On Knowledge
Educational Solutions Worldwide Inc.
Caleb Gattegno
Newsletter
vol. V no. 5
June 1976
First published in 1976. Reprinted in 2009. Copyright Š 1976-2009 Educational Solutions Worldwide Inc. Author: Caleb Gattegno All rights reserved ISBN 000-0-00000-000-0 Educational Solutions Worldwide Inc. 2nd Floor 99 University Place, New York, N.Y. 10003-4555 www.EducationalSolutions.com
Once more we have prepared for our readers a send-off into their vacations by putting in front of them important issues which are not clear for most of us and need reflection. The first pages of this Newsletter are devoted to the proposals contained in four short articles, that “knowledge,” — a common currency among educators — is far from being “known” well enough by all of us. Perhaps the reading will not clarify everything. At least we hope that it will reduce confusion by distributing the light on the subject in a different way from the one held by the readers. Our news items are, we hope, also carriers of interesting topics. When will our readers feel stimulated enough to correspond with us ? “Hello out there! Is anybody reading?”
Table of Contents
A Number Of Meanings Of Knowledge.................................. 1 Knowledge As Awareness ..................................................... 5 Knowing And Knowledge...................................................... 9 Two Examples To Contrast Knowledge And Knowing ......... 13 News Items ..........................................................................17 1. On Foreign Languages ..................................................................17 2. Our Work On Reading Remediation In Hartford, Conn. ........... 23
A Number Of Meanings Of Knowledge
In my pocket diary there are a few pages devoted to holding the names, addresses and telephone numbers of a number of people and institutions with which I have some dealings. The fact that I carry these sheets around, tells me: 1. that I must know they exist and why, 2. that I must know how to use the list, 3. that when I look at any one of the entries I can associate with the name either a blank or an image or some excitement, dismay or any one of several feelings, proving that I can be triggered by the impact, first upon my eyes and brain and then my consciousness, of those signs on paper, 4. that I know which marks refer to a person, which to a location and which to whether I am far or near from that place, whether I am in possession of enough means to call from a pay phone that connects the number to a dialing process; all involving my attention and my acts. I am free also to ask myself whether I recognize any of the items in an entry, whether I can date an entry and the level of certainty of this. If I stop to ask myself whether only one sort of involvement is part of all these states I begin to see how complex my knowing is. In fact I am
1
On Knowledge
faced at once with the difference between knowledge that is memorized, knowledge that results from impacts, knowledge that is association, knowledge that is images, knowledge of doubt or certainty, knowledge as awareness, knowledge as skills and knowledge of knowledge, etc. We are all used to giving words many meanings, and that also is knowledge; but it also is sui generis. So long as we keep in mind that there are many kinds of knowledge we can use the same word to refer to a universe rather than to one single and well defined thing. In our experience over the years we may well fill the concept of knowledge with very many different meanings. Teachers may gain much by being more attentive to such a situation. As this becomes plainer we shall meet examples to illustrate what their gain can be. Epistemology, as the science of how we know, has resorted to a priori theories to reach some understanding of what knowledge is. But it was not concerned with how we know pain, for instance, or that we know that we know. It concerned itself only with knowledge which is acknowledged to being intellectual. And in this what struck most was that we need to remember a great deal to function as people who can say that we know, as is done in the sciences. It followed that teachers, whose job was to ensure transmission of knowledge, identified knowledge with retention by their students of statements they would make to their classes. Hence it was possible for students to say that “7x8 are 56, ” because the teacher said so. Indeed, children were asked to memorize their “tables” and teachers did not know other ways of making them “know” their products. A step towards a more functional study resulted from the desire to see how the notions and concepts of the sciences are generated in the mind. Genetic epistemology, as those studies are called, may have helped to relate the understanding of some intellectual constructs to functionings, as if one owned the notions. It proposed a definition of intellectual knowledge as the evolution of experiencing from sensory motor to operations via images. Once constituted as operations, the intellectual functions could organize themselves in the manner the
2
A Number Of Meanings Of Knowledge
sciences did historically, and particularly in the western civilization from the 17th century on. The knowledge of the world as achieved by a person like Aristotle say, is considered by genetic epistemologists as equivalent to what boys and girls in the west reach spontaneously before they are forced by their teachers to adopt the ways developed in the last three centuries in the exact sciences. Genetic epistemologists call knowledge their own way of organizing their own thinking about the world. In fact this is the way of all schools of thought. Knowledge is what one acknowledges it to be. But could there be something else? and what does this mean? Before entering into this question as we shall do in the second article, we can note here that knowledge being produced, there must exist a process by which it is produced. If this process is called knowing, it is clear that even for the creator of knowledge, knowing must precede knowledge. This may not be the case for those who can find in themselves the means of reaching knowledge as a perceptible object. For these, that knowledge is factual and may appear as existing per se, eternally; hence, a further confusion about the various meanings of knowledge is generated. The content of treatises is part of this phenomenon and students consider knowledge to be what is found in books and journals. To acquire knowledge then becomes retaining what one can glean from printed pages. Epistemologists are not only challenged by the multiplicity of kinds of knowledge but also by the fact that knowledge, in each of us, evolves. Is it sufficient to assume that knowledge is a function of time? If so, what is that knowledge which may not be recognizable sometime later? Is, after all, the concept of knowledge really that helpful, if its contents lose their meaning in time? There must be a better way of looking at these matters.
