Category: Learning

Discussions of learning… by children and adults.

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How We Think About Animal Behavior — Moving Beyond Behaviorism, Mechanism, Positivism, and Other Problematic Biases

This post has been stimulated by a posting in the “Animal Cognition” group in Facebook that shows a video of a crow trying to break up a rather intense fight between two cats. The crow repeatedly caws loudly at the two cats, then pecks at the base of the tails of the cats (it’s difficult to distinguish whether the crow is pecking at the same cat or at both cats, since the two cats look very similar).

Courageous Crow Tries to Break Up Cat Fight

I’ve been watching my Doberman do the same sort of thing for almost 8 years. If two dogs get into a fight in the dog park, she’ll run up and bark at the two dogs. If that doesn’t do anything, she’ll try to figure out who the aggressor is and pull its tail and run away. She’ll also do the same thing with people who are vehemently arguing (e.g., my wife and I or two people in the dog park), except there are no tails to pull.

In the past, we were stuck in a behaviorist paradigm, where the ideas of animal emotion, animal cognition, and animal consciousness or sentience were dismissed. But, we’re moving beyond such behaviorist views. However, there are still lingering remnants of this paradigm and its companion paradigms of positivism and mechanism and how they affect the way we perceive and think about animal behavior. We may need to consider that behavior, cognition, emotion, learning, etc. manifest:

  • as falling along a continuum of complicatedness (I want to avoid using “complexity,” since I don’t want to confuse this aspect with complex systems, even though behavior, cognition, emotion, etc. do play roles in thinking and learning as complex systems);
  • as adaptive characteristics for the contexts in which an organism lives; and
  • as fundamental characteristics of life.

We seem to get stuck in comparing thinking, acting, learning, etc. to the way we think, act, learn, etc., rather than looking at such things from the contextual perspective of the particular organism. For my Dobie (Dobermans are very sensitive and do not like yelling or fighting), she takes on a role of peace-keeper, which also extends to protecting the perimeter of the house, by alerting us to the presence of people. However, she is extremely observant, so if a person “passes” her visual and other sensory assessments, they can come into the house without further ado. We’ve never had to deal with this, but if a dangerous person tried to enter, I suspect she’d go through several levels of warning before she would neutralize the threat. She did try to warn me about a new vet I took her to. The minute the vet walked into the exam room, she started snarling. I had never seen her do this around any other person, even local gang-bangers who approached admiring my dog and asking how mean she was. But, as I found out, the vet was a money-grubber and psychopath. I should have trusted my dog’s judgment and left immediately.

However, the point is, that every living organism, thinks, learns, reacts emotionally (the biochemical substances associated with emotions are found throughout the spectrum of living things), and interacts with other living things cooperatively and competitively (both can happen with the same organism, but the type of interaction depends on the specific contextual circumstances of the moment).

So, the crow in this video, which like dogs, has developed in ways to or adapted to live in conjunction with humans and their pets. Both crows and dogs are quite intelligent. And, it very well may be that the crow is the neighborhood peace-keeper. This is not to say that all crows act this way. However, this particular crow may have had sets of experiences and particular inclinations that have led to his or her taking on this role. My dog has assumed this role. Not all dogs do, but I have observed other dogs act as peace-keepers, as well.

Intelligence, emotions, and sentience seem to be characteristics of life. From bacteria to humans, organisms think, learn, and act in ways that are appropriate to their experiences in the contexts in which they live. We can’t directly compare and assess intelligence, etc. in terms of our own intelligence and emotions. We can only compare how different organisms’ intelligence and emotions are suited for their own contexts. From this perspective, bacteria may be the ultimate in appropriate emotions and intelligence. They not only survive through multiple assaults from the environment and from humans, but they help other organisms survive (from individual survival to the survival of all life) and have created and regulated the Earth’s atmosphere and biogeochemical cycles that have provided the contexts of survival for all organisms. We, on the other hand, seem to be hell-bent on destroying ourselves and other species. That is not very intelligent in any context.

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Children’s Learning for the 21st Century: It May Not Be What You Think

In various contexts in which education is discussed or promoted, invariably there is going to be a new initiative that sounds something like “21st Century Schools” or “21st Century Skills” and so forth. But, in reality, not much has changed over the past century and not much is likely to change in the near future. Probably for the first time in human history we are facing a clear possibility for extinction. At the very least, we will be facing uncertain and extremely difficult times over the next few decades. At this point, we are not talking about in 50 or 100 years. We are talking about the next 10 to 20 years.

