Stimulating Questions
One of the problems I have with institutions of learning (schools) is that they are not structured to foster and nurture independent thought. I agree with Plato's assertion (at least I think it was Plato) that learning consists not of stuffing people with information so much as opening the doors of knowledge within them.Clearly there is a bit of a precedence dilemma, since it seem that we need to have at least some knowledge imbued into us in order that we can start to ask questions (or even realize that there are questions to be asked). As an aside: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The best answer I have heard is "the egg because the Earth is the egg from which the chicken originally came".
I believe that some priming of the mind with information is necessary to get it started asking questions, but once it is up and running and asking questions then we need to switch to a different mode of teaching. Maybe other people are different, perhaps many people like to be stuffed into classrooms, facing the teacher and having information droned into them. I never have been. I remember that from around grade 3 onward (once I had learned to read), I was paying very little attention in class. I often was lost in my own thoughts or discrete artistic / exploratory activities, periodically looking up and wondering what was going on around me. High school was one of the worst experiences of my life - 5 years of stasis (on the other hand, working life is not any better), 5 years of waiting until we were old enough to be passed off to college.
I don't recall finding school interesting again until I went to CEGEP (the equivalent of college, but you start at age 17 in Quebec), with its myriad of course choices. I took Theories of Man, children's literature, oceanography, and various other non-core courses - which were absolutely stimulating. I also took the course which were core to my studies (electrotechnology). In most cases the actual program courses where significantly less stimulating than the elective course I chose. This was also the case in university - electives were always more interesting than core course.
Recently I was thinking about why children's experiment books are rather bland and unstimulating. The books may be wonderfully produced with beautiful pictures and wonderful explanations. But, let us be honest, the whole idea of an experiment conjures up visions of something exciting. As an example, we did an experiment on pressure with my daughter: get a plastic water bottle, poke three holes vertically along its side, fill it with water and observe that the water at the top does not flow out as far as the water from the whole at the bottom. (Tania picked this one, not me). The experiment is fine, it demonstrates pressure and the book offered some explanation, but … it was lacking.
The problem is that the books do not stimulate questioning. They present information, they even show how to demonstrate the effect, but they do not respond to a question. A book of experiments presents a lot of information. One may look through it to find an answer to a specific question, but we get sidetracked with a lot of information about which we had no question.
Rather than slaking a thirst for knowledge, it simply is given to us, whether we are ready or not for it. We become lazy, why should we think when the knowledge is given to us. Like animals in captivity who lose the ability to hunt and forage because they are regularly fed. Does our education system, in feeding us knowledge, make us lazy? Does it discourage us from discovery and questioning.?
Another aside: chemistry sets today are not anywhere as interesting or exciting as they were when I was a kid. All the interesting chemicals and substances seem to have been removed and we are left with bland substances generally no more toxic than chalk. sigh. NOTE: I am not suggesting that toxic chemicals are better, but typically they resulted in somewhat more interesting experiments.
I learn because I follow a trail of questions - though this means my knowledge tends to be eclectic rather than comprehensive.
Image nabbed from here.
Comments
To this day, I cannot simply sit in a class or a meeting and take notes. I have to be multi-tasking or else I fall asleep out of boredom.
mattias: Oh! That is horrible. A clear case of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. Force feeding people knowledge without inspiring them is no good, but neither is starving them and telling them, "If you are hungry, then go eat."
The problem is in trying to stimulate people into asking questions and in enjoying discovery. Of course, I admit that as a child I had an overly strong interest in things science - I would always choose to watch science shows over fiction or sports, I was a voracious reader consuming books at an alarming rate.
I share my own writing with the kids, I often use my poetry and songs as part of the program. I have many young adults come up to me years later and tell me that I was the reason they bought a guitar and got into music. Maybe we just need more creative open-minded teachers who are willing to use open-ended activities.
The whole inspiration of the post was simply my observation of why I find science experiment books a failure: they fail to stimulate discovery. Sure, they present a problem, present an experiment, and explain the results. But, nowhere in that whole process was the motivating stimulus: "Why do balloons stick to walls when I rub them on my hair." The questions is posed, whether you are ready for it or not, and then answered.
Granted, learning would be impossible if we did not at least feed some information into people and I suppose trying to stimulate interest by asking a question is better than nothing … but I wonder if there is something better?
(Of course, we can also have long discussions on how different learning styles affect education as well).
What I really wanted was a picture Microsoft used to use in their development tools advertisements 20 years ago. It was a professor at a machine with a crank and books being funnelled into the top (like a meat grinder) and to each student was connected a headset. The implication being that they were being educated in a modern way. All knowledge distilled and passed on.
However, I recognize that we cannot build up our knowledge base entirely from first principles and do rely on "standing on the shoulders of giants"
Thank you for dropping by and commenting (and diagreeing with me :)
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