If fear and hope can be diametrically opposed forces that work for the same ends, are they the same beast? Where does the idea of "Truth" come into play?
From Steps to an Ecology of Mind: "We can either have the habit of automatically looking before we cross the street, or the habit of carefully remembering to look. Of the two I prefer the automatic, and I think that, if Dr. Mead's recommendation implies an increase in rote automatism, we out to accept it. Already, indeed, our schools are inculcating more and more automatism in such processes as reading, writing, arithmetic, and languages" (175).
As brought up in class, this preference for automatically looking, seems like an active support for the DI system of instruction, designed entirely off the basis of rote and rapid memorization. While this stands in contradiction with the themes consistent throughout the rest of the piece, perhaps what we can infer from this statement, and from the theory and "success" behind the DI system, is that for children enmeshed within a structure of violence designed to ghettoize them, the ability to read and write is as key to survival as looking before stepping into the street. We can rationalize the DI system as providing a discipline of automatism within their schools, as a strategic response, or coping method to an environment in which the failure to know how to read, could (and is likely to) result in death--or chronic disenfranchisement. As with remembering to look before stepping in the path of oncoming traffic, for certain communities (such as City Springs) branding the ability to read into the minds of students whose environment is structured to disempower them, is comparable to survival. With matters of survival, it is of secondary importance that one first understands the value, and then chooses to remember to look before crossing the street, or chooses to learn to read.
What is the danger of this logic? I think we, in approaching social change, or educational pedagogies, from a holistic perspective, become vulnerable to confusing what works with what's "true." If there are two practices of teaching a child to read, the one being the power of free will, of the emancipated mind, and the other being the call and response tactic of the DI system, does the method matter if they both can prove success?
A beetle will confuse an orange beer bottle with its female mate--seeing instead of a beer bottle, a large, orange female ripe for fertilization. He will ignore the actual waiting female bug, confuse the bottle with the ideal mate, and attempt to inseminate it. As a result, the female beetle will die off without procreating and the survival of the species is threatened. The beetle, in this instance, confuses what works--orange, large, mountable--with what is true.
How can we take the fact that perhaps the two methods of teaching a child to read, although contradictory, might both work. Can we apply the "whatever works" mentality?
Plato committed himself totally to the ideal, ignoring the contradictions of what he observed from his sensory observations. Aristotle did not seek to uncover any underlying laws of nature, and based all his theories on what he observed. Galileo, recognizing that neither of his predecessors were entirely correct or incorrect, combined their methods. The differing free fall motions of a rock and a feather, were not insignificant; neither were they indicative of naturally anomalous behavior. He acknowledged the paradoxes of observed nature, while employing a practice of creative reasoning and imagination to generate new insights--the contradictory free fall behavior of a rock and a feather led to his understanding of air resistance.
(Excuse me, I am obviously in the midsts of a physics course)
What is the underlying law, the "right" or "true" way to teach? What unseen force accounts for the fact that two opposing methods can both work? If both methods aim (as I believe it can be argued) to effectively teach, a teach from a basis of humanism, how do we account for their irregularities? Can the conditioning environment within which a school, and an educational pedagogy necessarily exists, justify a coping method seemingly at odds with a larger theory? What is the greater law encapsulating the methods? What are we not seeing? Is there a truth?
What are the nuances, the subtle consequences of either method that we are missing when we categorically support or devalue a certain method when we approach it holistically?
1 comment:
Juliann, as I am also taking physics right now, I am loving the comparisons and how the topics relate. Also I thought of another physics concept while reading your post. You bring up DI and compare it with teaching children to automatically remember to cross the street. You said that for some students in poor areas, learning to read and write is just as critical because it eventually empowers them and removes them from dangerous neighborhoods. I still could not make myself see them as the same thing. This is where the physics concepts of proximal and distal came to me. The proximal in this case being the children learning to not get hit by a car. The distal being that they will eventually learn to read. The child not getting hit by a car seems more important than how well or quickly they learn to read. I began to understand why you claim that learning to read and write is just as critical. Even though their fate will not be decided in an instant, it still depends on the same thought process of automatically remembering to look both ways before crossing the street. One just appears more important because it is closer in space and time.
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