However, the difficulty with the above statements is that we really don’t have any sense of impending doom. We get up and go about our daily routines in much the same way we’ve done for many years. Nothing seems all that different, despite what we may hear or read. Even though we may know that the future looks grim, our everyday experiences communicate a very different message about the future. We’re being screwed with by our very own experiences. And, this situation of contradictory information is dangerous. It’s a bit like driving down a highway in cruise control and not believing the signs warning that the bridge over the ravine has collapsed. “How could these signs be true? It’s a beautiful day and a beautiful highway!”

So, back to what children should be learning. We’re on this highway, but the systems involved in education, including the education system itself, the political system, the economic system, and the social system, are not particularly known for being able to adapt or change quickly. In fact, these systems are resistant to change. All of these systems are deeply intertwined and interdependent that any attempt to change in one will require massive changes in all of the others. And, with the present situation in the U.S. and many other countries, the political and economic systems are working diligently to undermine any attempts to address the monumental issues we are facing. Such tendencies and actions are serving to hasten the collapse of everything we take for granted.

So, we can’t rely on our institutions of education or whatever to address what our children need. They are still out for the quick profits and for keeping the populace dumbed down. And, if you’ve been reading any recent articles about the wealthy surviving the future, you’ve seen that the wealthy don’t care about the rest of us. They are already preparing to survive without us.

Of course, there are exceptions, but they are just that… exceptions. There may be the odd school bucking the system or the occasional teacher risking her or his job to really address children’s needs. But, the fundamental status for “the rest of us” is that we’ll be the first to die off, unless we do something about it.

Children’s relevant learning will have to happen somewhere in between the institutions and despite the conglomerate of systems. It’s up to us. But, what is worth learning? And, who decides what is worth learning? These have been two of the major critical questions asked among curriculum theorists. But, now they have to be asked by us and by our children. As much as we may hope that our children will grow up and get a good job and have a nice family, this may be a pipe dream. But, if you’ve ever played poker, you don’t want to throw away your ace in the hole. Maybe there is an outside chance of that kind of future happening… for a while. But, we need to play all our cards.

If all or most of the infrastructures (electrical grid, health, transportation, etc.) collapse, what will our children need to know? If everyone is scrambling for survival, what will our children need to know about working with diverse people? What else will we need to know? How will the way we think have to change?

…

The near future is likely to be a completely different ballgame. We have no experiences that will prepare us for what could happen. The ways in which we think, which may have been quite useful for us so far, will no longer work. This will not be “business as usual.”

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Communication & Information – Norbert Wiener’s Paradox

“…We cannot afford to ignore Norbert Wiener’s observation of a paradox that results from our increasing technological capability in electronic communication: as the number of messages increases, the amount of information carried decreases. We have more media to communicate fewer significant ideas.”

FROM: Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner. (1969). Teaching As a Subversive Activity. — page 8

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This quote was from 1969, and was citing Norbert Wiener, who died in 1964, but I suspect he was discussing this paradox in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. I wonder what Wiener would think about our current state of affairs? He’d have to talk about miscommunication, false information, and so much more as part of the communication circuits, as well.

The implications of the increase in the amount of information (both factual and not), the increase of triviality and nonsense within that information, and the increase in propaganda along with the ease with which communication can now occur are frightening. Yes, it is nice to have easy access to information, but it requires ways of sorting out the trash from the significant. How do we know what is really trash, what is really significant? How much do we have to dig through before we get to the significant? How much time will we have to spend getting to worthy information? On another line of questions, some people may find messages of hate and distrust valuable. So, what are the implications for divisiveness among people from local communities to the global population? How can we work towards bringing people together, promoting understanding and appreciation of difference, and so forth?

There are so many issues and questions that cross all aspects of living … and ultimately our survival as a species. Wiener’s paradox and all of the questions it brings up affects everything from our personal psychological wellness to global politics, from our effect on ecosystems to our effect on societies. It affects education, spirituality, economics, politics, and global affairs. It is a monster like nothing that has ever been experienced.

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What do Schools Teach Children?

Paul Birtwell posted a graphic that listed the following criteria of schooling:
What does school really teach children?

  1. Truth comes from authority.
  2. Intelligence is the ability to remember and repeat.
  3. Accurate memory and repetition are rewarded.
  4. Non-compliance is punished.
  5. Conform intellectually and socially.

…

Yep… and it’s been this way for a long, long time.

