Why Preschool Shouldn't Be Like School
In this post, Joe Bower discusses the method of indirect teaching. He references two different experiments that helped him shape and support his beliefs. The first was done by a group at MIT. The researchers either gave the students a toy and played with them to discover its capabilities or had a director show the students what the toy could do. Of course the students learned more and continued playing more when they were allowed to discover new information. The other experiment was done by Mr. Bower and three others. Again, this experiment was designed to test the student’s learning capability when allowed to discover information on their own rather than being directly taught. Mr. Bower ends his post with this quote: “Perhaps all learners would be better off if every level of education was a little less like school”
My comment to Mr. Bower first included me thanking him for the various resources he includes in his blog. They are valuable for future educators and very interesting. Next, I thanked him for sharing his view on this topic and providing the research to support it. While I completely agree with the indirect teaching style, I had to raise a question that has been on my mind a lot: what about those students who are “too cool for school” or who are unable to motivate themselves?
Fair Isn't Always Equal
This post contains the above cartoon and discusses fairness and equality in terms of standardizing our students. In this post, Mr. Bower mainly lets the cartoon get across the message. After all, “a picture is worth a thousand words”.
My comment on Mr. Bower’s post mainly discussed my take on fairness and equality. I shared with him how I think of the two: “you can teach your students in what you consider a ‘fair’ way, but the results you get will never be equal”. I further explained myself by saying that the results are never equal because students are never the same and never learn in the same way. Also, I shared with him my desire as a future educator to be able to get to know my students well and teach them fairly AND equally.
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