3
Knowledge As Awareness
In a number of areas it is at once obvious that to become aware is equivalent to having knowledge. Thus babies can become aware that the expressions of emotions they see on relatives around them are testimony of these emotions, which are assumed to exist in these people — of the reality behind the appearances. They “need to know� when mother or father is angry, or joyful, or in pain, etc. Another experience will lead to the subtle knowledge that disguise exists when one finds that lying is possible. This tells us that one can become aware that one lives in a world where much is invisible, where knowledge is uncertain, hypothetical, requiring demonstration, proof or evidence. Awareness is wider than knowledge but of the same kind. Awareness can vanish without leaving a track, but for knowledge to exist, a track must be left behind. Awareness is the sign that the knower in oneself is involved in the thing to be known. Without awareness there is no way of holding the thing to be known so that it makes its impact. Awareness provides the dynamics that scan the field to be known and is, therefore, both a condition for knowing and the means of knowing. Awareness is needed to bring back knowledge and work on it again to change it, make it more conscious, more precise, more useful and connected with other awarenesses, now knowledge. The self in each of us knows the difference between the content of an awareness and the dynamics that carry it and work on it. Hence knowledge is known to the self as what is left after some energy, some time, has been given to the activity that produces it. Knowledge must
5
On Knowledge
be of the nature of awareness to be able to be permeated by it, to be recast by it, to be visited and activated by it and made different from what it was, as well as to be connected with the rest of the self through a number of variable associations. How could we understand that knowledge we hold in our memory for years can be made to be different and illumine our mind in a new way, if there was not beyond the objectified, the structured energy(that is our memory), the active energy which dissolves the existing one to replace it by the new? Once we understand that knowledge has to be produced, to be received and retained, to become a reality of the mind, we also understand that there must be other entities in the mind that supply what knowledge is not. Such as the energy, the time to make it be. The energy to leave within it, associated with it, so that it can be triggered, recalled, associated with what occupies one’s awareness in the here-and-now. Merely to understand how the unknown gets known, how the known yields features which make it possible to recast it, to find in it gaps and flaws, inadequacies, is to call in something else besides what is academic knowledge (to teachers, for example). For too long knowledge has been an absolute, a sacred cow not to be questioned even though it is known that progress in the academic fields always results from such questioning. Since knowledge does not question itself we must find who or what, does it. The self’s own awareness, is our present proposal. It is easy to accumulate examples of breakthroughs in the field of science when someone became aware that the familiar hid a working principle which could be looked at and its place examined, and possibly altered. Copernican revolutions are those movements which re-open a field of study by challenging a basic assumption accepted by all. A whole field is renewed because, instead of untouchable assumptions, alternatives are being suggested capable of maintaining as knowledge the inescapable facts but challenging the insights that originated the viewpoints. Viewpoints are either integral parts of knowledge (and when not noticed as such, requiring a revolution to separate them), or clearly seen as distinct from facts and susceptible to be altered without any danger for that science.
6
Knowledge As Awareness
Viewpoints refer to awareness and like it can vanish in time while leaving behind the facts as knowledge, as content. The reality of the solar system is not shattered by the request to replace a geocentric model of it by a heliocentric one, only its description in the model. Reality of facts does not disappear because awareness is given its place in studying knowledge! Instead of seeing knowledge of facts as the reality of facts, we can see that facts gain existence for each of us through our awareness of them and from our awareness of how we study them. Our knowledge of them also depends on how we handle our awarenesses. Thus all knowledge becomes relative even when we think of the reality of facts as absolute. As soon as awareness becomes central in the act of knowing, and knowledge is seen as energy structured by the activity of being aware of a field within oneself, we restore to the dynamic components their reality. This is needed particularly by those who wish to make knowledge become part of those who do not yet have it, i.e., by educators.
