We could learn a lot about how to run our schools by thinking about how we as individuals best learn something. Reading, although I'm all for it, is probably the least effective method. That's because few of us are motivated to pick up a book on something that we don't know and so doesn't interest us, and even fewer ofus remember much of what we've read. A good lecture is a slightly better way of learning because it offers human contact and maybe some drama. Better still is a combination of hearing and seeing, say through a lecture and slides. Still better is a discussion because we have to listen to others and respond - we're more directly involved.
But for most of us, the best way of learning is by doing - by making and unmaking something, solving problems and investigating for ourselves the answers to questions we are made to care about.
But formal education seems to ignore this fact. Schools continue to be organized around the least effective methods of learning: reading and lecturing. Is it possible for schools to take into account what we know about our own learning?
One recent book that clearly illustrates the power of learning by dong is Eleanor Duckworth' s The Having of Wonderful Ideas (Teachers College Press, 1987). The book offers several marvelous examples of how light bulbs go off in children's minds when they are exposed to real tasks and problems. One of the best actually involves a light bulb.
It's the story of a fifth grader named Hank, an "energetic and not very scholarly" pupil engaged in a lab experiment that used flashlight batteries, light bulbs, wires and boxes to show how electric circuits work.
"After the children had developed considerable familiarity with these materials, the teacher made a number of mystery boxes," Duckworth writes. "Two wires protruded from each box, but inside, unseen, each box had a different way of making contact between the two wires. In one box the wires were attached to a battery; in another they were attached to a bulb; in a third, to a certain length of resistance wire; in a fourth box they were not attached at all: and so forth. By trying to complete the circuit on the outside of a box, the children were able to figure out what made the connection inside the box."
Hank attached a battery and a bulb to the wire outside the one box. The bulb lit, so he knew the wires inside were connected in some way. But the light was dim so he also knew that the wires inside were not connected by a piece of ordinary copper wire. The dimness of the bulb meant that the wires inside were connected either by another bulb or by resistance wire.
" ... in order to push the children to think a little further, [ the teacher] asked them if they could tell whether it was a bulb or a piece of wire inside the box. She herself thought there was no way to tell. After some thought, Hank had an idea. He undid the battery and bulb that he had already attached on the outside of the box. In their place, using additional copper wire, he attached six batteries in a series. He had already experimented enough to know that six batteries would burn out the bulb, if it was a bulb inside the box. He also knew that once a bulb is burned out, it no longer completes the circuit. He then attacked the original battery and bulb again. This time he found that the bulb on the outside of the box did not light. So he reasoned, rightly, that there had been a bulb inside the box and that now it was burned out."
Duckworth' s example captures the possibilities for kids when we organize their learning in ways other than lectures and textbooks. "Not very scholarly" Hank, for example, was allowed to do science and reason his way toward principles of electricity. Now Hank can pick up his science book with real interest and a real experience to guide his understanding of more abstract materials.
In Duckworth' s view, once you look at schooling from the point of view of how students learn, you get a different set of ideas about teaching, too. "The first is to put students into contact with phenomena related to the area to be studied - the real thing, not books or lectures about it - and to help them notice what is interesting; to engage them so they continue to think and wonder about it. The second is to have the students try to explain the sense they are making, and, instead of explaining things to students, to try to understand their sense."
Why don't we have more such activities, or as Duckworth calls them, "occasions for wonderful ideas"? Why are hands-on activities declining in our schools while lectures and textbook-based methods which already represent over 80% of instructional time - increase?
Part of the answer is that lecturing and reading are the ways teachers themselves successfully learned. Teaching differently would mean inventing the equivalent of the wired boxes - not just in science but for every idea the teacher is trying to get across and in every subject. This means devoting lots of time that teachers don't get to coming up with new ideas.
Of course, ideas could be developed by all the teachers in the school and then shared. But most teachers are isolated and there's little time for sharing. Furthermore, like other new ideas, many new teaching ideas will bomb. And, before we advise teachers to use a new approach, shouldn't it be field tested, just as new medicines are?
These would have been insurmountable problems only a few years ago. But, thanks to technology, they no longer are. New ideas and projects can be put into a national, computerized teacher data bank. New ideas would be identified and available to be tested, with results disseminated. Tried and tested techniques would be available, so that teachers would ultimately have plenty of ideas to choose from. Periodically, new ideas would be added and unworkable techniques deleted.
Sound too mechanical? Maybe. But remember, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc., have standard ways of handling most situations. Doctors, for example, are not required to discover the remedy for each disease they treat. By handling most things in a routine way, professionals can save their thinking and creativity for the tough cases that resist routine solutions. Success in schooling may depend on just this kind of approach.