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Part 64: John Holt 2:
August 18, 2003:
This is the second of my essays inspired by reading John Holt's book, "How Children Fail." In one part of his book, Holt discussed some things called Cuisenaire rods. He used them as props to teach math. He said we want the rods to turn the mumbo jumbo of arithmetic into sense. That made me wonder if he was a mathematician or just someone who taught math. Arithmetic is not mumbo jumbo if you teach it right. It's the rods that are mumbo jumbo.
These rods were invented by a Belgian educator, Emile-Georges Cuisenaire. He devised this method of teaching children to count by having them associate numbers and colors and thus learn the basics of addition and subtraction. His colored wooden rods range in length from 1 to 10 centimeters and each length is associated with a particular color. Of course, he wrote a book called "Numbers in Color."
I'm thinking bologna. If you teach math right, you don't need props. Props, new teaching methods, and new math are all bologna. Math is a thing of beauty and structurally sound. Kids will see that if you show it to them in the right way. Teaching methods are irrelevant if we see ourselves as guides rather than teachers. It is this basic premise that is wrong. The whole curricula driven concept comes out of the notion that we must teach kids rather than support them in their quest to learn.
These people and their rods and props are off the mark. All they do is add another level of complexity. I don't think we need props of any kind. If we must use props in teaching, at least let the kids design them and build them. Let them make sense to the kids, not some ivory tower professor of psychology or educator.
The notion of using props is very similar to the notion of using associations as a memory aid. I do that and it works well for me. The failure occurs when people try to teach association as a memory aid by providing people with ready made associations. It does not work. Association only works if the association has meaning to the person using it.
The same is true of a teacher bringing in props made by someone else for the kids. They just add another level of unnecessary confusion. For the kids, it becomes just another thing to memorize. Unless the prop is invented by the person who uses it, it will not make sense to them.
Now, we should differentiate between examples and props. When we count, we must be counting something, but the something should have meaning to the child. Marbles, money, and jellybeans will do. Little pieces of colored wood will not. When a teacher brings in hokey props made by some ivory tower professor they are bound to confuse the kids and waste time. The difference is, a prop represents a concept in abstract and is difficult to grasp. An relevant example is understandable because it is a concrete reality. It has meaning to the student.
Mathematics is easy to teach and learn when the kids can relate it to something real in their lives. This is exactly why we should not offer it until the kid sees that relationship. Whether we relate it to financial matters, score keeping, or harmonics is not relevant. The key is its importance to the student. Props do not do that for us.
The big thing is, you cannot teach arithmetic until children want to learn it. That is the truth and that was most of Holt's problem. He was trying to teach something to kids who were not ready to learn it. We should never tell kids that they have to learn something even if we give them a because. That is really not true and we know it. It is enough to let them see that they cannot really understand music without understanding the relationships of notes which are mathematical. They can still play music, but they cannot compose music. Then they can decide how important math is. It is not necessary to tell them they must learn math because that is simply not true. We should not lie to kids.
I repeat, there is no evidence whatsoever to show that math is necessary for any particular human's success. Eventually, most kids will have to know some math to support their other activities. When they discover they need, it is the right time to teach it. Not before. Age is irrelevant. My theme is still the same. The only skills the kids must hone are the ones they have already developed before they got to school. These are communication and investigation. Given the proper support and environment, they will continue to develop these skills. All else will come out of that naturally.
Now I did wonder about Holt's math background and implied that he may not have been a mathematician. Whether he was a mathematician or not, he was a first class genius. Another possibility is that he was an outstanding mathematician and knew math so well he could not teach it. Some people cannot teach what they know because they know it too well. They cannot assume the student role and understand how difficult it is from that level of ignorance. That is one large problem for teachers. Many are unable to assume the student mentality.
Another problem can occur when a teacher does not know the subject well at all. They must teach by rote because that is the way they mis-learned it. They do not really understand it. If your knowledge of the subject is so poor that you have to teach from a book, you should probably not be teaching that subject. As to the rods, later in his book, Hold seems to draw the same conclusion I have. Props end up being counterproductive.
One fascinating part of Holt's book was a discussion of how children see things. He noticed that in many cases where a teacher was correcting a kid, it was the teacher not the kid who was blind. Still the teacher beat the kid down. I won't spoil the book for you by borrowing his examples. They are just too choice.
Everyone in the world has an absolute right to see the universe the way it appears to them. One of the worst, meanest, stupidest things we do to kids is tell them that they are wrong. The truth is the universe they see is simply different from the universe we see. It is not wrong, it is different. If their view is not effective, they will learn that. Often, as Holt has discovered, if we take the time to look, we may learn something. We may discover that their view is just as logical and sound as our view.
The fact is, for any human being, their view of reality is a construct. There is no absolute view of the universe. I am far from being a sophist, but we should cut out the nonsense we feed to kids that we have some kind of absolute knowledge. All of our knowledge is provisional and relative. Though it is usually useful and serves us well, it always awaits the discovery of new truths. We can get into deep doo-doo when we forget that, especially when the new truths appear. As the church has learned, time and again to its own discredit, new truths do appear.
As I said, near the end of his book, Holt was coming to the realization that it's the system which is wrong. The model we use does not work. After thinking about it, I have concluded that this educational machine has never worked. It only appears to have worked because, until recently, we did not need education to succeed. In an agrarian culture, which we were for many years, formal education provided no competitive advantage.
There was a time in America's history when we produced an almost
unbroken string of inventive, creative geniuses. This was during
the industrial revolution and the western migration. Looking at
these people, I come to the amazing conclusion that most of them
were not educated. They were uncorrupted by formal education.
Now we educate our kids. Don't we? Instead of producing creative
geniuses and artists, we produce creative con men. We pretend
we are teaching kids how to be prepared for the world. What we
really teach them is that the world of power is dishonest and
the best thing to do is con it. When the kids can watch televison
and see that our leaders are con men it tells them something.
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