7
Knowing And Knowledge
Many readers of What We Owe Children have been uncertain of the distinction occasionally made in that book between knowing and knowledge even though one is a verb and the other a noun. In the previous article awareness was associated to knowing and both were considered as capable of vanishing while knowledge was given a more lasting reality. Still all three are of the mind and we can all forget some knowledge we once had, making knowledge appear as capable of vanishing also. If they differ. it is essentially as two functions of the mind and since they are not imposed from outside for arbitrary reasons we shall gain in being better acquainted with their reality. In order to reach this reality we can consider areas of experience in which the dialogues are entirely left to the individual and the pair knowing-knowledge can become sharply distinguished. From then on one can apply what one has learned from this easy distinction to areas where the distinctions are less sharp. Learning to speak — what everybody who can hear does — is a particularly good area for such an illustration. Since nobody can make a baby know from outside that one of the features of a stream of sounds, uttered by those who speak, is what one can abstract from it and that will one day be labeled as words, it is clear that the role of awareness in learning to speak is paramount; particularly since words are arbitrary. Before a baby can know any word in his mother tongue he must be involved in knowing what is
9
On Knowledge
required by the acts of speaking. This will never become for him knowledge as a separate entity. Instead, it will change itself into a know-how, totally automatic and fully integrated into a functioning. All of us who speak have known this and can look again at the activity as it takes place to find in it the components it contains. We can again find what is entailed by this preparation if we manage to learn a new language consciously, i.e. watching what is required of us. Knowing will then cover the demands that make us do the right things, which are those that ask us to pay attention to that which leads to the sorting out of what can be postponed and that which must be acquired; and in the order dictated by the temporal hierarchies involved. To pay attention to hierarchies, to how one retains, tests, makes sure of what needs to be done, is part of knowing as distinct from know-hows and knowledge. Hence knowing is the form taken by awareness engaged in sorting out, in depth, the many demands of a complex activity that cannot be presented analytically and adequately, by anybody. Knowing has the characteristic of intuition because both must respect the whole and find out, by the lightings provided by the self, what can be singled out to be retained, used, re-used, made automatic at a time one does not specifically yet know what is useful and worthwhile. The conscious experience of knowing may lead to one telling oneself: “Because I am aware of what I am doing with myself I can produce awarenesses at different levels and simultaneously. One of them is experienced as skills or know-hows, another as energy locked up in structures. This is what I experience as knowledge. � The dynamics of knowing, once part of one’s awareness, provide the criteria for an individual to know that knowledge has been produced and is available, or that know-hows are the outcome. Then one is a changed person, not a person who remembers. Hence knowing is what we cultivate in ourselves rather than the acquiring of knowledge. When we become a painter, or a professional player in one of the sports, or a mathematician or a lover we do just that. In all the fields that are not reducible to a collection or remembered items (and this seems to cover almost every thing human)
10
Knowing And Knowledge
knowing has been the first preoccupation for each of us and will remain so, if we know how to look at learners while they are learning. Knowledge is the product of knowing or rather the by-product. By this we mean that there will be no danger of people not gaining knowledge — if knowledge is valuable to all concerned — when we concentrate on knowing; knowledge gets automatically generated and retained. A great deal of what we do in the subordination of teaching to learning can be summarized as encouraging the right kind of knowing which produces the desired knowledge. Our experience in teaching through knowing tells us unequivocally that it represents the most promising breakthrough in the field of education to date even if very few of the educators acquainted with our work see it in these terms.
