At first, content knowledge is secondary or incidental to the process. Essentially, students must spend their time “learning to read” before “reading to learn”.
Wexler claims that cognitive psychology has discovered the opposite is true. Knowledge is the basic building block upon which education rests. She points out that a sentence like “Clarke clinically cut and drove 10 fours” is meaningless to even the best readers unless they have a familiarity with the sport of cricket. For her, the best way to boost reading comprehension (and educational outcomes) is not to focus on discrete skills but to teach students, as early as possible, history, science, and other content through a systematic progression that could build the knowledge and vocabulary they need to understand both written texts and the world around them. She consistently challenges the orthodoxy that “education should be a natural, pleasurable process and that learning facts or memorizing them is inherently boring and soul-destroying.” She believes that the direct teaching of subject content in schools is a matter of fundamental justice, pointing out that students with less educated parents are unlikely to have opportunities to acquire a broad base of knowledge outside of the classroom. Furthermore, she rejects the current practice of encouraging teachers to be the “guide on the side” claiming it undermines content knowledge and devalues the expertise of teachers. However, she recognizes that mandating the teaching of particular content in a pluralistic, multicultural society is fraught with political danger. Who decides what knowledge is vital and which is trivial? It is not an easy question to answer and she does a much better job of pointing out the problem than proposing a solution. The book is a short, enjoyable read. Interspersing the history of educational reform and pedagogical theory with first-person accounts of modern classrooms keeps the writing light but consistently challenging and thought provoking. Whether you ultimately find her argument persuasive or not, by the end of the book you will have re-evaluated your own teaching practice in a much more critical light.
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“What a teacher writes on the blackboard of life can never be erased.” - Anonymous At any rate, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is one of the best books I have read in the past year. It is an exhaustive account of the evolution of our species and an attempt to explain how we went from a largely insignificant simian in sub-Saharan Africa to the most dominant species on the planet. He writes about a series of four pivotal events in our history that set us on the path we are on. The first, around 70,000 BCE occurred when human beings evolved imagination. This he calls the cognitive revolution. With imagination, came innovation and one of the earliest innovations was culture- a group of myths and shared beliefs. These served as an organizing principal that allowed humans to cooperate in large numbers. He writes, “Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.” This, he argues, enabled humans to live in a dual reality, “On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.” The second, around 10,000 BCE, is the development of agriculture. He has a very interesting perspective on this, essentially arguing that the quality of life deteriorated because of this development. “Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure.” We substituted a relatively easy existence of hunting, fishing and gathering for one of brutal backbreaking labour. He states, “We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.” Judging the quality of life based purely on the amount of labour and leisure-time that the people enjoyed would suggest the agricultural revolution was a step backward, but the great thing about wheat is that there is virtually no chance that it will turn on you and attack you. Plus, it is possible to feed a lot more people on a much smaller area of land. “This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.” The third and fourth events that were pivotal in our past are inter-related: the unification of humankind and the scientific revolution. Recently, Christopher Columbus has been subjected to some harsh criticism and perhaps deservedly so, but it was his mission to find a shortcut to India that undermined the existing order on both sides of the Atlantic and set the world on path towards the Scientific revolution. Reverence for the past, for received wisdom, for traditions had long stood in the way of progress. Columbus’ voyage revealed that there was an entire world that European religions and ancient texts knew nothing about. It had a similar effect on the Native American communities living in the Americas who could have had (at best) no knowledge of the previous 3,5oo years- the lowest estimate of when the Innuit migrated to the Americas. Contact between the two worlds changed everything for both. “The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions. Premodern traditions of knowledge such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism asserted that everything that is important to know about the world was already known. The great gods, or the one almighty God, or the wise people of the past possessed all-encompassing wisdom, which they revealed to us in scriptures and oral traditions. Ordinary mortals gained knowledge by delving into these ancient texts and traditions and understanding them properly. It was inconceivable that the Bible, the Qur’an or the Vedas were missing out on a crucial secret of the universe – a secret that might yet be discovered by flesh-and-blood creatures.” Overall, Sapiens is a tremendous piece of writing, engaging and informative. The perspective that Yuval Noah Harari brings to the historical development of humanity is reminiscent of his teacher’s Jared Diamond, author of “Guns, Germs and Steel” (another fantastic book). If you are at all interested in where we have come from as a species and why we behave as we do, you should pick up this title. In the meantime, try watching his Ted Talk below.
