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Showing posts from September, 2021

Thought Bite - 10 Mistakes in EDUCATION - #4 EXPERIENCES

  "Obviously I believe that the school system is still stuck with many beliefs. Here are Roger Schank's ten favorites, with our comments.  Mistake #1: Schools act as if learning can be disassociated from doing. There really is no learning without doing. There is the appearance of learning without doing when we ask children to memorize stuff. But adults know that they learn best on the job, from experience, by trying things out. Children learn best that way, too. If there is nothing to actually do in a subject area we want to teach children it may be the case that there really isn't anything that children ought to learn in that subject area . Our Thought : One example is how most of us do not know the rules of grammar, yet get it mostly right . Mistake #2:Schools believe they have the job of assessment as part of their natural role. Assessment is not the job of the schools. Products ought to be assessed by the buyer of those products, not...

Thought Bite - THE MYTH called LEARNING - #4 EXPERIENCES

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  The myth of learning is simple to state and prove. The myth says that  only when we learn, do we learn . What it means is that unless there is a conscious and methodical method, learning cannot happen. It is only when we are taught (in a systematic, structured way) that we will learn. But this is not true. Let’s take the mother of all examples to prove it wrong: We all learned our mother tongue without any structured and specific effort to learn it. We learnt it by being exposed to it all the time, by hearing others speak in that language. Our brain was collating data, analyzing, concluding and assimilating it, without we or anybody perhaps realising it.  Similarly, if I work in a garden (or in an agriculture field) I will automatically learn about crops and irrigation.  In fact, the evolution of our education system is only recent - about 150-200 years old. We learned very differently for thousands of years. Perhaps we learned for different reasons. We did not lea...

Thought Bite - How Learning happens - #1 Intro to Integrated Learning

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  When you see an insect and say, "Yuck!" What does your child say? "Yuck" Lesson to a child: worms are yucky and possibly scary also. Without realizing we close a big learning opportunity for the child: To know more about worms, about nature and the food cycle, about aerodynamics or movement, about life. When you see a flower and say, 'Beautiful".  What does your child say? "Beautiful" (Even if the child is too small to speak, she appreciates beauty). Lesson to a child: Flowers are beautiful, something to appreciate. Maybe without realizing we have opened one learning opportunity for the child to know more about flowers, designs, nature and to appreciate good things in life.   Children see us, observe our behavior, listen to our words carefully and feel our feelings. How the adults approach a learning situation, the child learns to approach the same way. If we want our children to be curious, inquisitive, exploratory,  inquiring, we need to ...