11
Two Examples To Contrast Knowledge And Knowing
1. Multiplication This topic is chosen first, because all elementary school students are supposed to have mastery of it and second because it permits us to see with some clarity some aspects of the differences we want to make obvious. Multiplication is the name of an operation on numbers that can be made autonomous from addition from which it stems, through the condition that the addends are all equal. Hence the first awareness required is how, by specializing the value of the addends, we pass from the general addition to one that will have more properties, merely because it is special. This is a common awareness held by all children who use words and know that nouns always apply to classes, i.e. by children in the first three or four years of life. Because we can make perceptible the difference between a train made of any rods and one made of rods of the same length (or/and color) while leaving the choice of the length open, we can make students aware that it is possible to inject a property into a structure to transform it into a new one that includes the first plus something else. It is therefore not knowledge of any items to be entrusted to one’s memory, but a feel that because we do something special we can expect some special features to appear. This feel justifies that a new name be put into circulation. The names of the lengths of the trains made by adding one more rod of the same length to each previous train has to
13
On Knowledge
be associated as going together with the number of rods in the final train. The three variables: length of the train (or product), number of rods in the train (or multiplier), length of the repeated rod (or multiplicand) are to be seen as correlated: each change on one of them is capable of leading to an alteration upon one or more of the others. All this belongs to knowing. Such knowing is capable of generating all the knowledge needed to be on top of “the operation” of multiplication. To be on top of the facts, as expressed singularly by statements such as “seven nines make sixty three,” will require additionally a way of measuring each rod and the length of the train in a particular number system, as well as holding in one’s memory the relationship found. Only then can we say that the students have a knowledge of multiplication. To be more precise we should say that they have gained a facility in that field as distinct from having the required awarenesses. 2. Reading is much more concerned with knowing than knowledge. In fact, if to read is to say what the various words ask for, whether they are near or at a certain distance, sufficiently well lit, upside down or on the side, well written or displaying enough of their features to be recognized, and to say them at a certain speed with certain intonations, then it is clear that only a flexible attitude to the activity deserves consideration. And this is clearly not what we would call knowledge. Rather a know-how. If words trigger meanings we say “we know” these words. If not, we need to take some steps to generate associations between the sounds in the words (in the order in which they appear, with the stresses normally associated with some of them) and some perception of some reality. We then say that, now words have meaning. Because reading is concerned with a number of awarenesses and a number of skills it cannot be counted as knowledge. In fact in all languages the expression for being on top of the challenges of reading is not “I know reading” but “I know how to read. ” So what is knowledge in the field of reading?
14
Two Examples To Contrast Knowledge And Knowing
As usual, it is what requires that a track be left in the mind. Thus the conventions of reading have to be accepted and integrated. If one gets a book in Hebrew or Arabic one has to open it from one direction that is opposite to that used for opening English books. One must also read lines in opposite directions, but follow lines from top to bottom (valid in all these languages). However, one must insert the vowel sounds since they do not appear in Arabic and Hebrew and relate to the context which then commands which utterances are required rather than accept their appearance. This is a rare fact in the case of English. Looking at a text that uses the latin alphabet does not suggest which sounds should be uttered; one needs to know what language it is and which associations have been selected for the signs, to be able to sound words in that language. All of this illustrates where knowledge is to be found in the field of reading. There is of course a certain amount of knowledge; but when compared to all the other functionings which are know-hows, experience, sensitivity etc. the amount weighs little. Therefore the learning of reading is far less dependent upon memory than is believed by those who require students to remember either whole words or names of letters. Both of these are not in fact part of the act of reading as we understand it from our vantage point of knowing. We hope that our readers will take some time to look into the contribution which the distinctions made here between knowledge and knowing can make to their understanding of learning and teaching foreign languages, social and natural sciences, music or art. It may be very significant. Caleb Gattegno
15
News Items
1. On Foreign Languages 1. The National TESOL Conference in New York In our April Newsletter we had room for only a brief mention of our first official participation to a TESOL Conference. Here we shall attempt no more than to convey those impressions that add to the existing and future reports which refer to that large and vibrant meeting of thousands of people teaching English as a second language. Our presence at the Conference has been the exception in the ten years of TESOL’s existence. Although Dr. Gattegno is on record to have been a founder member of TESOL as a participant of the 1966 founding Convention in New York City, this was the first time that the originator of a way of teaching languages that excites or baffles teachers all over the world, was asked to appear personally to inform the membership of TESOL about his work. At the Conference large numbers of people, perhaps as many as 500 showed up for Dr. Gattegno’s demonstration lesson in the Silent Way. It was some what unfortunate that such numbers turned up since people in the back were not able to follow what was going on in front. In spite of this trying logistic set up, most remained until the end. At the pre-convention workshop, directed by Dr. Gattegno, over fifty people registered for its 12 hours although here too some left before the end.
