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| This article first appeared in the June 2005 issue
of Literacy Today
(issue no. 43). |
Literacy is not just about being able to read and write,
it is also about speaking and listening, discussion and understanding.
But, argues maths teacher, Colin Hannaford, classroom teaching
is more about instruction than discussion. This, he believes,
prevents many pupils from becoming properly literate.
The great ambition of working classes once was to become
literate. This literacy, they believed, would give them access
to such knowledge that they could never again be socially
enslaved. The Scotch-American billionaire Andrew Carnegie
provided many millions of dollars for US and British libraries.
Even more billions are spent in all countries on modern education.
But becoming literate in the modern world is a complicated
matter. It requires an understanding that literacy is not
only the ability to read and write. Literacy is also about
spoken language; it consists of networks of associations,
built up over long periods of time through critical discussion
of ideas and emotions.
However, in modern schooling, many pressures can combine
to reduce literacy from a very complex process to a much simpler
one - instruction. It took me most of my career in teaching
mathematics to understand that dependence on instruction has
evolved as the simplest method for schools to avoid admitting
fault. Teachers instruct; pupils then copy these instructions.
Formal responsibility of the teachers and school then ends.
Whatever other attempts are made to help pupils, once a complete
instruction of the syllabus has been given it is their responsibility
to understand it or not.
But learning like this requires the pupils to comprehend their
teacher's use of language. Naturally, those who succeed find
this satisfactory. Even professors of education tend to ask
only how to improve methods of instruction. Very rarely does
anyone ask whether these methods suit everyone equally well.
Clearly, they do not. My own observation has been that when
any average class is taught mainly through instruction, it
will soon divide into three:
- Division I will contain most of those already accustomed
to the language of instruction; they find it satisfying
and enjoy their lessons. They soon learn to ignore those
below them and only resent teachers who cannot "keep
control" of the others in the class.
- Division II contains those for who it is not their natural
language but whose obedience is rewarded even without
their understanding of what they are doing, or why. However,
to pass as successful, they must learn to be dishonest,
as well as helping others in their group to evade detection
too.
- Division III can neither understand, nor obey, nor reproduce
results well enough to succeed. They learn to despise
all authority and to be continually, angrily, disruptive.
Just two or three individuals like this in any class can
prevent any teaching from being effective. They can even
cause it to fail completely.
Children obviously do not really want this kind of treatment.
And there is a perfectly simple alternative: learning through
discussion. The source should not be the teacher, but the
textbook. The aim of the teacher is to help them to learn
how to use it anywhere, at any time. Everything in their textbook
that they need to know is read aloud by pupil after pupil,
line by line. "And what do you think that means?"
the teacher will politely ask someone of every paragraph,
sometimes after every sentence. "I don't know,"
is an acceptable reply. "That's fine. Just read it out
again," is the response.
Every explanation, however hesitant, must be in a pupil's
own words. The magic is that other pupils will listen far
more closely to these attempts by their classmates than to
anything said by a teacher. The meaning is thus patiently
extracted, discussed - literally reconstructed by the whole
class, reading, listening, thinking and working together.
When this finally satisfies them - as well as their teacher
- they choose their own exercises to test their understanding;
attempt them, and mark them. If necessary, they also correct
them. The teacher supplies encouragement, direction, control,
but in the end the teaching comes from the textbook. Soon
they learn to trust it!
Slowly connecting ideas together, children learn in this
way to enjoy the difficulty of reading, of cooperation, of
being respectful of each others' efforts to understand, of
accepting criticism without resentment. Only imagine what
this alone can change. Spiritual reality is described most
simply as being wherever we try to share understanding with
others. But this process is also a description of science.
There is really no contradiction there either.
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