IV. Repairing the Damage
11. Liberating Our Own Learning
"The official theory of learning has been doubly detrimental to the way most people approach learning. On the one hand it leads us to overlook the classic belief that the basis of all permanent learning is identification with people who are more experienced in what we would like to learn; it removes the emphasis from people to procedures. On the other hand, the official theory has convinced us that learning necessitates work, so that we regard difficulty as a challenge that we must confront rather than as a warning that we should try a different approach."
"The good news is that learning is most effective when we voluntarily participate in an interesting activity. We should be less puritanical, and look around for ways to enjoy what we want to learn. Unfortunately, most of us have been so corrupted by the official theory of learning that we need considerable support and guidance — if not therapy — to rid ourselves of the conviction that learning has to be an unrewarding chore."
"Lev Vygotsky had a pithy way of describing how collaboration leads to individual learning. Anything children can do with hel ptoday, he said, they will be able to do by themselves tomorrow."
"What Vygotsky didn't point out explicitly is that one of the things constantly in the zone of proximal development is our own self-image, including our beliefs about what we will and will not be capable of doing in the future."
"It is not difficult to see how learning flourishes where there is interest, confidence, and understanding, and how it withers under boredom, trepidation, and confusion. We are bored when we are trapped in the confining inner circle of things we already know and can do, and we are confused when we are lost in the circle of things that are beyond our present capacities."
"Try to be more than an observer in these learning situations, and become a participant. Don't attempt to teach anyone how to do art, science, reading, or writing, or how to behave collaboratively, respectfully, and democratically, and so on, but engage in these things yourself, demonstrating how important they are to you."
"Learning is as natural as breathing, but doing something that you have learned, or from which you will learn, may be intrinsically difficulty and time consuming. Many people seem to believe that once someone has learned to write, for example, writing becomes effortless and can be done to order. But writing — or reading, cooking, gardening, computer programming, or repairing an appliance — may often be a struggle, even for an expert. Patience and effort are required."
"Don't focus on learning; focus on the task to be accomplished."
"I'm being careful to relate learning to enjoyment and satisfaction — not to fun. Many commercial instructional programs, on paper and on computer software, claim that their materials make learning FUN!!! ... They are sugar coating on the bitterness of the official theory of learning. ... "Fun learning" is often the reverse of enjoyment and satisfaction, because there is nothing reflective about it. If anything is learned, it is the mindless activity, the frenzied gimmick, and the desire for a pointless and irrelevant reward."
"Learning will advance in the classic way if learners watch out for two danger signals: (1) when they find themselves trying deliberately to memorize what they are studying or practicing, and (2) when they find themselves plowing through material and activities where they remember nothing, except that they were confused."
"The effort to memorize interferes with memorization because it destroys understanding. Rote memorization puts things in the wrong place, in short-term memory, rather than in long-term memory. ... The way to hold something in long-term memory is to relate it to something you already now. And there is no need to worry about finding something you already know to relate the new knowledge to because that will take place automatically if you understand what you are doing. Understanding means that you are connecting what is new to what you know already. Confusion means there is no such connection."
"Get on with enjoying what you are reading — or look around for something else that is interesting and does make sense to you. The more absorbed we are in an activity, the more we learn and the less likely we are to forget."
"Sometimes things are difficult to understand because we have confused ourselves, by following a false trail or making inappropriate connections. ... More prior knowledge is required. This means finding out as much as we can about what we are trying to learn from another source — a different book, the Internet, a movie or video that might be relevant, or another person."
"There is another resource that opens up fast tracks for learning — the power of imagination. ... Anything that stimulates our imagination and promotes of our enjoyment of an activity is a green light for learning."
"There is great power in reading, which offers supreme opportunities for the imagination to work."
"Read what you can understand. This may sometimes mean literally putting yourself in the place of children. ... the most helpful illustrated books are often produced for young people."
12. Liberating Schools and Education
"Abolition of all of the following: fragmented instructional materials and procedures, drills, memorization and recapitulation exercises, segregation into special ability groups, coercion, and time constraints."