17
On Knowledge
It was reported that at the concluding remarks of the conference, the new TESOL chairperson said the Silent Way was a fad. This approach started twenty-two years ago and has been ignored for almost as long. In the last few years quite a number of people have come in con tact with it and have found it exciting and rewarding. Many of these people, however, lacking the discipline for a prolonged scientific study, have picked up a few superficial techniques of the approach and claim they are using the Silent Way. We, of course, have no control over people’s claims. I wish to think that the remark was addressed to this state of affairs and was an invitation to teachers to be more responsible for their own professional development. As for the approach itself, the one called the “Silent Way” and based on the subordination of teaching to learning, it can never become a “fad,” simply because it was conceived by the author as a scientific approach to language teaching, which means that it will evolve and develop in the hands of people who use it as an instrument, and through it have new insights into, and understanding of, the real challenges connected with foreign language teaching. To be a teacher in the Silent Way means to be willing to take responsibility for every action performed in the classroom and to be deliberate in every movement. These are enormous demands made on teachers who are used to props and external devices. As a con sequence, not many are yet ready to pick up these demands. Those who have found the excitement and joy of using themselves in more creative ways and have discovered that it is possible to know at every moment what one is doing, have also discovered that each class is a different entity; indeed, that each person in each class has different requirements. True teaching occurs only when the reality of each person is taken into account. Once people have experienced teaching as a de liberate and growing experience, there is no way back to “other methods.” True recognition of the Silent Way is in the interest of all foreign language teachers, and we were pleased to serve the TESOL participants. 2. Transcultural Education, a theory for A group of educators in the Los Angeles area have been federally funded to prepare materials for bilingual and bicultural education. They invited a number of
18
News Items
contributors to send in papers that would constitute a text to help readers survey the field through a number of lightings that are representative of a number of tendencies and involvements current in the country. Dr. Gattegno selected for his chapter to sketch a theory, in the way it is done in some scientific fields and in which a model is proposed which brings together known facts and thus permits the asking of new questions that may lead to discoveries. It is this last point that serves as the “measure” of the value of the model proposed, mainly if the discoveries that ensue are confirmed empirically or the opposite. In the proposed theory, transcultural education is understood as the level of awareness reached by an individual who has transcended the two or more cultures to which he/she has access, thus reaching a state in which one knows oneself as owning enough of those cultures while not “belonging” to either, rather, as “in and out” of them at the same time; as beyond them without any element of rejection of either and from either. This is in fact the meaning of transcendence adopted in that theory and that makes it possible to create techniques and materials for human education. Official bilingual education seems today to offer the first chance to establish a transcultural education if it is wanted enough by any group that no longer thinks of itself as monolingual or monocultural. The symposium at the Material Development Center of Pomona (near Los Angeles) shows how alive the most profound educational questions are for these emerging groups made of the “ethnic peoples.” 3. Two Languages Added to the Silent Way This last half-year, because of some interest shown by an agency of the Government we developed the materials for two Philippino languages: the lingua franca of the Philippines (Tagalog) and the second and most widespread language in the islands: Cebuano. These are the nineteenth and twentieth language for which we now have fidels and word charts (and worksheets for pictures). In our testing of the usefulness of the materials prepared, we found that by adding language after language to our series we are becoming more able of making continuously better use of our understanding of 19
On Knowledge
language teaching. This showed itself in two ways: 1) we could give, in as few as six hours of teaching, a feel of the new language to the students so that they performed spontaneously as if they had a good sense of what was right in that language; 2) we could reach deeper attributes of the languages that we may call “the spirit of these languages” — and find through them an entry into the psyche of the natives whose language we were studying. The language then can serve as a bridge to the characteristics of the culture of those natives. In particular in our study of Tagalog through the materials prepared and the techniques of the Silent Way, we have been able to be moved in a very novel manner towards an empathy with absent natives and a certainty that their way of living, their mode of thought can make sense at once and are found pleasant. This certainty goes beyond language learning and can lead to a transcultural concrete experience. A new dimension in language learning for beginners. 4. Teaching Language Through Television Our readers may like to know that we are now equipped with a video cassette replay apparatus received these days from Europe. On it we can play materials made by the two processes most widely used in the field: Pal and NTSC. We already have nineteen hours of tapes in cassettes of which only two are in color and of broadcast quality. We also have five more hours on reel to reel black and white tape. They all form part of our experimental work at the pre-pre-pilot stage of the production of our solution for teaching language through television. This material will be included in further tests aiming at determining as well as we can the yet uncharted areas of this new adventure in education. It may be possible to accommodate requests for viewing if readers care to make prior arrangements for this. It is a new way of looking at language teaching and an exciting one, mainly because of the kinds of challenges raised by the various components: the medium, the content, the subject matter and the viewing population and its expectations.
