Eugene, I think that everything you say makes sense if the learning
is aimed at "what" and not "who am I." Obviously, both sorts of learning
co-occur during school. Sometimes, by focusing on the "what," the
student learns a new way of being. But sometimes, the "what" requires
that the student not be who s/he knows him/herself to be, and the
student will not/ can not forego her own way of being in order to
attend to the "what." The problem is not a different way of
reasoning through common artefacts as your example shows, but
a different way of caring/valuing/weighting artifacts, including
features of the linguistic system, a problem of different selection
values from the whole set of semiotics in the culture....
I'm not explaining this well - I imagine it's a systemic issue, the
sort of problem Jay Lemke explains well, one differently
weighted system interacting with another to compound the
differences that communicants must somehow account for or slide by.
so what do you think?
Judy
At 06:06 PM 4/6/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi Mike and others--
>
>Mike wrote,
>> I am not certain if the sensitive teacher gets us fully past the
>> "other peoples' children" problem. Ideally, I suppose so. Factually,
>> to be sufficiently sensitive, it might mean that the teacher needs
>> to be sufficiently knowledgable about local cultures to be able (for
>> example) to speak to parents in their native language (never mind
>> the kids, where in 4-5 first language classrooms, the task is impossible).
>
>I do not think I'd define a sensitive teacher as that who knows everything
>about a child and can speak his/her language. Your reasoning seems to imply
>(and correct me if I'm wrong) that sensitivity comes from similarity (i.e.,
>being in common with child as much as possible). I strongly disagree with
>such approach. I do not agree for teacher spending all evening studying
>their kids' cultures and languages. I believe in teaching through diversity
>not through similarity. Students are in interest to me, as a teacher,
>because they deviate from me. I hope to make them interest in each other
>and me because we all deviate from each other. We are the curriculum for
>each other -- not textbooks or district guidelines -- and this is not our
>choice. But we have choice to reject or accept each other and curricula we
>bring with us.
>
>Let me provide an example (real example). A week ago I was asked by my
>student teacher to visit a classroom where she has her teaching practicum to
>observe her teaching and to see a case of learning disability diagnosed by
>the school teacher. As evidence of learning disability, the student teacher
>pointed at a first grader (an African American boy) who was doing dittos
>with a bunch of addition tasks. The boy did everything correctly except
>several repeating tasks of 6+1. He systematically wrote that 6+1=2.
>Teacher passed the boy several times and corrected him by crossing 2 with
>seven and making explanation why 6+1=7. The boy seemed to agree with the
>teacher until the task 6+1 came again on the ditto.
>
>I was puzzled by the boy's behavior because he solved all other addition
>tasks correctly and because he used his fingers for counting. Finally, I
>came to the boy and asked to explain how he counts 4+3. The boy opened four
>fingers on the left hand first, then three fingers on the right hand, and
>then he counted the fingers on both hands. Then I asked the boy to explain
>6+1=2. The group of kids sitting around stopped their work and started
>listening to the boy's explanation. The boy opened one finger on the right
>hand representing six and added another finger representing one. Because he
>got only two fingers open he explained how he got 2 as the result. "Two
>plus the other hand," added a girl who were listening them. The boy agreed.
>The university instructor recognized that the children were switching from
>the system with the base 10 to the system with the base 5. He asked them to
>count 7+2 and the kids (including the boy) replied, "Four plus the other
>hand." The boy added that "seven is two plus the other hand." I pointed at
>boy's ditto, at teacher correction of 6+1=2 (crossed by the teacher and
>replaced with 7) and asked the boy, "Is it why the teacher wrote 7 here").
>The boy (at the other kids in the group) looked at the addition task and
>said, "Yes. She wrote seven because it is two." "Plus the other hand,"
>added the other kids. The boy thought for awhile and said, "She wants me to
>count fingers on both hands." I told the boy that he had invented his own
>way of counting. I represented seven in his system as Y2 (I actually drew
>like a tree with five branches representing a hand with open fingers, not
>"Y"). The other kids were exciting to write conventional numbers in the
>boy's system.
>
>I moved away from the group. Later I observed that the boy solved task of
>8+1 by putting both conventional number 9 and his representation Y4. The
>teacher passed him by, looked at his picture of "hand" and asked quickly
>"What it for?", crossed it out and moved away. After the lesson, I told the
>story to the teacher and she said that she is too busy to investigate
>problems with each child (however, she was not too busy to ask the student
>teacher to document "learning disability" of the boy).
>
>I argue that guidance sensitivity is not about "investigation of problems
>with each child" or the exhaustive description of cultural background of
>each child, but rather guidance sensitivity is in teacher's genuine interest
>in ways students do what they do. Moreover, I believe that the teacher
>should MAINLY learn about his/her students in the process of the guidance
>rather than before it.
>
>What do you think?
>
>Eugene
>-------------
>Eugene Matusov
>Willard Hall#206G
>Department of Educational Studies
>University of Delaware
>Newark, DE 19716
>Office: 302-831-1266
>Fax: 302-831-4445
>email: ematusov who-is-at udel.edu
>website: http://www.ematusov.com
>-------------
>
>
>
Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183