Article Review
After reading the excerpt from Leo Buscaglia's book Living, Loving, Learning below please reflect on your thoughts and feelings.
The following questions were created to be thought provoking: (you do not have to answer them all but they may aid you in your responses/reflections)
1) What were some of the AHA's (ideas that stood out to you) that you encountered?
2) How can you utilize this information in your classroom to improve student learning?
3) Do you feel/think that this excerpt from the 1970's is still true today? Where have we improved in education since this article was written? Where have we slipped?
4) What do agree with? What points do you question?
5) Please comment on one other course members comments
**Click on comments to read and leave your personal ideas**
YOU MEAN A RABBIT CAN BE TAUGHT TO FLY?
As an individual you must not be satisfied with just becoming like everybody else.
By Leo Buscaglia, Ph.D.
Busscaglia: "I teach seminars in graduate school. It's amazing how people have learned to parrot by then."
A rabbit, bird, fish, squirrel, duck and so on, all decided to start a school. The rabbit insisted that running had to be in the curriculum. The bird insisted that flying be in the curriculum. The fish insisted that swimming be in the curriculum. The squirrel insisted that perpendicular trees climbing be in the curriculum.
All the other animals wanted their specialty to be in the curriculum, too, so they put everything in and then made the glorious mistake of insisting that all the animals take all of the courses. The rabbit was magnificent in running; nobody could run like the rabbit. But they insisted that it was good intellectual and emotional discipline to teach the rabbit flying. So they insisted that the rabbit learned to fly and they put her on this branch and said, "Fly, rabbit!" And the poor old thing jumped off, broke her leg and fractured her skull. She became brain-damaged and then she couldn't run very well, either.
The same way with the bird -- she could fly like a freak all over the place, do loops and loops, and she was making an A. But they insisted that this bird burrow holes in the ground like a gopher. Of course she broke her wings and everything else, and then she couldn't fly.
We know this is wrong, yet nobody does anything about it. You may be a genius. You may be one of the greatest writers in the world, but you can't get into a university unless you can pass trigonometry. For what? Look at the list of drop outs: William Faulkner, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Edison. They couldn't face school. "I don't want to learn perpendicular tree climbing. I'm never going to climb perpendicularly. I'm a bird. I can fly to the top of the tree without having to do that."
"Never mind, it's good discipline."
As an individual, you must not be satisfied with just becoming like everybody else. You must think for yourself. For example, art supervisors. I can remember when they used to come to my classroom in elementary school, and I'm sure you can remember it, too. You were given a paper, and the teacher would put up the drawing in front of you and you were really excited. It was going to be art time. You had all the crayolas in front of you, and you folded your hands and you waited. And soon the art teacher would come running in, because she had been to fourteen other classrooms that day teaching art. She ran in, and she'd huff and puff and she'd say, "Good morning girls and boys. Today we are going to draw a tree." And all the kids would say, "Goody, we're going to draw a tree!" And then she'd get up there with a green crayola and she'd draw this great big green thing. And then she put a brown base on it and a few blades of grass. And she'd say, "There is a tree." And all the kids would look at it and they'd say, "That isn't a tree. That's a lollipop." But she said that was a tree, and then she's pass out these papers and say, "Now, draw a tree." She didn't really say, "Draw a tree" -- she said, "Draw my tree." And the sooner you found out that's what she meant and could reproduce this lollipop and hand it to her, the sooner you would get an A.
But here was little Janie who knew that wasn't a tree, because she'd seen a tree such as this art teacher had never experienced! So she got magenta, and orange, and blue, and purple, and green, and she scribbled all over her page and happily brought it up and gave it to the teacher. She looked at it and said, "Oh my God...."
