Replying to LO28876 --
Dear Organlearners,
Barry Mallis <theorgtrainer@earthlink.net> writes:
>Uh oh, Terje, you really struck a nerve with this one.
>I can't overstate how much I agree with your words
>below:
>
>>As of late it seems he doesn't want to measure anything
>>at all, thinks that all work and learning will get done by
>>intrinsic motivation and that even saying something like
>>"good job!" is a bad thing. These ideas are very appealing
>>to certain teachers though (who pay for his books and
>>presentations,) because removing such tests would make
>>it practically impossible to tell if they were doing anything
>>at all, and fit well with their romantic ideals."
>
>In this geographical place where I live and work, on this
>planet, in this country, workers WANT TO BE TOLD that
>they are doing a good job. Told by peers and managers, by
>leaders and supervisors. It's at the top of their list. Maybe
>this is not so in other countries, but it IS SO HERE.
Greetings dear Barry (and Terje),
I agree with you that workers and even learners want to be told that they
are doing a good job. But I have learnt through the years that one
additional requirement applies -- do not tell them they are doing a good
job when it is not the case!
So how do we know that somebody is doing a good job? By putting that
person to a test afterwards with measures designed into it? That is
certification! I think the person should be encourage by tips and
compliments while doing that very job!
Up to the sixties this is how most teachers operated here in South Africa.
The pupil::teacher ratio was small because our national budget could
afford paying many teachers a reasonable salary. But then the ugly part of
apartheid began to manifest itself rapidly. Social unrest, crime and
especially terrorism benan to rise rapidly. More of the national budget
went into treating the symptoms of evil. Taxes began to rise. Intelligent
students graduated in law, engineering and medicine to ensure a steady
standard of living. Less intelligent students became teachers. The
education budget began to decrease. The pupil::teacher ratio began to
increase, intensified by the growing population.
Meanwhile our civil education departments and academical education
faculties began to look for solutions elsewhere in the world. They found
it in "testing outcomes". What they were not aware of, is that this
"testing outcomes" was firmly entrenched in the paradigm that
organisations are driven by information. As a result within twenty years
our educational culture changed from a knowledge driven one to an
information driven one.
Teachers began to operate in terms of transfering information to pupils
using rote learning and give feedback on it in terms of test results. But
because of the high pupil::teacher ratio, it took many days to mark the
all the answer papers to one test. Since having to transfer new
information, these answers and the errors in them to past information
transfer were seldom discussed with pupils to improve their past learning.
Pupils had to teach themselves from their marked answer papers where they
could improve themselves. Only the intelligent pupils succeeded in this
"teach-yourself".
As for me, this is not the way of education. The teacher has to move
constantly form learner to leaner while they are doing their learning
tasks. The teacher has to observe each learner carefully to know how
his/learning is proceeding. Where the learner has difficulties, he has to
probe their idnetity with questions and then make suggestions. Where the
learner has mastered the excercise in an elegant manner or by having
overcome difficulties, the teacher has to compliment that learner.
In knowledge driven education, there is immediate interaction between the
teacher and the pupils. Information exchanged exists for a few seconds
before acted upon by the other party But in information driven education
there are timelags up to weeks before acting upon information supplied by
the other party. For example, information supplied in class may become
memorised only several days afterwards. Several days are needed for the
completion of learning tasks. Marked errors in a test on the outcome of
these learning tasks are shown to the pupils only several days afterwards.
What a mess when a system grinds to a standstill when producing
information which a bystander demands for excusing himself since he did
not participate self.
>Having taught fourteen years in school classrooms, and
>then in corporate training rooms for another twenty, I
>have my own opinions. One reason I am jaded by the
>school teaching profession is that poor competence or
>incompetence too often goes unrecognized, uncorrected,
>unaccounted for. Where are the measures?
Dear Barry, my opinion may differ from yours, but here it is anyway.
Incompetence afterwards are avoided by interactive teaching and learning.
Three conditions are required from the teacher/lecturer to succeed in
his/her part of this interaction -- profound knowledge (topic and act of
learning), crisp observation and a positive attitude towards the learner
and his/her improvement. Three conditions are also required from the
learner/student -- the courage to create self, the passion to explore the
unknown and the willingness to confide in the teacher/lecturer.
Sadly these latter three conditions are so maimed in learners and students
that it took me (first as teacher and later as lecturer) up to three
months to convince them that these conditions are all what i need and that
i will honour and treasure them with all my power under all conditions.
>Why do so many people remember only a handful
>of their teachers from twelve, sixteen or more years
>of classroom experience?
Let me try to articulate it. They remember those teachers who shared at
their sides their failures, who helped them at their sides to turn self
these failures into intellectual victories and who reflected at their
sides their gratitude back to them as their own spiritual glory.
>We all read English. How many of us can teach an
>English class, eh? Teaching is a human science which
>CANNOT be unbound from art.
Dear Barry, not even a natural science can be severed from art. A natural
science for me is about thinking upon doing and then doing in terms of
that thinking again -- growing theory and practice going hand in hand
endlessly. Is that not art?
>And today? Dams of data have crumbled, releasing
>inundations much of which may never become information.
>We're so overwhelmed, gasping and grasping for the light,
>for the soul of it all. Muddy data solidifies into a concrete,
>much like the loose flakes of avalanched snow harden into
>a vise grip around the stripped tree.
Yes, it is for me like walking in a desert when a storm wind suddenly
overtakes me. The sky becomes brown with dust and the horizon on which i
base my bearing becomes hidden behind dust. The light subdues so much that
in the next step i may stumble against a rock or fall into a crevice.
Breathing becomes difficult because it has to be done through a cloth.
Seeing becomes difficult because the eyes can be opened at most into
minute slits. Trying to rest in some scant shelter is worse because then i
become aware of an incredible thirst while hearing the wind howling at
that shelter like a thousand furious devils. Such is it when a community
living in knowledge is over overtaken by the paradigm that information
drives the world.
>Rumi said 800 years ago that
>
>Mind does its fine-tuning and hair-splitting
>but no craft or art begins
>or can continue without a master
>giving wisdom into it.
That is so true. But what is wisdom? For me it is the capacity to act
while respecting creativity universally. It is the impositor who claims
respect for himself while turning so much dust up in the craft or art that
whoever wants to master it becomes suffocated self.
Information is one of the possible outcomes of the act of creation which
requires creativity. This means that information cannot equal creativity
just as information cannot equal knowledge. Consequently information
mongering is for me the worst possible admission to a lack of creativity
self. It is like pretending a dust storm in the desert to be the desert
itself because what does the desert explorer sense other than dust itself.
But just as the dust storm in a desert eventually dies away so that the
beauty of the desert is revealed once again, the present and crazy
infatuation of the western world will die away too.
>........................the horizon grows
>defined; people become friends in a
>
>moving caravan. Night birds may think
>daybreak a kind of darkness, because
>
>that's all they know. ..................
>So, dear Friends, let us keep our LO caravan moving
>along in the sunlight; asking questions, seeking the
>outside on the inside, and the inside in front of our eyes;
>master as student, then exchanging places.
Thank you for your passionate calling. I think that many fellow learners
are already trying to separate the dust from the desert rather than
blowing up even more dust shielding off the desert.
>I bow to the god inside you,
And I to the beautiful desert in you fellow learners which will outlast
every dust storm blowing over it.
With care and best wishes,
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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