20
News Items
The two summer workshops conducted by Dr. Gattegno at our head quarters in New York City, on ESL during the week of July 26-30, on the Silent Way during the week of August 23-27, may both include a viewing of the cassettes mentioned above. Two one-day studies of teaching language through television are announced for the monthly one-day teacher education courses (see our Fall 1976, Spring 1977 brochure). 5. Overseas News Two workshops were organized for me in Paris and two in London. One of these (in Paris) was a forty hour course in Italian for teachers of English as a second language who had had some exposure to the Silent Way and wanted to experience it as learners. The others were workshops on the Silent Way. In Europe, the interest in our approach is growing rapidly as the demands for learning English grow. In Paris, people had to be turned away from the course as it was already oversubscribed. In both Paris and London there were requests for workshops during the coming Fall. These workshops have been an opportunity for me to study the difficulties of being a teacher of teachers as compared to the ease of being a teacher of Italian. What struck me most is how insidiously deceiving words are. In the Italian workshop I found no obstacles in reaching my students because I have learned how to be silent while the students are working. Because students were put in contact with their own functionings: perception, power of association, imagination, etc., they felt at once that they could work in a relaxed and intense manner. For some, the experience was truly liberating. A man who had spent two or three years in France, felt that after forty hours he knew more Italian than French. As the course went on, all participants felt that the reservations they had at the beginning of the course disappeared with the increased contact with this way of working. We tried to have feedback sessions after each class, in which there was an opportunity for everyone to air “objections.” Our intent, however, was never to explain things away with theoretical axioms; rather participants managed to answer their own or each other’s questions by drawing from the immediate experience they had just shared together.
21
On Knowledge
By contrast, the workshops on the Silent Way were full of words and as such subject to the diversity of realities behind each speaker’s words. Never before was I as aware, at times painfully so, of the miracle of communication. This kept me on the alert. If I wanted to convey what I knew to be true of language learning I had 1) to give participants experiences, not words (words without definite experiences behind them only generate beliefs); 2) to stick to what I knew to be true, no matter how unacceptable it was in the group; 3) to learn not to be afraid of silences, even long ones. Only by facing silence, real silence, did I discover that participants would change from spectators to real participants and actively contribute to the workshop. Some lovely things happened even in these “hard” workshops, which gave me a precise sense of the vitality stored in people that becomes manifest at those moments when they allow themselves to change. After some work done with the charts a young woman said, “What an extraordinary instrument this is! It has the power to become alive and different over and over, according to the demands of the activity for which it is used; and then, when it is no longer used, it is just there on the wall with unassuming neutrality ready to take on a new face.” Another woman, who is an author of foreign language teaching materials, expressed her sense of liberation derived from not having to use a book in class. A man saw that the Silent Way was the only approach capable of helping him with the students who still don’t know English after having studied it for years and years in school — a problem quite common both in France and among students who go to England to learn English. He realized that with this approach, students would be engaged in totally new experiences to which they could relate directly and which would require their full attention. There would be no time, nor the occasion for these students to bring their negative past experiences into the new situations as it happens in all other language courses. It seems that one of the major problems teachers of these two countries face is to engage students’ interest in any class activity based on grammatical sequences, no matter how cleverly disguised these grammar patterns are. It seems that the common response from students is “I already know it” to no matter what is being presented.
22
News Items
On the other hand, because I used only words on such occasions, I doubt that I went very far with one of the participants on the subject of practicing listening through tapes. She expressed her belief that long sessions of tape listening were necessary if a student was to learn English. I pointed out to her that time alone would be no guarantee that any learning was taking place. I told her that it was more important to make a student aware of what it means to be present in one’s own ears while listening. If this job is not done, any amount of time spent with tapes or other devices would be useless. She couldn’t see that indeed, students who go to England to study English, have all the opportunities in the world to hear the language spoken. What they often don’t have is the capacity to discriminate sounds and the freedom to use themselves in the required manners. This European experience has been very rich for me and it has sensitized me to the necessity of being in contact with teaching and its reality, in ways that go beyond words. Cecilia Bartoli Perrault
2. Our Work On Reading Remediation In Hartford, Conn. Early in February after a two-day conference arranged for the City of Hartford School District at which we were exposed to the top personnel, it appeared possible that during this school year we would be given a chance to show that some of our clinics were based on fact. Two literacy labs were set up, one each in two of the three high schools with the dual purpose of training reading clinicians while a number of difficult cases were worked on. We promised to make a vital contribution to the academic life of 24 students in 6 weeks in each of the labs and to leave behind competent clinicians to work effectively on the eradication of illiteracy in these high schools. In fact we worked in all with 70 students and there are now 15 teachers who participated as apprentices to become clinicians.
