Has Piaget got the Key?

Piaget's idea that there are four main steps of cognitive growth has been criticized for suggesting that development has an endpoint rather than being a life-long process (Riddle). The question has also been raised whether children actually go through the stages in precisely the way Piaget suggests (Silverthorn). The sensorimotor stage goes from 0-2 years, but by 22 months my son spoke in paragraphs rather than sentences; during the preoperational stage (2-6/7) he was not egocentric, but very perceptive of others' feelings, and at 6 he wanted me to read him Lord of the Rings because an older friend had read it - and he enjoyed and understood it. I am not alone in thinking that Piaget underrates the intelligence of children as this discussion paper shows (http://intranet.yorkcollege.ac.uk/yc/new/HUMSOC/psycho/unit4/piaget.pdf), but probably I am oversimplifying here: Piaget says, in response to Vygotsky's criticisms, that 'Cognitive egocentrism... stems from a lack of differentiation between one’s own point of view and the other possible ones, and not at all from an individualism that precedes relations with others.' Certainly, after thirty-four years of teaching, I still need need to heed his warning that 'every beginning instructor discovers... that his first lectures were incomprehensible because he was talking to himself... He realizes only... with difficulty that it is not easy to place oneself in the shoes of students who do not yet know what he knows about the subject'.

(http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/comment/piaget.htm). I do like Piaget's idea of equilibration (Silverthorn): I am continually fnding that one mode of thought is not sufficently satisfying, and searching for a newer understanding - particularly in my own writing.

Certainly I agree with Piaget's followers that learning should include activity, peer interaction and Socratic dialogue (Silverthorn, citing Driscoll). But rather than conceiving the educational process as a series of steps, I would picture it as unlocking a door so that the student can enter his or her own interior landscape and embark on a life-long process of discovery.

Does Vygotsky Light the Flame?

Lev Vygotsky's zone of proximal development suggests that development is a process rather than a product, as suggested by Piaget's stages(Riddle).This view is more compatible with the idea of life-long learning. However, Vygotsky's model suggests that knowledge and learning are outside the student, and that the teacher leads the student into a world beyond themselves. But Socratic method suggests that knowledge and understanding are innate, that the student must give birth to the ideas and the teacher is only the midwife.
(http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/curriculum/socratic.htm).
One of my most precious possessions as a teacher is a scruffy scrap of paper on which a student wrote, 'Thank you for seeing something in me that I couldn't see myself.' As a student, I learned French by reading it; my teacher taught me mainly by being excited by my capacity and lending me books. At university, a few lectures on interpreting art ignited a latent passion that I have pursued independently for the rest of my life.

Vygotsky's stress on the social aspects of cognitive development is important, but it suggests a hierarchy of knowledge. This can be a dangerous view. Particularly with creative writing, I can often see the potential of an idea before the student, and it's a struggle not to overdirect and impose my ideas. I believe learning is best when the teacher is learning from, surprised by, the student - when the learning process is as equal as possible.

It is a question of trying to blow on the coals and ignite the student's latent passion into flame.

http://offspring00.blogspot.com/

God's Justice

Michael's lecture on 10/3/07: I felt almost as if it was an answer to prayer. I don't say this out of flattery, but because I have been feeling a tug in the direction of social justice for some time. I found the whole day rivetting. His story of Juan Geradi and Fr Rigoberto was very challenging - I don't think I do feel a call to Latin America because I know that it would be hard on my family if I put myself in a situation of potential violence, but I was affected by his point of the importance of solidarity. I wonder how I can do this, not I think, through political action, but surely in some way through education, as I have such a great deal of experience in this area.

When Michael spoke of his parents as Good Samaritans, this reminded me of my father, who was not at all a Christian, but was definitely a G.S.

