Learning from the past
(This post is featured in the 188th Carnival of Education. Check it out!)
“In preparing a lecture I find I always have to work hardest on the things I do not say. The things I am sure to say I can easily get up. They are obvious and generally accessible. But they, I find, are not enough. I must have a broad background of knowledge which does not appear in speech. I have to go over my entire subject and see how the things I am to say look in their various relations, tracing out connections which I shall not present to my class.
One might ask what is the use of this? Why prepare more matter than can be used? Every successful teacher knows. I cannot teach right up to the edge of my knowledge without a fear of falling off. My pupils discover this fear, and my words are ineffective. They feel the influence of what I do not say. One cannot precisely explain it; but when I move freely across my subject as if it mattered little on what part of it I rest, they get a sense of assured power which is compulsive and fructifying.”
The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on Education, page 17. Written in 1908. I find this quote deeply relevant and stimulating, as a classroom teacher who is currently preparing for the return of school next week!
I’m a maths teacher, and this next quote could easily have been written about the current trends in the teaching of my subject:
“Among the many changes in mathematical education during the last twenty years, and among the many and often conflicting ideals which have directed these changes, one element at least appears throughout; a desire to relate the subject to reality, to exhibit it as a living body of thought which can and does influence human life at a multitude of points… Our children must learn to think.”
This is from page 35 of Essays on Mathematical Education, written in 1913.
These are just two of more than 8000 results that appear when you search archive.org for texts mentioning ‘education’.
Places like archive.org allow us to correct the notion many people have about the way people were taught in the past. Vocational education; project-based teaching; differentiation; learning styles; curriculum content; the importance of the physical education of youngsters — all of these and more have been considered by teachers for many generations.
Tags: archive.org, education, public domain, Reflections
September 10th, 2008 at 10:47 am
[...] can we learn from teachers of a century ago? Plenty. Jon Ingram presents Learning from the past posted at Lessons Taught; Lessons [...]
September 10th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
[...] issues being debated today were hot issues 100 years ago, writes Jon Ingram at Lessons Taught; Lessons Learnt. Yet his wife, working on a PhD in education, [...]
September 11th, 2008 at 10:29 am
[...] Carnival of Education, hosted by The Core Knowledge — featuring an interesting section on history, geography and social studies. There is interesting material for my colleagues, [...]