| News
& Views
- Feb, 1991 Issue |
Schooling: The Developing
Child
By Sylvia Farnham-Diggory
(Harvard University Press)
($17.95; $8.95 paper)
School, unfortunately, is
something all too many of us associate with multiple-choice tests, boring
textbooks, and jarring bells. This bleak institution, Farnham-Diggory
tells us, is the legacy of the educator Edward Thorndike, who conceived
of school as a factory where students, passive recipients of knowledge,
learned discipline by toiling at isolated tasks. The problem with the
Thorndikean model, the author convincingly argues, is not only that
it dehumanizes students but also that is simply doesn't work. It wrongly
assumes that we learn by mastering a series of disconnected steps, whereas
cognitive research demonstrates that we actually learn by encountering
the "whole" in all of its inherent complexity. Farnham-Diggory's own
vision of a school draws heavily on the child-centered philosophy of
John Dewey. Like Dewey, the author argues that children learn best by
participating in concrete, "hands-on" activities instead of being given
parcels of disconnected information. While the author acknowledges that
changing the current structure of our schools will be difficult, Schooling
succeeds in spurring our desire for reform. - A review by David Ruenzel,
former chairman of the English department at University Lake School
in Hartland, Wisc., found in Teacher Magazine, Nov./Dec. 1990 issue,
Vol. II, #3, p. 62.
Copyright
© 1991, Woodbury Reports, Inc. (This article may be reproduced without
prior approval if the copyright notice and proper publication and author
attribution accompanies the copy.) |