"Teachers must take charge of their own professional lives. How might teachers take charge and improve what goes on in schools? I have a simple answer. They must change the world. And when they ask how they could possibly change the world, I have another simple answer — a little bit at a time."
"It's not necessary to throw out everything is done in schools and to start all over again. The world isn't divided into good schools and bad schools nor into good teachers and bad teachers. In all schools, some good things are done and some bad things are done. ... The main difference lies in the proportions. Good teachers to more good things. What needs to be changed — in schools and in individual teachers —is the proportions."
"The world doesn't have to be perfect for things to be improved. Teachers don't need perfect conditions in order to teach well. Children are remarkably adapatable in their learning. ... But that doesn't mean that adverse conditions should be tolerated or that teachers and learners wouldn't do better if conditions were improved. Everyone, in school and out, might do better with more opportunity in schools for respect, collaboration, reflective thinking, individual initiative, wide experience, and personal interaction."
"Teachers attribute boredom, confusion, apathy, resentment, anger, and despair to the personality of the students, not to the dynamics of the classroom or to disruptive events that may be occurring in the students' lives."
"Teachers may be oblivious to the consequences of what they are doing. How will teachers ever be able to examine critically the significance of their behavior in the classroom? They probably won't if they have no stimulus to shift them out of their habitual way of viewing their world. The solution, once again, is that learning takes place as a consequence of collaboration. Teachers should consider asking their questions and pursuing their inquiries in company with other teachers, with parents, and especially with their students. Everyone's consciousness and understanding can be raised with frank and open inquiry, not to reach conventional or 'right' answers but to reveal the underlying dynamics of every aspect of school activity, social and emotional as well as intellectual."
"The first step, in short, is for teachers to uncover the consequences of what they do; what things are good, and what things are not. The second step is to do more of the productive things, and less of the others."
"Teachers should be honest with their students. Tis is the only sure way of repelling and perhaps eradicating the official theory of learning and all the unnatural practices that it fosters and maintains."
"Most students believe that everything that goes on in school must be good for them. They assimilate the official theory of learning and then help to maintain it. ... Students who do well are inclined to think that all of their educational experience was good for them. Students who do poorly are inclined and encouraged to believe that 'failure' reflects their own inadequacies."
"None of this is difficult to understand for anyone open to seeing the world the way it really is. I have talked to primary grade students about the fluent and inconspicuous way they learned about language and about the world — and about how boredom and confusion can interfere with learning — and they understood exactly what I was talking about."
"Consciousness raising will not immediately eliminate everything that is wrong with schools, but it will make it easier and less traumatic for everyone to survive in them."
"The question should never be 'Are the students learning?' but always 'What are the students learning?" The answer is found not by testing the students but by looking at what they are doing and how they are doing it."
"Abolish the words learning and teaching altogether, and talk instead about doing. ... One thing is clear from the classic view — that people always learn from what they are doing. If they are doing something worthwhile they are learning something worthwhile. If they are engaged in a boring, confusing, or irrelevant activity, then they are learning something that is boring, confusing, or irrelevant. If they feel helpless and angry, then they are learning helplessness and anger."
"No one is suggesting that teachers give up their responsibility for what students should learn. The classic point of view puts greater responsibility on teachers since it asserts that their behavior and attitudes determine what students learn and what students think and feel as well."
"The doubters are wrong in thinking that chaos is the inevitable consequence of relaxed control. The teachers who burn out are the ones who want to control everything that goes on in their classrooms.
"The difficulty in getting many teachers — or their administrators — to change their attitudes and their ways is not that they are ignorant, but that they are insecure. They are afraid their world will fall apart if they give up any of their power or claim their independence."
"Administrators may feel they have even more to lose than teachers. The only way administrators can demonstrate their authority is by demanding a steady stream of numbers. They may require even more reassurance that they are not taking a grave risk by relaxing control."
"Parents who think a child's learning can be gauged by grades need educating, but what eventually will persuade them is actually seeing what their child can do, while the child is doing it."
