> My younger son, now 5, attended LaPetite Academy for daycare almost until he
> entered kindergarten last fall. They incorporated learning with coloring,
> cutting and pasting. I still try to do that at home with him. We can't take
> away a child's childhood, but we can integrate learning into play activities,
> and do it in ways that don't lose the fun of play. In some ways, I even try
> to do that with my Pima classes. I try to make learning interesting for my
> students, giving them new perspectives, new experiences. Yes, we've even
> been known to cut, color and paste (when we read the U.S. Constitution and
> made a wall-sized map of Colonial Williamsburg). I have forwarded this
> article to a friend of mine, a principal in England, to get her take.
> Ingrid
Who are the imbeciles that decided children don't learn anything in the
process of play? Consider Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development.
Consider the notion of the Invention-Convention continuum. Whatever
happened to the notion of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?"
It seems to me perilous to believe that what will be promoted next is NOT
a repealing of Child Labor Laws. Not only are children being "molded,"
they are being molded into, and viewed as, the kinds of replaceable
components required by industry with "Standardized" knowledge ingrained
early and often. I am reminded of the commercial where the father asks
his 3rd-grade son when he's going to begin looking for work. The son
responds, "But, Dad, I don't even know my multiplication tables yet"
(although this may be a paraphrase). The father responds, "Well, I
wouldn't let THAT slip out in an interview." The commercial is meant to
be humorous, I believe, because such a notion is ludicrous, NOT because it
strikes too close to home, too close to current reality. Here at The
University of Arizona, we offer a course in the College of Education
entitled "Learning through Play." Perhaps we need to remove it from the
curriculum and add a new series: Learning Through Rigor, Learning Through
Oppression, Learning Through Abuse, Learning Using Totalitarian Techniques.
I am also reminded of Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times (1936). In it,
factory workers are depicted as sheep, following the Judas goat of
industry into places of endless, mindless repetition. Take note, friends,
that we are no longer "personnel," but "human resources" to be mined and
to be used. What are the ramifications of not being indoctrinated in the
Standard Way? We could very well become the tailings of the educational
process, to be discarded. Who sits at the last stop on this educational
assembly line in the seat marked "Quality Control" separating the usable
human resources from the tailings? Keep in mind as well that California,
for example, is Standardizing Phonics as THE way to teach reading, despite
the fact that not all students learn to read through that method. (That
aside from the argument that this method reduces and/or depletes context
that is essential to learning.) Perhaps it would be better if we
simply made Xerox copies of our most "productive" (meaning
profit-generating) workers. Remember, however, that this has already been
tried: As I noted earlier, Dolly the Sheep is Dying.
+ Dan +
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( University of Arizona, College of Education )
( email: websterd who-is-at u.arizona.edu )
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