1 May 2011

But that's just it! The "what" and the "how" are inseparable!

Leonard Sax talks of two ways of knowing, knowing experientially and knowing intellectually. He points out that other languages, ie. German, French, and Spanish, actually use different verbs for each type of knowledge (kennen/connaître/conocer vs. wissenschaft/savoir/saber). He argues, in his book "Boys Adrift" (which I'm not yet sure whether I recommend), that schools in the United States have become almost entirely focused on the latter, on the wissenschaft, on the intellectual, and have almost completely devalued ideas of "experiential learning."

I think he's right on this point, and that what he's getting at goes far deeper than the usual superficial conversation. That the issue goes even beyond simple questions of "how" to teach "what."

For example, let's take a living environment state standard:

Performance indicator 1.2: Hone ideas through reasoning, library research, and discussion with others, including
experts.

Major Understandings
1.2a Inquiry involves asking questions and locating, interpreting, and processing information from a variety of sources.
1.2b Inquiry involves making judgments about the reliability of the source and relevance of information.

Pretty simple at first glance. We, as teachers, look at this and say, "Okay, now I know (wissen!) what to teach, now I need to simply (!) figure out how to teach it." The problem is, how we teach it completely changes the nature of what it is we end up teaching! We could take students to a Buddhist temple for an hour, and, after eliciting their own questions, allow students to roam freely and try to discover answers to their questions through locating, interpreting, and processing information from a variety of sources. Or, we could give them a worksheet with questions that need to be answered by locating, interpreting, and processing information from two different textbooks in class. What we are teaching is very different. And this only brushes the surface! It is not semantics - it's at the heart of the matter.

We're mixed up. What do we really want from our students? What is our vision for our youth? If it is a vision of robots spitting out facts, then perhaps we can think of what and how separately. However, if it is a vision of creative, self-managed people in service to others, the questions of what and how become more and more entwined.

I realize, of course, that this is not really the heart of what you were saying. In a more direct response, I would like to say, yes! I am with you on the relational how. That this is where we can re-construct, from the ground up, our society's educational priorities, and our schools' priorities for our youth.

To end, this issue may be bigger than we realize. Leonard Sax points out, in the same book mentioned above, that as of 2004, in a number of states, 25% of men aged 30 to 54 were not working and not looking for work. In almost half of the states, the percentage was 20%, and at least 10% in the remaining states. This is up from less than 5% in almost all states in the 1950s and 1960s. What's this trend about? Have we mis-prioritized away from things that are actually of meaning, ie. creative thinking, service to others, community, in our schools and society at large, in the name of relatively uninspiring informational banking?

We got so caught up in "how" to teach "what" that we lost sight of what the what really should be?