"As parents and teachers we need to think about what our goals are for those we are involved with. Not so much how we teach but what we want a person to know."
Psychologist Barbara Luskin
(mother of a child on the autism spectrum)
Friday, April 3, 2009
What do we want our children to know?
Here's a quote I saved from an internet chat that has helped me think about intervention, teaching and learning:
"As parents and teachers we need to think about what our goals are for those we are involved with. Not so much how we teach but what we want a person to know."
"As parents and teachers we need to think about what our goals are for those we are involved with. Not so much how we teach but what we want a person to know."
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2 comments:
My philosophy is quite opposite. How we teach directly affects what a person knows. For me, education is more than what a person knows. To quote Charlotte Mason,
"Our aim in Education is to give a Full Life. We begin to see what we want. Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. 'Thou hast set my feet in a large room' should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking -- the strain would be too great -- but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest... The question is not, -- how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education -- but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?"
I *love* the quote from Charlotte Mason. It reminds me that we need more "unplugged" time. Video games, TV, computer all put our feet in a small room, don't they?
Tammy, you are looking at "big picture", zoomed out, so to speak, and I am zoomed in and looking close up.
I'll use the skill of gaze shifting as an example. You can teach a child to shift his gaze as a behavioral skill (what you want to teach) or as the path to a discovery (what you want him to know) about what happens when you shift your own gaze and gather your own information.
I'm referring to the basics needed to get to "how much does he care".
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