Recently, a book was published called Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do). Basically, it lists 50 mildly dangerous activities for kids to participate in that may (but likely will not) result in minor injuries. The author presents the book for the purpose of helping parents with providing dangerous opportunities for their children so that they learn from firsthand experiences—although the average child will have already found several of the listed activities.
Take the following activity for example:
By presenting the How-To of super gluing one’s fingers together, parents can now create an event for their kids which will imbue them with valuable experience. As their kids reflect on their experience with super glue, they can learn meaningful lessons from their actions, feelings and emotions. Lessons may include, “I prefer life with a thumb,” or “I don’t believe dangerous things are beneficial to my well-being.”
But what about children who live for excitement? The lessons a rambunctious kid learns from personal reflection on danger may be just the opposite. He may think, “If this is so fun, then I can definitely find something else to glue. Where’s my little brother?”
Imagine if that rambunctious child was shown the following activity:
If he were to learn saliently in the wrong direction, he could very well make conclusions contrary to those that the parent intended, and start sticking forks in power outlets for fun.
That seemed to be the biggest challenge that I considered while reading the article. Teaching others to learn saliently removes a teacher’s ability to set a focal point for learners. I agree with the article when it discusses the tensions between individual and institution. Enforcing at least a marginal degree of focal attention is essential before allowing learners to reflect on where their salient attention lies.
The Prophet Joseph Smith said concerning how he led the saints, “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.” That appears to be the best balance for a teacher to have. Help students understand that, although there are a variety of lessons to learn saliently, there are still right lessons and wrong lessons that will arise.
I definitely agree with you on this point. There has to be some amount of direction or else values that are completely wrong may be learned. I kind of thought about it like a talk given in general conference. The speaker chooses a topic, or focal point, which he or she means to direct your attention to. However, while listening to this talk, a person with righteous desires may have their thoughts directed towards a different, yet still important topic. This is why when you ask a group of people what they considered the main point of conference to be you will get a variety of answers. Their own experiences and needs direct them to what is most important.
ReplyDeleteBilly, great examples of what could happen if we swung the pendulum of this concept a little too far! I appreciate how you correlated this principle with the teachings of our leaders, specifically the Prophet Joseph Smith. Your subject matter, and the language you employed were engaging! It pushed me to read on! Great design too! (where did you get those instructions? :) )
ReplyDeleteGreat design, Billy. Great find, too. Kudos to you for finding such a clever way to prove your point.
ReplyDeleteI think the quote from Joseph Smith was very good. I think this issue strikes at the very core of teaching, for which we have lots of examples. We will all be teachers our entire life (parents, church leaders, examples to peers etc.) and we will be taught our entire lives (from parents, friends and most importantly, the Holy Ghost). I am not sure how we should interpret our teaching and being taught, but realizing the roles of teachers, I think we have to believe that there has to be a focus to the teaching (imagine if our time here on earth was just to learn what we wanted without any direction or focus).
ReplyDeleteThis may be my favorite post this week, at least that I've read/scanned over so far.
ReplyDeleteI remember my dad showing me what would happen if you stuck a fork in an outlet (he had some seriously thick gloves in). While I was fascinated by the spark, I never came close to being tempted to doing something like that. It also had good carry-over as my mom would tell me that if I vacuumed over the chord, something similar would happen. You can bet that I never did that, though I now have my doubts.
However, I've had to learn other lessons for myself, no matter what others told me. This was sometimes painful, but those lessons last a long time.
Focal learning is important in some settings, but if we only do focal learning, we end up leaning towards a lack of free will and agency.
So I don't exactly agree with the whole lick a 9 volt battery idea for a variety of reasons.
ReplyDelete1. How could a child continue to trust a parent who tells them to lick a battery or glue their fingers together. I think the trust lost in this case would far outweigh any benefit gained from "learning a lesson."
2. Life lessons are to be learned as they come- not artificially set up.