Re: LO only half an answer? LO4112

Michael McMaster (Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk)
Wed, 6 Dec 1995 12:41:45 +0000

Replying to LO4047 --

I like Marion's comments a lot. I find them respectful and gentle
and none-the-less effective. They still miss something that I'm
attempting to keep alive.

I deeply appreciate the teachers in my life - past and present - and
do not consider that they only "point me to what I already know".
Not exclusively at any rate.

I have become connected to traditions of thinking, of questioning, of
practices - to name a few areas - that do not occur for me as
something I "already knew" even after I have attained some mastery in
them.

They aren't "unnatural" and I can say they resonate with what I
already knew. But that is a far cry from saying I already knew them.
It is also, in some cases, a long step to "putting them in my living
room". I had to keep them in the garage and workroom for a long time
first in some cases.

I am referring to intellectual matters, to athletic and performance
matters and to matters of human relationships. In the latter case, I
may have known it on some level but it was something offerred "from
the outside" that connected with what I knew that made the
difference.

In any case, teaching is present and in many cases it was very "one
way" in its delivery and, at least in some of these cases, that was a
very effective way to do it. The requirement for its effectiveness
was my interest, willingness, engagement but even that was at least
partly a matter of the teacher creating it - although this latter
part tended to be in partnership.

I'm reminded of a story from a wonderful book called "The Tracker".
It was a story of learning told by a man about his childhood
experiences with a tracker in the everglades. The statement that I
remember (fairly accurately) was, "Before he taught us something, he
made sure we passionately wanted to know it." That sentence
captured what was often a long process of interesting the boy in
something in a slow and indirect way until he badly wanted - or even
needed - to learn what the tracker wanted to teach next.

> From: GMBrady@aol.com
> Date: Mon, 4 Dec 1995 16:05:29 -0500
>
> >We have reacted so strongly to the linear "mug and jug" model of
> >teaching that we've forgotten its roots. My Scottish dictionary
> >says, "introducing to a body of knowledge".
>
> In the course of working with thousands of students, I've come to the
> conclusion that, for me, the best model of teaching requires that I assume
> that all my students already know everything I want them to understand,
> and that what I'm trying to do is point it out to them. This involves
> sort of poking around in their mental attics and basements, finding the
> piece of mental furniture that they seemed to have need of, dragging it
> down or up, dusting it off, and helping them find some useful place for it
> in one of their living rooms.
>
> Marion Brady
> GMBrady@aol.com

--
Michael McMaster
Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk