This is from the collection of my reflections on three selected phrases from each of the six chapters of John Holt’s book; Learning all the time. An online version of the book could be found here. This is the last reflection of the series.
Book: Learning All the Time
Author: Holt, John Cardwell, 1923-1985
Length: 169 pages
Published by: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
Year of Publication: 1989
Edition: Eight, August 1995
ISBN: 0-201-55091-1
Chapter 6: The Nature of Learning
Phrase 1:
And I only very slowly and painfully--believe me, painfully--learned that when I started teaching less, the children started learning more...
Teaching does not make learning. As I mentioned before, organized education operates on the assumption that children learn only when and only what and only because we teach them. This is not true. It is very close to one hundred percent false. [para 2 & 3, page 160]
This is shocking. If the writer wouldn’t be an experienced teacher and wouldn’t have a repute, I would have simply rejected it declaring it a statement based on madness. But now, I can’t, even no rational person can reject it knowing who says that. This offers us to apply the principles as the writer has presented in his book, on children around us and see ourselves what the results are. This is true that children are eager to learn whatever new they see or hear. That gives them knowledge but they need to learn skills as well and a little exposure to some skilled person would not be enough to teach them that skill. Isn't that they need guided instructions to learn every step of the skill and then practice it to master? Up to this point, I am a bit confused about the claim. Lets see if the writer could elaborate it further.
Phrase 2:
Children learn from anything and everything they see. They learn wherever they are, not just in special learning places. They … are more interested in the objects and tools that we use in our regular lives than in almost any special learning materials made for them. [para 2, page 162]
This is absolutely correct. Few days back when I was polishing my shoes, my kid, just 18 months old, kept watching me. When I put the brush down, he grabbed it in his one hand and a shoe in another hand and started rubbing it exactly the way I was doing it. A child so young, yet he was perfectly imitating me and learning in that way.
Phrase 3:
We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions - if they have any - and helping them explore the things they are most interested in. [para 2, page 162]
Here the writer gives us the plan of action for our child’s real learning; an alternate of organized, guided chunks of knowledge which is made to master before next chunk is presented by every child of the class in a uniform way. I endorse that at least the way mothers make the child eat food is best taught when children are left free just to observe the adults having meal. Children are only needed to make them sit on their chairs for a few days and they quickly learn that it is meal time now and all members of the family will now sit on their chairs and have a plate with some food in front of them. All of them will take some food in their hand or spoon and put in their mouth. The little child; the keenest observer, quickly learns all that and soon starts asking for food in a plate exactly as the adults have in front of them. Without making any shouting or running away from the table, the child will keep on eating food but in an imperfect matter.
The only thing parents need to do is show some patience as the young learner makes his first tries of putting meal in his or her mouth. This could create a mess having dirty spots all over kid’s clothes and food items lying on the floor but this is the learning curve and the child could not be perfect from the very start. If he is appreciated and given freehand to have food on regular basis, not only he will learn eating correctly, he will have desire for eating too. He would then have chance to taste different food items and will keep on learning that food items are different in names, colors, shapes, hardness and tastes. That’s all important learning which the child will have only when he is given a little liberty, appreciated, motivated and is not enforced to eat and finish all food of his plate.
Same technique applies to making kids learn anything. Summarizing the steps of this technique as following:
- Increase interest level of kids about the thing you want to teach them by talking to them, storytelling, and using KWL method (letting them tell what they already know, what they are interested to know, and when learning is over ask them what they have learnt)
- Show them with utter seriousness how it is done
- Allow them to freely imitate without being criticised or pointing their mistakes
- Answer their questions and appreciate what they do well (without pointing out their mistakes. Through auto-correct mechanism, they will correct their mistakes with time on their own)
- Stop this session when their interest is gone
- Repeat it at another time when they are willing
This answers me the confusion I had in the start of the chapter and clarifies the steps of real learning which is not just interest boosting but is also meaningful and natural too.
