Re: someone should clarify

pprior who-is-at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
Sun, 28 Apr 1996 07:40:47 -0500

Arne writes:

>If indeed the main aim of today's teachers at US schools is to
>let students learn under conditions of "intrinsic" fun motivation,
>then some effects of the US schooling system that have been puzzling
>for me become suddenly explainable.

I'd be interested in hearing from others who have spent more time in public
school than I have, but between being a parent and having supervised
student teachers for a year, I have never been in classroom where having
fun was the driving force in the organization of the class. Having fun may
be seen as desirable, but I'd nominate control as much more fundamental.
Actually, on average the schooling I've seen in the U.S. seems more tense
and distressing than pleasurable.

And, what I've heard from real whole language teachers--a fairly small
group as far as I can tell--(as opposed to the basal reader version of
whole language), the teacherswork very hard indeed to structure
environments where quite specific kinds of learning would occur. Such
classes certainly sought to tap students' interests and to work from
students' capacities, but I wouldn't equate that with fun or fatalism.

Paul Prior
p-prior who-is-at uiuc.edu
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign