Alfie Kohn offers thoughtful comments in his September 10, 2008 post, It’s Not What You Teach; It’s What They Learn. I added a draft of these comments to his guest book.
The title says it all, an easy point for some of us teachers to miss.
And, yet, I disagree that the point holds beyond middle school. for most students. It definitely should not hold for teacher prep and inservice updates.
At some point, the duty for learning rests with the student, not the teacher.
It becomes the student’s duty to figure out what the teacher/faculty member means, to delve into the literature to identify background for the lesson, etc.
At least that’s the way learners appear to have risen to superior intellectual positions throughout recorded history.
Why should we extend elementary theraputic schooling and spoon feed “discovery” to those in their teens and older, just because some want to continue acting as children and have their learning catered with “interaction.” Yes?
Let’s let students grow up, Teacher, and accept their duty to learn. After all, this is their bootcamp for a highly competitive life, not just feel-good-about-myself, free play time.
(I wonder how much of this I accept, and how much I recite familiar rhetoric?) 🙂
Great write to put in your blog. I find much of Kohn’s writing to be a better way of stating what I think. And with what I do not agree, he at least makes me think. Your post is timely with the start of school and all. It would be great if teachers take these thoughts to heart–let students learn. All students learn and it is up to the teacher to find what they need and what they want, using that as a basis for further study.
Your comment about “Let them Learn” reminded me of a comment by an internationally recognized faculty member’s wife after they returned from Europe decades ago. “All the children in the schools we visited read at grade level. I think teachers should get out of the way of students and let them learn to read also.” I agree with you and her, with a couple of common sense reservations.