"When I talk with teachers anxious to liberate their own classrooms from the official theory of learning, I suggest they should try to bring administrators and parents around to viewing the world the way they do. But if they fail, I recommend that they press ahead without the support of administrators and parents. Their first responsibility is to the students."
"The classic vision is neither old-fashioned nor outdated. It respects the challenges to learning of the modern world far better than the puritanical Victorian myth of the official theory."
I'm putting this in ALL-CAPS too (not in all-caps in the book):
TO SAY THAT EVEN SUCH TEACHERS AND STUDENTS CAN BE UNAFFECTED BY THE GENERAL ENVIRONMENT OF EDUCATION IS LIKE SAYING THAT HEALTH-CONSCIOUS INDIVIDUALS CAN SAFELY SWIM IN POLLUTED WATER. NO ONE ESCAPES THE SECOND-HAND SMOKE OF THE OFFICIAL THEORY OF LEARNING. AND THE CONTAMINATION IS SO PERVASIVE, LIKE AN INVISIBLE CLOUD OF POLLUTION HANGING OVER AN OBLIVIOUS CITY, THAT MANY TEACHERS DON'T EVEN SUSPECT ITS EXISTENCE. THEY DON'T QUESTION IT. THEY ACTUALLY GO ALONG WITH IT, HELPING IN THEIR GOODWILL AND PROFESSIONAL ENTHUSIASM TO PROPAGATE THE SYSTEM THAT UNDERMINES THEM.
Objection: "Should teachers do nothing? Should students just be allowed to goof off?" Response: "Teachers aren't doing nothing when they respect the classic view of learning and neither are the students. Some theory of innate wickedness seems to underlie objections such as this — that the natural preference of teachers would be not to teach and the natural preference of learners would be not to learn. Teaching and learning aren't aversive activities that people by nature want to avoid. What is universally unpalatable is the mindless 'work' in schools that gets in the way of sensible teaching and learning."
"It would be the responsibility of teachers to ensure that opportunities to engage in interesting and productive activities are always available."
"A classroom that can't cope with students of different mental, physical, and cultural abilities is a microcosm of a society that doesn't respect such differences. The fault lies with the classroom or the school, not with the individuals who 'don't fit.' The solution lies in changing the school and in changing attitudes, not in promoting and expanding difficulties through discriminatory and undemocratic bureaucratic procedures. Segregating individuals who are different in particular ways is not required because of the nature of people or of teaching and learning. It is required by the mindlessness and heartlessness of the official theory of learning."
"There can't be any fundamental objection to examinations that license individuals to enter particular occupations... Children and young people have no choice about attending school, and the constant testing is not designed to give them entrance to particular occupations, only to keep them under control and to manipulate their everyday experiences."
"Unremitting experience of competitiveness, apprehension, and triviality doesn't strengthen students for future trials and adversity. The people best able to survive sudden starvation are those who have been well fed, not starved for most of their life. Life is rarely as competitive and undeviatingly challenging outside school as it is inside."
"The essence of any liberated school is that it would be a community — not a hierarchy of principal, teachers, support staff, and students but a place where peopel gather to engage in interesting activities."
"There are some things that all liberated schools would lack in common —there would be an absence of mindless exercises, punitive tests, discrimination, segregation, pointless competition, labeling of individuals, restrictive timetables, and public and private humiliation of teachers and students."
"There would be opportunities for everyone to engage in interesting activities. There would be many interesting activities to engage in. There would be many interesting people around to demonstrate interesting pursuits and to assist interest learners to engage in them."
"Good teachers abound, to the extent that they are able to escape the narrow thinking and destructive interventions of the official theory of learning."
"All the good teachers I have known have been good organizers. Not hierarchical organization from the top, but community organization reaching outward. ... I'm talking about people with the talent and determination to make interesting possibilities occur in a creative and productive way."
[I'm not going to try to type up my notes from the endnotes because they are printed in a smaller font and I just can't manage to look and type, but it is in the endnotes that Smith has some observations about Freire, Csikszentmihalyi, etc. so I will want to come back and look at that again later even if I am not going to try to type stuff up here now.]