23
On Knowledge
The following two reports written for this Newsletter amplify the message above. The authors were our colleagues, Dr. Dorothea E. Hinman and Mr. Steve De Giulio, who ran the labs for 6 weeks. 1. Literacy Lab in Weaver High School In a 6-week workshop seven teachers were released from their other professional duties and introduced to Words in Color, an approach to teaching reading developed by Dr. Caleb Gattegno. The seven participated, first as observers and then as teachers, in remedial work with thirty-six students identified by the school as functionally illiterate. Some of the students had apparently learned a lot before their identification; but twenty-four, at least, were unable to function as readers or writers at the level of a newspaper or their school books. The more advanced students worked for 1 - 2 hours in the lab to straighten out any confusion they still had about reading-writing, and to open up new territory. The others, who ranged from complete non-readers to those having a sight vocabulary and some decoding skills, worked an average of 5-10 hours over 3-4 weeks. They learned, in their first minutes with us through some game-like activities, that their own voice is the key both to decoding words and comprehending sentences and books, and that they didn’t have to rely on memory any more since everything was hung on the walls for them to use till they no longer needed it. In a similar way the teachers were confronted with the fact that it is their own perceptions of students that is the key to teaching, and that Words in Color is a set of tools and techniques whose use depends on teachers’ criteria and judgment. They were not given formulas for working or pat explanations, but were asked to examine their own perceptions and understanding and the Words in Color tools and to observe actual lessons until they felt ready to begin learning by doing. Study alternating with practice then became the form of the workshop. Of course each student responded differently to us as people and to the work we offered. Some sensed at once a way out of a confusion that had been weighing on them for years; these worked hard and seriously. Others were delighted to find a way of working in which they could immediately feel their powers and make sense of things; they enjoyed being with us and shared their happiness. Others gave up their
24
News Items
resistances only very slowly. Evidence of several kinds was kept of the students’ growth: reading tests given by the school, improved speed and fluency in reading a local newspaper, written case histories, and dated copies of written work. Summaries of the results have not yet been completed and so, for this short report, there is only room to quote a few sentences from the case histories written by the participating teachers: “By the last session Gary was reading independently. He had developed the ability to transfer his speaking vocabulary into his reading vocabulary. He had the building blocks and knew how to use them to build words he did not recognize at first.” “Norman smiles now and appears very relaxed and has a definite air of confidence about him I didn’t see before.” “Tom is really looking, listening and hearing more.” “Ken is working more comfortably and not appearing to be tired or nervous.” “James made strides, more than I have seen in any other situation.” “At first Virginia was hostile and sluggish, she said her problem was that: ‘it doesn’t make sense’ when she reads. After using the charts to form sentences, playing other word games and reading in books and the newspaper she saw that through looking and listening things can make sense. On her last visit she appeared a different person, so at ease that I felt she had unloaded a heavy burden.” The participating teachers had much to say about their own experiences. Following are some quotes from their oral and written feedback on the last day: “it’s not a program, its an approach that lets students learn.”
25
On Knowledge
“During the six short weeks I was thoroughly surprised at the interest displayed by so many students I observed and worked with.” “I am glad I was here. You may think I didn’t do much, and I didn’t, but now I understand how you were working on awareness and I will get the practice I need with my summer school students.” “Now I see that I was always too busy teaching to let the students learn. To put the student in the center of the learning is a concept I’ve heard before, but now I have the tools and know-how to actually do it.” “In this approach I don’t plan, but I have so many plans, so many ideas in my head of things to do.” “Now I can do what I haven’t been able to do for years. I’ve learned a lot from each of you.” “I still don’t understand exactly how the colors make the students free, but I know enough to let my students do much more than they could before by demanding of them responsibility and their best work, and I learned a lot about myself.” “I think I understand that it’s somehow my job to put students in a state where they are activated and do the job themselves.” “Teaching is providing exercises and questions, not answers, and seeing this had made me more patient, even when I’m not teaching.” For myself I can say that I have been moved in new ways, that I see it is affectivity, sometimes called love, which is the dynamics present in the relationship where learning occurs, and that reading, insight or skills are by-products of this. I had to meet my limitations in several failures and stretch my resources in working with students through their resistance or depression or anger or defeated-ness; and I think I learned from their gentleness and joy something of what it is to take on life whole and to triumph. The technical gains in reading and writing
26
News Items
were enough to excite us as teachers, and should be of interest to educators everywhere, but the human impact is no less considerable. 2.
The Literacy Lab in Hartford Public High School
Those of us who participated in the Literacy Lab at Hartford Public High School — students and teachers — have lived something during these six weeks that leaves us as persons more in contact with ourselves and with others — especially our students. At the affective level the experience was expressed by two seniors: “I never thought before that there could be a class with feelings in it.” “I loved this program. I really wish I would have had it about three years ago. And I liked all the teachers because they were very very nice. . . and I wish this program, make it for all our sakes and the children too.” (written) “I was so happy to be asked if I wanted to learn to read in both Spanish and English because I never know when I may have to go back to my country of Puerto Rico.” And by some of the teachers: “You can feel it all here in this room.” “it is something so very precious that I can’t really put it into words.” “You can see it in the look in your (student’s) eye or the way your face lights up when you figure out some new word by yourself.” “Here I feel I am in contact with the student learning. I see it taking place before my eyes. This has never before happened to me.” “You know it’s really like B.C. and A.D. I feel this six-weeks separates B.G. (before Gattegno) and A. G.”