I was intrigued by Michael's account of Guiterrez and how the question facing him, the question of poverty and structuraloppression, was so differen from the questions facing European Theologians. Later, I read 'A New Way of Encountering God':

• The here-and-nowness that LT deals with
• That we are all theologians and that theology is a love letter to God
• That God (as I firmly believe) s a mystery that none of us can penetrate, and that intellectual modesty is essential
• That theology's love letter changes with time

When I came to the part about Commitment being the first act and theology the second, my heart began to burn within me (sorry to be mushy but that is what it felt like) - I so want to find a way of committing myself in this area - have been feeling this for some years now, but not sure how I can do it. I do encounter poor people to some extent in volunteering a little with refugees in Blacktown, but this is mild compared with the problems of Africa or Latin America.

I was moved by the three main parts of LT - liberation from:

• unjust social structures
• the power of fate
• personal guilt or sin

Reflecting that I do have a growing desire to confront the structural causes of injustice, I realized that in some ways I already do this - that friends and colleagues and family seem to find it helpful to talk to me, especially when they are struggling to release their creativity from the social constraints that inhibit it. I had a very strong sense too, that a particular friend is actually one of the poor in spirit, who asks for my love in a very special way that liberates both of us from some of our past fears and unhealthy patterns. This led me to reflect on the moments of poverty of spirit in my daughter and husband - moments when they need me to listen and be with them. This too is an obligation. I cannot be like Mrs Jellyby in Dickens' Bleak House, with her eyes always on the natives of Borioboola-Gha - and her own family falling in ruins about her. So I do not quite know how I will find my way through this, but pray and trust that God will open a door for me.

Jared Diamond, Collapse

Factors in social collapse (not all necessarily present in every case):

1. Environmental/Geographical issues - soil, climate, fragility of natural eco-systems
2. Climate Change
3. Hostile neighbours
4. Collapse or decline in friendly trading partners
5. Response to problems

I am concerned about environmental issues and looking at ways to reduce my footprint, as I realize that the situation now is a type of intergenerational theft. We have eight and a half acres of arable ground - now that we only have one very old horse, I am trying (with my son's help - he works in bush regeneration) to regenerate native species and eradicating introduced species (native to our district - which means eradicating Silky Oak as well). There is a long way to go, but there are definite signs of improvement and at least I have learned to identify a few of the relevant species as desirable or undesirable. Also trying to reduce further use of packaging, electricity and water consumption. It is good that I don't have to drive to work every day this year as I am part time and can take the train to university - would like to have even less car use next year. I am also tryign to organize chooks and vegetable garden so that I can maximise my efforts to grow vegetables. I'm not up to killing the chooks or I'd try to grow our own meat as well. Perhaps I can manage fish when we build a wetland in the front paddock. I also try to apply this at school - always turning off lights and encouraging others by example at least to be more conscious - it was one of my colleagues who dubbed me an eco-warrior - but I don't think the term is justified yet.

Second Lecture: Tuesday 27th March

The Moses Project: I found this lecture again fascinating and inspiring - it seemed to me to integrate my view of the Bible in a way that no church service has yet done. It allowed me to retain the metaphorical/mythological readings which enrich my own understanding of how to live my life.

It also integrated the Old (First) Testament God with the New: the God who acts in favour of the poor, oppressed, and marginalized in both testaments.

The FT focuses on God's rescue of the oppressed slave class of Egypt, i.e. the Children of Israel/ Hebrews - even if the archaeologists have found that they didn't exist as such - and believe that they were really the poor, dispossessed, slave class or apiru, and later, according to the archaeologists, the liberation of the apiru of Canaan. However, with it's more primitive world view, sanctions using violence against the First Born and Pharoah's Chariots, and also grants an exclusive status to The Chosen People. Later the Prophets seek to reignite the flame of this idea when it congeals into a new status quo. Jesus follows in this tradition, but without violence (Turn the Other Cheek) and without being exclusive (the Kingdom of God). I would like to read more about this.

Lead Out

Educate comes from the Latin e- (out of) and ducere (lead or draw) - it means that education is about leading out of the student what is already there. Socrates (according to Plato) thought that the job of the teacher was to help the student to discover what he (mostly he in those days) already knew. This is the underpinning of my philosophy as a teacher.

My other core inspiration comes from Roger West, who said that 'The heart of education is education of the heart.'