Day #7 – Learn’n & Prep’n & Question’n
This past Thursday Elizabeth and I got together to prepare our learning theory presentation on Howard Gardner’s concept of multiple intelligences and I must say I am amazed at how in integrated in popular knowledge this idea has become in such a short period of time. Frames of Mind his book that introduced the foundation for the idea of multiple intelligences was originally printed in 1983. I was thinking about it and I think the first time I was formally introduced to the idea in Psych I in 1994, which means this idea went from unknown concept to one of the leading theories in thinking in under a decade? If the abstract expressionists had been so lucky.
Which brings me to another question I have been pondering. Is culture a top-down phenomenon? That is to ask – Are academics, and societal leaders sitting around determining how society should be molded? They send out a decries, and modify their friends business models to make sure that the masses have no choice but to take part in the appropriate choices? Or is this some crazy conspiracy theory, does culture still shift naturally without the influence of the rich and powerful?
Lastly, what do we all need to learn to be able to make our digital narrative pieces? I could use a video reminder session. I movie would be fine. Also as I have said previously I have no idea about audio but I am trying to figure out Garage Band and it seems fairly straight forward. Thoughts anyone?
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Your post questions about societal leaders made me think of the The Third Wave: Nazism in High School article. He mentioned that, “there is not much democracy in the classroom” because we are reading books that are selected by these “societal leaders” and written from a narrow perspective. Then it made me think about how the SAIL school doesn’t use textbooks at all! Which is scarier?!
Oh GREAT! Now I am getting compared to Nazis
Really though this is a great question. I have to say it is a little scary to me that charter schools don’t seem very well regulated (Oh I am such a liberal, big goverment, pain in the ass). The idea of no texts is out of my relm of thinking. Being able to read what you want for me is the power of self teaching; I read constantly and can’t imagine children learning through the limited view of one person (the teacher) and I think textbooks assist in perpetuating wider views in some small way. I do believe the democritization in a class room is limited in most cases, BUT isn’t it almost required to maintain order and a foundational level of information sharing?
Maybe we should differentiate between a textbook and a text(just a book). By this I mean, the traditional idea of a textbook is a book that tries to cover an overview of a topic. Other texts could be chosen that aren’t “textbooks.” Do you understand what I’m trying to say?
Of course, that makes sense. However it seemed to me at SAIL, a charter school we visited last week, uses no text books and generally very few texts at any depth. Many worksheets, photocopies of passages, etc. It was a little scary to me, though maybe I am ignorate to some great learning that is occuring across the nation with no books.
More to Melissa’s point though, no matter who picks the texts of any kind, there truely is very little communial decision making occuring in a classroom. In fact it is why we intrust teachers and administrators to do their jobs.
“Is culture a top-down phenomenon? That is to ask – Are academics, and societal leaders sitting around determining how society should be molded? They send out a decries, and modify their friends business models to make sure that the masses have no choice but to take part in the appropriate choices? Or is this some crazy conspiracy theory, does culture still shift naturally without the influence of the rich and powerful?”
I was just rereading your post and this paragraph remained unaddressed. This is a big question, bigger than can be addressed in my short response here. First, what do you mean by “culture”? I will use culture to mean values and the manner in which someone and their community conduct their daily lives. Until recently, the rich and powerful did not have a lot of direct impact on “ordinary” people’s daily lives. Now with the ways we have to communicate, information is often spread via a top-down mechanism. However, there is a sort of contradiction, as tools such as digital media also give us the mechanism to create our own messages and spread them widely. In other words, we can have top-down and grassroots communication mechanisms happening simultaneously…