 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, 1995).
Students learning in their own way like Mooney and Cole figured out how they learned
best …we developed our own set of academic skills that allowed us to use our
education as a means to redefine ourselves.(2000, p.81)
Our skills are alternative learning skills. In every section, we explore multiple
entry point to information, integrating color, verbal processing, pragmatic learning, and
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project based learning. (Mooney & Cole, 2000, p.83). In Rogoff each community may
have different end goals in educating their children, some may find it important that…
children to 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(2003,p. 22). Other communities’ goals …where literacy
is key to communication and economic success in adulthood, preschooler may need to
learn to distinguish between colors and shape of small ink marks (Rogoff, 2003, p.20).
When using the definition of schooling to mean the institution then the social
thoughts, norms and cultural values need to change. The behavior of society as a whole
needs to be shaped into a more open, and accepting of other ways of looking at
schooling. 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). Yes, it will take some time for us to change and become more open to teaching
all children individually but we need to start somewhere and I believe that we can start
with us. Jerome Bruner said …that any subject can be taught effectively in some
intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development (Smith, 2002, the
process of education, para.3)
Children learn best with individualized learning this was true during Plato’s time
and it is still true now. We have let money and bureaucracy get in the way of teaching
our children. Unfortunately, our children are the ones that are being hurt. However by
not educating all children individually we have… many stupid, bad kids….got beaten
down…you can find …people in prison, many on unemployment, and many casting
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desperately about, looking for a way to live this life without daily failure and frustration
(Mooney & Cole, 2000, p.16). In reality, we are costing ourselves as society more
money by not educating everyone than it would cost us to educate him or her.