About memorizing

Two friends takes a walk in the park. One of them say: How beautiful here, what nice trees. The other who is a botanical not only know the names of the trees and the flowers, he also know their history and why the look like they do. That's why his experience of the walk in the park becomes much richer.

As humans our relation to our environment doesn't become as naturally and engaged, when we have to look things up on a computer or in a book every time we encounter something. It is a poor experience of the world and the cause of it is, that we seem to give up on the inner life. An inner life is important in the matter of living a good life.

We forget to remember.

Information just pass through us. It has been such an integrated part of our life that we don’t even notice it.

Once reading a book was not only an experience. It was an investment, because the book became a part of who you were. You could memorize it and quote from it.

This is not an argument for rote learning. But to learn new things depends on relating it to previous knowledge. Creating new Knowledge demands old knowledge to build on. Sure our school system has to teach children to be sensible and creative, but they also need some basic knowledge to orient themselves from.

We should not forget this old knowledge.

This words are my translation of fragments of an interview with the American author Joshua Foer as it was to read in the Danish Newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad, April 17. 2013.

A Luhmann Lesson  

Niklas Luhmann (December 8, 1927 – November 6, 1998) was a German sociologist, and a prominent thinker in sociological systems theory.

This is my interpretation of some of the things Niklas Luhmann has said or suggested. 

Students should not learn about environment anymore. Well, we should not put it that way. It is much more personal and individual talking about it as ecology. That is a more including word because it contains a thought of living in it. It is equating the individual and the nature.

The student is not a trivial machine. A trivial machine is only giving answers according to the information its programmed with. If you treat students like such a machine you only accept answers that is strictly correct according to the textbook. No place for individual thinking.

Reality has through the sciences imposed a special terminology. But reality can not be recognized by a form of words. Reality can be described as systems which serve to communicate. Communication creates reality and the dynamics of the system.

School is an institution where the input can be observed. But it is as a kind of black box because what happens in it is unpredictable. Similarly, the outputs.

(My addition:This is not an argument for not trying to educate children as good as possible. Because as more knowledge and learning that occur as greater the chance that something reasonably is happening.)

Parents values school by showing interest

Parents should show more interested in how their children are doing in school. No matter what level they are on its crucial that children experience their parents interest about what they are doing in school. They see that they are send to school each and every day for several hours, so if this is not followed by interest of what they do there they might start questioning the value of school and education. The interest they must be met with got to be true and honest interest, not just the typical question; what did you learn in school today? That is very difficult to give a good answer to and it doesn't show true interest. Parents must take a professional interest about what there children learn in the different subjects. Even more important they got to have interest about how their children learn. The best advice a child can get is about how to learn. As teacher we know that there are a various of ways children learn. Parents have an extraordinary opportunity to learn exactly how their child learn. They should use this opportunity. Doing that they show how much they value their children as well as education and school.

Emancipation

Empowerment should be the starting point when educators support students creating their identity. It could be called “help to help ourself develop general education”. As educators we need to ask certain questions to our students in the matter to help them. Questions that helps them present them-self, create the picture of their life and identity. Only if we as educators write this down, we will have an idea about, who it is we are dealing with. Education certainly also concerns life in general for everyone who are involved. We need to expand the width and the quality of the tool we use, which is an important source for information about the individual we educate. This tool could be improved if we add some vigour and more power to it. The student and the educator has to join a partnership about the students education. The questions students need to take a stand on are: The quality of their social relations? The quality of their schoolwork? Questions about spirituality? What is their family situation at the moment? How their educational situation influence on their social life? We can as educators ask the questions and help the students build on their answers.

The trouble with interest

Should parents take more interest in the school of their children? Sure, yes they should. Though its not that simple. Cause taking interest can lead to interference. That could be an negative outcome, because the parents often don´t know, what their children nead to learn in school They dont know the curriculum, and they don´t know the core of the subjects in school. This problem need to be solved if interest shouldn´t lead to troubles.

Life and death

Last week one of my pupils went home from school thinking that the end of the world was near. In my geography lection he heard about the supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park. In the scientific broadcast the speaker mentioned that statistically a big eruption of the volcano was imminent. The consequences would be an ecological disaster who would wipe out most life and civilisation in the world. He was honestly worried, and his mother got concerned about him. She called the school asking, if we could do something to calm him down.
A few days after I met the boy. I was taking up the case with him. Though it wasn´t necesarry, because he had already done some personal research into the matter. He found out, that there wasn´t any reason to be worried instantly due to the statistically chance of an eroption.
This boy is just an average pupil. He get interested in schoolwork when it realy matters to him. Well, as so many other pupils do. Because lets be honest, most pupils do the schoolwork because the teachers and parents tells them. Or they do in the matter of achieving good marks. But this incident shows, that when it matters, when it is about life and death, pupils are even doing research by themself.
Isn´t it a shame that most school systems prevent us to take serious use of our pupils personal interest in the world around them?
Maybe it dosn´t have to be literally a matter of life and death, but what if it could be in a figurative sense. Using that kind of interest would sure cause more learning.

Let go with the control

When you suggest to give the pupils more freedom to follow their interests and work on their own choise, maybe you have met this kind of teacher saying that it will never work out because that way pupils will never learn what they need to learn. And arguing that you can´t remain disciplin if they all work on different things. Well, its right that you you don´t feel to be in control, when you let the pupils be in charge of their own projects and let them learn what they learn. But its just a false feeling, because you have never been in control of what pupils learned. Learning is a process in our minds and only the individual have access to it. So why not let go?

"Bateson claims that man will never be able to control the whole system because it does not operate in a linear fashion and if man creates his own rules for the system, he opens himself up to becoming a slave to the self-made system due to the non-linear nature of cybernetics."
Quote from Gregory Batson.

I suggest we let pupils be creative. We should let innovation play a more important role in our educational systems. Though how do we reveal that pupils learn something? The ansver is simple. Let them communicate about it. If they can communicate in a rational, shrewd and insiting way, they have probably learned it.
So what about discipline? They simply have to work disciplined. Its is not on question. Though to obtain disciplin in the educational system require a clear and simple set of rules, and just as important, transparency for parents so they can see how their children behave and work in school. Let us never forget that disciplin is something children first of all learn in their home. Parents and with them their children should always be given the majority of responsibility for childrens behavior.

Photo: Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980)