27
On Knowledge
“I never would agree to teach reading before and now I love to do it all day long (from an English teacher).” At the level of finding greater skill and confidence in reading and writing as expressed by some students: “This program really helped me with my reading. . . improved my reading quite a bit. I learned how to break words up which I never knew where to start to break it up. Before I learned how to read in this program I was very shy to read in the classroom because just about everyone knew how to read but now if you gave me a book to read in front of the classroom I’ll be glad to read.” (written) “I can read almost all words of the English language and before I could not read it… All the help I had helped me to read much better. I can read and understand texts and write whatever I think. . ” (written by a student considered for Special Education before his parents objected) “I’ve been going to night school in addition to day school to see if I could graduate, and just since I’ve been coming here I got a 74 which is passing and means I can graduate. . . Now I can read the newspaper and fill out withdrawal slips and applications.” “I’ve passed my Driver’s License test because of this and I have been getting 70 to 80 in Government tests when before I got 12 because I couldn’t read. Now I can know what I’m reading if I have a contract in front of me so no one can rip me off.” (Passing the Driver’s Test was crucial to this student going into a Postsecondary work-study program that would provide his self-support.) “I’m going to work now on getting my writing and my spelling straightened out and then go to college. Before I didn’t care. If I had only had this much earlier, I think I would have been a genius by now.” “The words just keep coming!”(From one student in the middle of writing independently.)
28
News Items
At the level of finding new insight and confidence in their work as expressed by some teachers: “You (students) don’t know what it was like before to know that you had no way to help a student who doesn’t know how to decode, and what it is like now to be given a tool that really works, by our school system.” “I was never excited before about what I was doing. The students didn’t seem to learn very much no matter how hard I worked. Now it is such a tremendous thing to watch you learn to figure out words on your own and to know that you can walk out of here and not need me any more.” “I think it has put me in touch with students’ learning. I never was before. I was always so preoccupied with what I was teaching.” “Now I see that all those labels — ‘retarded,’ ‘perceptually handicapped,’ ‘learning disabilities’ — do not affect the way students can learn in here. They all can do it.” These few statements give some sense of the impact of the Lab on both students and teachers. Learning — as well as becoming a reader — became visible for the first time. We observed students struggling to drop their habits of guessing and saying anything that came to mind; saying “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” and believing it; or turning to the teacher for confirmation (or commendation). Instead they began looking with concentration at the printed designs to see precisely what these could tell them (still, slit, or list), discovering for the first time that it was in their own voice that they found the criteria for knowing if they were right or wrong. One senior, after struggling for five minutes to finally utter a word correctly, burst out in amazement because of its positive emotional tone for him “That’s black — my God!” The teachers also struggled to drop their habits of praising, telling, giving clues through giving meanings, drilling, reinforcing, and reviewing. Instead they began studying how students met and worked on each new challenge as well as what it was that interfered with their
29
On Knowledge
functioning and why. Through this and having access to the instruments they found ways to indicate to the students what it was to function as a reader and how to read unknown words because of what was already known to them.
30
About Caleb Gattegno Caleb Gattegno is the teacher every student dreams of; he doesn’t require his students to memorize anything, he doesn’t shout or at times even say a word, and his students learn at an accelerated rate because they are truly interested. In a world where memorization, recitation, and standardized tests are still the norm, Gattegno was truly ahead of his time.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1911, Gattegno was a scholar of many fields. He held a doctorate of mathematics, a doctorate of arts in psychology, a master of arts in education, and a bachelor of science in physics and chemistry. He held a scientific view of education, and believed illiteracy was a problem that could be solved. He questioned the role of time and algebra in the process of learning to read, and, most importantly, questioned the role of the teacher. The focus in all subjects, he insisted, should always be placed on learning, not on teaching. He called this principle the Subordination of Teaching to Learning. Gattegno travelled around the world 10 times conducting seminars on his teaching methods, and had himself learned about 40 languages. He wrote more than 120 books during his career, and from 1971 until his death in 1988 he published the Educational Solutions newsletter five times a year. He was survived by his second wife Shakti Gattegno and his four children.
www.EducationalSolutions.com