Learning is the product of the activity of learners

Have I been blind, have I been lost,
inside myself and my own mind;
hypnotized, mesmerized,
by what my eyes have seen? ~ Natalie Merchant ~

"The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners." John Holt, in 'Growing Without Schooling'

I am going to stay on point and talk a little more about my thoughts on education. The topics I chose today are expectations and encouragement. Ideas I got from my study of education and the people that influenced me the most 30 years ago are still valid today. Some of the greats include Leo Buscaglia and Carl Rodgers. Their  ideas on student based learning and the future of education was considered outside the mainstream and therefore mostly ignored. Tapping into the unlimited source of human potential sometimes requires unconventional methods based on the individual.

I am targeting teachers in this discussion but these principles apply in everyday life to everyone human.

Ellis B. Page was widely published in the field of educational psychology and edited books on the subject. Dr. Page did a wonderful study in affect where he took his class and he divided it up into three groups, A, B, and C. on every Group A paper, he put only a grade. Remember writing those wonderful papers that were a bit of you and then finding that you got it back with only a letter grade?

An A, a B, a C, a D, an F?  Meaningless. If you were like me, you would look for a spot of spaghetti or maybe a place where some coffee has been spilled on it so you would know he or she actually read the thing. Group B, he gave them a grade and a word, like: good, fine, excellent, nice work!

With group C he stopped and wrote each of them a letter and he said, “Dear Johnny: your syntax is atrocious. Your grammar is not to be believed.  Your spelling is nonexistent. And your punctuation is like James Joyce. But you know, as I was sitting in bed last night talking to my wife, I said, “Sally, he has the most beautiful ideas in this paper. And I’m really going to try and help him develop it.  sincerely yours Teacher” and if somebody did something really beautiful he wrote down, “thank you. You continually blow my mind. Such a good paper with so many good I ideas. I can’t wait to hear what you’re going to say next.”  Then he did a statistical study, Group A remained the same, group B were stationary and Group C grew and became without exception.

Another study I found fascinating back then was “Pygmalion in the Classroom.” the  paperback is still around I just saw a copy a few months back in a local used bookstore. Every educator or anyone working with children, parents e.g. should read it. Talk about expectation! These people from Harvard came in and said to all the teachers, “now we are going to go in your classroom and we are going give (this isn’t verbatim but the essence) a test to be called the Harvard Test of Intellectual Spurts. And what this test is going to measure is which kids in your classrooms are going to grow intellectually during that year that they’re in your class. And we will be able to pick them out. It never fails. We’ll be able to tell you, and think of what a help this will be.” So the testers went in and gave some old obsolete I.Q. tests. After they finished giving it, they threw it in the trash can. Then they just took five names at random from roll books and sat down for an interview. They said to a teacher, “now these kids that are going to spurt this semester: Tommy Taylor.” “Tommy Taylor couldn’t spurt if you put him in a cannon,” said the teacher. “nevertheless, the Harvard Tests of intellectual spurts never fail,” said the bigwigs. And do you know what happened? Every name they put on the list spurted all over the walls. Which shows you, you get what you expect. You walk into a class and say, “you dumb kids. They will never learn anything.” you walk in saying, “these kids will and can learn; it’s my challenge to bring them to that table show them how fantastic it is.” We all have a need for achievement and recognition. We’ve got to be able to do something and the greatest thing is joy in the work.

You teachers that are only working for a paycheck do the world a favor, find something you love to do then go do it, to the ones waiting on retirement, retire and go teach illiterate adults you may be responsible for. To the rest, redeem and renew skills with an upgrade in attitudes and expectations. It’s too bad when you go to work and you don’t love it, especially in the teaching profession. If you don’t get excited every morning about getting into that room with all those little kids with bright eyes waiting for you to help them to get to that table, then get the hell out of education!   Do not feel obligated to stay because you came from a long line of educators, that is part of the problem. Do something where you’re not going to be contact with little kids and killing them at a early age. There are other things you can do…..but let children alone. We all need to be recognized for what we’re doing, for our work. Ever say, “your beautiful, kid. That was well done. That’s nice.” and don’t forget, if you need it, so do your kids. How about giving up this nonsense about twenty-seven wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Getting back papers with all of the things marked wrong. What about marking those things that are right. “you got two right, Tommy. Good for you. Wow!

How about letting them know they can do something well and building from that instead of always counting what is wrong? Accentuating what is right and is good is just as simple. In fact, you have less wrist movements.

We all have a need for freedom, too.  One thing that Thoreau says is that: “birds never sing in caves.” and nether do we.  In order to learn we have got to be free. You’ve got to be free to experiment, to try, free to make mistakes.  That’s the way you learn. I can understand your mistakes and I profit greatly from mine. The secret is not to make the same one twice. But I need to be free to experiment and to try. Give me that chance. Allow me the freedom to be and to be myself and to find the joy in need. Don’t give me your hang-ups! Let me find and overcome my own.

In closing a quote from Leo Rosten, in his special way he says it all: “In some way, however, small and secret, each of us is a little mad….everyone is lonely at bottom and cries to be understood;  but we can never entirely understand someone else, and each one of us remains part stranger even to those who love us…..it is the weak who are cruel;  gentleness is to be expected only from the strong….Those who do not know fear are not really brave, for courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined… You can understand people better if you look at them---no matter how old or impressive they may be---as if they are children.  For most of us never mature;  we simply grow taller…. Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable of…. The purpose of life is to matter---to count, to stand for something, to have it make some difference that we lived at all." ………………………………kosmicdebris……………………………….........