The latest from dougbelshaw.com/blog
- #uppingyourgame v0.4 now available!
- Things I Learned This Week – #11
- A brief history of infographics.
- You’re doing it wrong.
- Seven types of ambiguity and new literacies
- Wednesday Wisdom #10: Application and ability
- HOWTO: Create iTunes audiobooks from MP3s
- #uppingyourgame: an audio preview
- Things I Learned This Week – #10
- How I put together ‘Things I Learned This Week’ [visualization]
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The Hierarchy of Wisdom: where do you stand?
21 CommentsKathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users blog must be one of the best on the ‘net. Not only does she cut straight to the chase but she manages to say things worth reading by those involved in business and education alike. Her recent post on Moving up the wisdom hierarchy certainly warrants a closer look… :D
First of all, the relevant parts of the posts for us busy teachers:
If you’re a teacher, what are you teaching? Facts and information, or practical knowledge and understanding? Are you teaching the What and the How but without the Why and the When? More importantly, what are you testing?
There are a gazillion places to get a roundup of basic data/facts and information (which of course we need). It’s not tough to find “what to know and how to do” knowledge out there either. But it’s not until we get to the higher levels that we start truly getting if and when we should use something. What are the long-term consequences? What are the ethical considerations?
If we could teach kids in elementary school just one thing (besides reading), my wish is that it would be systems thinking. But too much of even our adult training/education (including much of what I create) is focused on short-term “just-the-facts-mam” or how-to hacks and tutorials. We obviously need reference info and how-to’s, or everything comes to a grinding halt, but without the higher elements of understanding and wisdom, we might never recognize that the thing we’re learning to do is NOT the right choice!
The nail has seldom been hit more squarely on the head. This ties in rather nicely with what I’ve been saying about creating a skills-based curricula and the need to move away from traditional knowledge-hand-down models. When children are young – usually under 10 years old, everything seems to be a ‘why?’ question. Dealing almost exclusively with secondary-school pupils I’d forgotten this until I recently went round to a (kind of) relation’s house and found myself teaching world geography to a 7-year old and a 5-year old. Their why questions seemed to be without end and they had a real curiosity and desire to find out as much as possible from me before I left!
Unfortunately, although I’ve seen some elements of this in the first half of Year 7 at secondary schools, most of this is hammered out of students by the ‘message of the medium’ of the current ways schools are set up. Students are rewarded for ‘getting through’ tasks, regurgitating knowledge and basically jumping through hoops of testing. In Kathy’s hierarchy this would, of course, correspond to the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ rather to the more fundamental, interesting and motivating why and if questions. Too much is either spoon-fed or dictated to pupils. I can remember Physics experiments when I was at school where we were told the results we were supposed to get before we performed them! Why not let students get on and learn for themselves?
In the comments on Kathy’s blog post there’s a great quotation attributed to Will Rogers:
There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves
(Visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners anyone?) :p
Having studied Philosophy for my undergraduate degree I know the joy and liberation that clear-thinking can bring. Looking into why things are the way they are (or, perhaps in History, why things happened) along with what would have happened or what could be the case if things were different has got to be one of the most motivating ways to teach. That would be hard to plan a curriculum around. But it would be real learning.
Published on April 24, 2006 · Filed under: Uncategorized;
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