How long does it take somebody to realize that what they're really saying is, "To pass, I want you to reproduce my tree." And so it goes through the first grade, second, third and right on into seminars in graduate school. I teach seminars in graduate school. It's amazing how people have learned to parrot by then. Think? Don't be ridiculous. They can give you the facts, verbatim, just as you've given it to them. And you can't blame those students, because that's what they've been taught. You say to them, "Be creative," and they're fearful. And so what happens to our uniqueness; what happens to our tree? All this beautiful uniqueness has gone right down the drain. Everybody is like everybody else, and everybody is happy. R.D. Laing says, "we are satisfied when we've made people like ourselves out of our children.
Excerpted from the book, LIVING, LOVING & LEARNING by Leo Buscaglia
While many educators have incorporated Buscaglia’s ideas into their teaching strategies, there are still teachers today who require students to regurgitate learned information as “proof” of their learning.
ReplyDeleteThese classes are predictable and boring for the most part. Each day fades into the next, making it hard to remember what, if anything, you actually learned. Then there are those teachers whose classes you look forward to. What historical character will he be dressed as today or what fun activity will she have planned? These teachers create a learning environment that fosters creativity and imagination and do not look for rote answers to questions.
We, as educators, must realize that in order to help students truly become problem-solvers, our dialogue cannot just follow a script. Looking at problems/information from more than one angle is an essential skill for students to develop. We also need to realize that not everyone will use trigonometry later in life and that is OK. Helping our students to discover their skills/potential and then nurturing that will make the most impact on their lives. When we teach with closed minds we hinder our students’ creativity and imagination instead of cultivating it.
As far as improvements in teaching that have occurred since the article was written, I feel that educators have been forced to be more creative in presenting their lessons. Kids today are bombarded with information at the touch of a button. In order to keep their attention in a classroom we have to use a variety of teaching tools. Computers, smart-boards, DVDs and internet sites are utilized daily to enhance learning.
I believe that “super” teachers have always looked for ways to go above and beyond just teaching the lesson. Due to the advanced technology we now have, there are so many more options available to us.
It seems to me that the moral of the story is “Let’s not foster cookie-cutter classrooms where each student is expected to be like the next one.” Encourage thinking outside the box. Generally there is always more than one answer to a given problem. Just because it is not the answer you would have given does not mean that it is wrong. Celebrate individuality.
This excerpt is so true. Schools and teachers do try and mold students to be same and therefore we must assume they all learn and assess the same way (usually a pencil and paper test). Look at ACT tests. They are all paper and pencil tests. If a student is not good at pencil and paper tests, they may not show what they really know about the subject.
ReplyDeleteTo me this reading exemplifies that all students do not learn the same way and that there are different ways to learn and evaluate the learning. We don't all have to experience the event in order to learn it. Some do but others don't. To give students options on how to approach and show learning should be individual instead of all students doing the same thing. Look at the information on the seven intelligences. Gardner tells us that everyone has their own way of learning and we need to try and give students the opportunity to learn in their own way. We don't have to make all rabbits fly but instead some rabbits could study the mathematical theories on flight while others may look at different modes of flight.
Student's feelings have not changed since the 70's about wanting to succeed and get a good grade, but I think teachers have changed and are more aware of the differences and want to help students be more successful. Teachers think more about how to present a lesson to be able to reach different learners. I know I am more creative in my teaching over the years. I sometimes think I spend more time on how to get the information across in a fun and creative way than I do about the content. I do agree that many teachers still teach facts for students to memorize and don't do anything more. Teachers are crunched for time and it's the easiest way to teach. While facts and basic knowledge are important to know, we need to take learning beyond that to a higher level of thinking.
Donna,
ReplyDeleteYou're so right about learning and regurgitating facts to be boring. I look at the teachers at my school that the students enjoy their classes the most and they are fun and innovative in the way they teach. Everything is not taught through notes and pencil and paper tests. One teacher teachers Latin, which could easily be memorization of words and phrases but this teacher does not do that. They play games, she gets on the table to recite passages to the students, they dress up and act out things. They are learning the information but doing it in a relevant, fun way rather that the regurgitation.