Eric Booth talked about the three kinds of learning that Plato described:
Instruction - we know too well what that is, sit and get.
Experience - schools know that this works in arts, science labs, sports - but it's time consuming and hard to test, so we don't always assess what a kid got out of it. And, as Rick Stiggins says, "Just because it's hands-on doesn't mean it's minds-on."
Uncovering What We Know - including things we didn't know we knew. The arts (done well) add just enough reflection to get kids to the Uncovering piece. That's what underlies the actual Aha! moment.
In fact, he posited that if we bring students in to the experience level through the arts, then ask them to reflect, they will uncover what they know and then begin to yearn for more information or skill around this.
I know this was certainly what we were trying to do at VSAA in the Integrated Academic Core class. Meet kids at the art and they will come along with you to a point of instruction that they didn't know they needed and wouldn't have wanted if you'd just sprung it on them!
And now for my favorite Booth quote of the day:
"We live in a belligerently anti-reflective culture. We have to remediate this. This leads to being curious about instruction. The curious kid lets instruction soar. We want to create a cycle of lifelong yearning."
Don't you just love that?
He went on to talk about how yearning can cause a kid to risk caring about a thing and thereby experience the rewards of yearning.
And then, the etymology lesson:
Reflect = to bend back toward
We need to teach kids to bend their experiences back toward themselves so they can learn from them.
Connoisseur = one who is adept at coming to know; a great learner.
So, Knowing isn't so much the goal; becoming adept at coming to know is.
Bravo = an exclamation originally used to recognize acts of great courage on stage, whether or not they were fully realized.
This gets back to Booth's distinction between Art and Entertainment - that Entertainment confirms your sense of what the world is or ought to be, regardless of the emotions it may elicit; but Art happens outside of what you already know, so it stretches you. I like this - I've struggled for years to define these without doing a blanket put down of entertainment! Also, I wasn't sure what to do with works of art that are in fact, fun or entertaining on some level. But, like the arts education itself, I think that we sometimes attract our audience in to an experience that is or seems entertaining on the face of it, and then gradually or suddenly allow them to uncover something new. Does this ring true?
Well, my flight's just about to board, better button up this post. Tomorrow I'll get to Dr. Rex Jung, Neurobiologist, and the reason we need to let our brains disengage from time to time.
Instruction - we know too well what that is, sit and get.
Experience - schools know that this works in arts, science labs, sports - but it's time consuming and hard to test, so we don't always assess what a kid got out of it. And, as Rick Stiggins says, "Just because it's hands-on doesn't mean it's minds-on."
Uncovering What We Know - including things we didn't know we knew. The arts (done well) add just enough reflection to get kids to the Uncovering piece. That's what underlies the actual Aha! moment.
In fact, he posited that if we bring students in to the experience level through the arts, then ask them to reflect, they will uncover what they know and then begin to yearn for more information or skill around this.
I know this was certainly what we were trying to do at VSAA in the Integrated Academic Core class. Meet kids at the art and they will come along with you to a point of instruction that they didn't know they needed and wouldn't have wanted if you'd just sprung it on them!
And now for my favorite Booth quote of the day:
"We live in a belligerently anti-reflective culture. We have to remediate this. This leads to being curious about instruction. The curious kid lets instruction soar. We want to create a cycle of lifelong yearning."
Don't you just love that?
He went on to talk about how yearning can cause a kid to risk caring about a thing and thereby experience the rewards of yearning.
And then, the etymology lesson:
Reflect = to bend back toward
We need to teach kids to bend their experiences back toward themselves so they can learn from them.
Connoisseur = one who is adept at coming to know; a great learner.
So, Knowing isn't so much the goal; becoming adept at coming to know is.
Bravo = an exclamation originally used to recognize acts of great courage on stage, whether or not they were fully realized.
This gets back to Booth's distinction between Art and Entertainment - that Entertainment confirms your sense of what the world is or ought to be, regardless of the emotions it may elicit; but Art happens outside of what you already know, so it stretches you. I like this - I've struggled for years to define these without doing a blanket put down of entertainment! Also, I wasn't sure what to do with works of art that are in fact, fun or entertaining on some level. But, like the arts education itself, I think that we sometimes attract our audience in to an experience that is or seems entertaining on the face of it, and then gradually or suddenly allow them to uncover something new. Does this ring true?
Well, my flight's just about to board, better button up this post. Tomorrow I'll get to Dr. Rex Jung, Neurobiologist, and the reason we need to let our brains disengage from time to time.
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