[Assam] Learning from children's learning - Holt etc

[umesh sharma]

Hi,
   
  I have been reading about how children can learn so fast. Research has shown that children learn fastest when they are 0-1 year old and this rate goes down with age. I knew this before I took up reading "Why children learn" - by John Holt. 
   
  Like my father:
  In many ways he is like my father - since he came from a different world (from inside a submarine during world war 2) to look at the civilian world where everyone was busy making money and "keeping up with the Joneses." My father too had left civilian life at age 10 to join military school and returned to this life in his mid thirties ( he had resigned without pension from army -after intense efforts to get himself out - to take care his family and society ) and knew little of outside world -such as filing tax returns or paying the electricity bill or getting food from ration store. I was about 8 at the time and in a sense we both learned about the (civilian ) world together - since he liked to think out loud and did not get along with my mother - so did most of his thinking with me. 
   
  Chldren's learning:
  Holt, in his book, mentions that children learn by seeing others doing things as part of their normal lives -hearing what they say and trying to do as the elders do. Young children try the hardest to get it right -since noone pesters them with teaching them how to do it right or correcting them. They do not have the fear of failure. So they learn the most when they are youngest - and perhaps that is the reason why we all learn fastest when we are small kids - than we do now. It is not because we were genuises then and have become senile now .
   
  In  a sense anyone who goes to a completely new place or country is like a small child - he knows noone who can ridicule him or her for making mistakes - and sees lots of new sights and sounds worth investigating Like small kids that "foreigner" has to learn to make sense of that place to survive in it.
   
   He also makes conectiions with the family background of the children and their aptitude/interest/skill level in diferent activities . He mentions for instance that one little boy from a "a very mechanical family" was very careful while operating his electronic typewriter -unlike most others -who simply banged on it. He carefully observed how it worked and tried to take it apart - the way his family members did with various objects bac home.
   
  Real work learning:
   Holt reasoned that children could learn more easily in an era where they could observe people doing "real work" and perhaps not just pushing files or telephones. I think he meant traditional work such as blacksmith's , farmer's , mechanics, factory workers, machine operators etc - something with has a visual component and something which does not require bookish knowledge. In that sense I was quite lucky since we in India still are doing mostly traditional work (unless you work in some ofice in a big city or govt) and I accompanied my father almost everywhere (after school hours) to meet all sorts of interesting people (incl. female teachers whose house I accompanied him - my mother didn't like to go out much -for work) incl lawyers, small time businessmen and to factories incl a major exporter's who stayed nearby and whose children studie briefly at Jaipur School.
   
   It helped to have a very diverse neighborhood - mostly middle class govt servants, quite a few entrepreneurs who ran factories in then recently opned Vishwakarma Industrial Area a few mlies away - and a sizeable cosmopolitan defense contingent (inlc my family) who had been allotted houses there and also lived in the sprawling army cantt nearby. Topping it off were the traditional Rajput royal blood families (most rapidly becoming poor after dissolution of royalty in 1947) who still stayed in the area -which they had owned for generations -and had a 1000 acre school land just behind my house -donated by the King of Jaipur. Even in a lawless India noone dared to encroach upon their unfenced land - a great playground for us children. 
   
  Teaching: As Holt observes we learn as long as we keep trying are not afraid to fail - most common in very young children. Most easily observed while they learn to speak. As they grow older and are "taught" by elders about the "correct way" of doing anything - they start to restrict their activities to what they can do right the first time. I have always been a late learner - in the sense that -to get it perfect -to my satisfaction - takes more time than given in a classroom setting. In that sense also I aim to make kids interested in exploring the issues themsleves - rather than just seeking my approval. I am glad to say that atleast 3-4 of my 6 students have really gotten interestd in book reading - on their own. One was good already. The last one has gone back to starting point - to having interest only in drawing-ever since he returned from his long illness.  
   
  Illness: Maybe he is trying to again make sense of the world (like an infant) visually -as I did when I recovered from a 3 month illness during grade 7 -then foolish doctors could not even find out what I was suffering from - I had to go thru two courses of typhoid medicine, one of malaria, a TB check - and then after 2 months a specialist reasoned that maybe I was suffering merely from sore throat and these medicines had risen my body temp to above normal levels --- so my disdain for these doctors. I recall that at many times I was undergoing treatment by three methods simultaneously - Allopathy (modern medicine), Homeopathy and Ayurved. I find Ayurveda is best -as a preventive medicine -since based on natural cures -and some medicines. Allopathy is only good for surgery or diagnosis or genetic stuff and research. As they say prevention is better than cure.
   
  any comments 
   
  Umesh  
   
  Holt writes:
   
  "Bill Hull once said to me, "If we taught children to spea, they'd never learn." I thought at first he was joking. By now I realize that it was a very importnat truth. Suppose we decided that we had to "teach" children to speak. How would we go about it? First, some committee of experts would analyze speech and break it down into a number of separate "sppech skills." We would probably say that , since speech is made up of sounds, a child must be taught to make up all sounds of his language before he can be taught to speak the language itself. Doubtless  we would list tese sounds, easiest and commonest ones first, harder and rarer ones next. .....................................
   
  This exactly what happened in the Chicago schools, for a while at least, with respect to reading. Some committee of experts decided that the activity of reading could be broken down into five hundred separate skills. They finally pared this list down to two hundred and eihty three , which they then proposed to teach , one at a time and in strict order, to all the children in the shools...........
   
  It is a remarkable business. We are so used to talking that we forget that it takes a very subtle and complicated coordination of lips , tongue, teeth, palate, jaws, cheeks, voice and breath. ............Yet every child learns to make the sounds of his own language. ...How does he do it? His coordiantion is poor to start with; how does he manage to do what many adults find so difficult.
   
  The answer seems to be by patient and persistent experiment; by trying many thousands of times to make sounds, syllables, an words; by coparing his own sounds to the sounds made by people around him; and by gradually bringing his own sounds closer to the others; above all , by being willing to do things wrong even while trying his best to do them right,"  (Holt --book - WHy children learn , 1964, 1983) 


Umesh Sharma
5121 Lackawanna ST
College Park, MD 20740

 1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
		
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