The first part of the book goes to some lengths to establish that we are not as rational as we might imagine. In much the same vein as The Art of Thinking Clearly, he shows that cognitive biases mean that our rationality is truly at the mercy of our intuitions. He likens the relationship between the conscious, rational mind to a small rider on an powerful elephant. The rational mind believes it is the one making decisions, but in fact it is coming up with rationalizations for the intuitions. What are these intuitions? It really depends on who you are. Liberals tend to have a relatively narrow definition of morality which emphasizes Care and Fairness. They don't have strong feelings about Loyalty, are suspicious of Authority and only value Purity when it comes to food and the environment. Conservatives also value Care and Fairness, but they also place a strong emphasis on Loyalty as well. For Conservatives, people who are unpatriotic are not good people. Conservatives also value Authority. You won't find them engaged in acts of civil disobedience as they tend to follow the rules and pay their debts. Finally, they have a very clear ideal of the sacred. Actions that bring you closer to your ideal self are not just "healthy" they are morally good. Actions that move you further away from your ideal are bad. This difference explains why a liberal will see nothing wrong with smoking a little weed, but for a conservative this may be seen as immoral. It is a fascinating book and Jonathan Haidt is an excellent writer. Watch the video below and if you like it, let me know. I would be happy to pass along my copy of the book. A while back there was an article in the Atlantic, titled This Article Wont Change Your Mind, that explained how facts are unpersuasive. This led me to do a little research into cognitive biases, the habits of our mind that lead us to disregard evidence and facts that run counter to our intuitions and prior beliefs. The more I looked into this, the more this title kept coming up. A world-wide best-seller (including 80 weeks in Germany) it has become hugely influential and with good reason. Originally a weekly column in Germany, Holland and Switzerland, it contains 99 short chapters each one dealing with a different type of cognitive bias- those habits of the mind that interfere with our ability to make rational decisions. Some of these are already well known such as the "Halo Effect" that makes us more like, trust and believe attractive people more than we like, trust and believe plain looking people. The Halo effect is the reason why Jennifer Aniston makes 10 million a year endorsing things and the best that I've ever done is some discounted wings and a Tim's card. Or the confirmation bias that leads us to disregard information that contradicts what we already believe and remember information that agrees with our opinion. Climate change deniers are ardent practitioners of this. Then there's the American president's favourite, the availability heuristic- whatever comes to mind easily is deemed important. Truely, there is no such things as bad publicity. The book didn't stop there though. Every chapter dug a little deeper into how our minds work and explained how the biases interacted with one another. How our tendency to go along with the crowd (the bandwagon effect) is in part due to our tendency to favour ideas endorsed by people we know- the in-group bias- and how this in turn leads to group-think where terrible ideas are adopted because everyone fears the social repercussions of objecting to them (loss-aversion bias). The book is very interesting and informative, but I couldn't help but wonder as I went through it if some of these so called "biases" were just part of being human and having a personality. I mean some people are overly optimistic and tend minimize future difficulties downplaying evidence that contradicts their rosy outlook. Is this an example of people systematically overestimating their chances of success, AKA the survivor-ship bias? And what about those people that adopt a bleak future outlook, who consistently catastrophize and are drawn to tragedy? Are they suffering from the negativity bias- the psychological phenomenon by which humans have greater recall of unpleasant memories? Dobelli finds irrationality wherever he looks. The final chapter is an interesting one. In it he advises people to stop following the news and promises you will happier and healthier as a result. It is similar to this article here. Give it a read and if you like it, send me an email. I would be happy to pass along the book. |
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