There are a few exceptions, including schools influenced by John Dewey’s ideas, Reggio Emilia schools and those influenced by these schools, and a spattering of others. But, for the most part, public, charter, and private schools in the U.S. and most other countries, these 5 points are the overarching framework.

In a democracy:

  1. Authority should be questioned. Truth is something children should be seeking through their play, exploration, inquiries, and talk.
  2. Intelligence is not what can be regurgitated, but involves the abilities to question, think, analyze, imagine, create, and so forth.
  3. The abilities to construct good arguments, to create novel works in the arts (dramatic, musical, visual, etc.), to analyze, to question, etc. should be valued (I don’t want to say “rewarded” since it wreaks of behaviorism and our tendency to treat children like they are rats).
  4. Non-compliance should be an indication of issues with the nature of the classroom community and should lead to re-evaluating the way the community is maintained. Non-compliance also is an indication of a disconnect between the child and the adults and/or community, which the intelligent child intelligence is seeing. We should value non-compliance as an expression of intelligence and courage.
  5. Conformity should be suspect. The individuality of each child should be valued and celebrated. Diversity and variation are what keeps all types of systems viable and healthy, and are what provides for growth, development, and change.
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Habits of Mind

We have these habits of mind in the West where we think along lines that are linear… simple cause and effect. But, the world (outside of simple physical, nonliving events) does not work that way. We must think about the complexity of multiple systems interacting and where the “blame” is in the relationships, which is not with individuals, with groups, or with other entities.

The same holds true for all levels of relationship. From those with our lovers and families to those among nations. It’s all about the relationships and intricate interconnections within and among different systems (we can think of each individual as a system, in addition to larger systems with fuzzy boundaries, such as nations, social groups, ecosystems, economies, religions, etc.).‬‬

As individuals, we are the result of our relationships. These relationship range from the molecular (e.g., DNA is all about the relationships between the base pairs) to those with family, friends, teachers, and others and to those with our environments. The relationships within the contexts in which we have lived contribute to a great extent who we are and how we manifest. That’s part of our humanity. We are social beings, who learn socially. And, this learning is mostly not the learning we do in schools. We are learning systems… and the systems in which we live are learning systems. According to Nora Bateson (2015), this kind of learning is called “symmathesy” or mutual learning in contexts. Murderers and criminals of all kinds are the product of symmathesy as are the highly regarded political leaders, spiritual leaders, and all the rest of us, including bacteria, protists, plants, fish, birds, and so on. All living systems, social systems, and ecological systems, are examples of symmathesy. This learning is “in” and “about” relationship. But, this learning is not value laden, it is just the way living systems learn. So, the learning can be pathological in relation to social norms. Or, the learning can be grounded and sane within the social contexts.

We can fall into a trap in just thinking that “I am the way I am because of my relationships and the contexts within which I was raised. And, that is just the way it is. So, tough.” But, this is a cop-out. We have the ability as complex systems to transcend our typical ways of thinking and behaving. In fact, that self-transcendent ability is one of the characteristics of autopoietic systems (Capra, 1982). Autopoietic systems are also known as complex systems or systems that are self-generating, self-maintaining, self-regulating, self-transcendent, and so forth (“auto” = self & “poiesis” = to make OR “autopoiesis” = self-making). And, all living systems are autopoietic. So, the “mutual learning in contexts” of such self-maintaining systems is known by the word created by Nora Bateson, “symmathesy” (“sym” = together; “mathesi” = to learn or “symmathesy” = learning together, mutual learning; which also is the basis of the notion of co-evolution).

In fact, our only hope lies in this potential for self-transcendence. We all have to work at not thinking in simple cause and effect ways. We desperately need to begin thinking in ways that see how multiple systems are interacting and how these system are learning together, for better or for worse. So, while the U.S. may start manipulating some political entity somewhere else in the world, that “U.S. system” is learning about and reinforcing the notion of manipulation, at the same time, the entity being manipulated is learning about how to be manipulated and how to resist being manipulated, etc. The alternative to such negative or pathological learning is to begin to transcend this level of functioning. How can we relate in ways that are more direct, more reciprocal, and mutually beneficial? This example is at the scale of nations, but the same holds true for all of our personal relationships. We can understand others as bundles of relationships, but instead of relating in ways that are based on our old assumptions (whatever they may be), we can take a fresh look, with great empathy and mutual understanding of our shared humanity, and proceed to relate in ways that transcend our old habits of mind. In attempting to think in this way, we can transcend our own habitual patterns and ways of thinking and relating. We make the jump and begin to influence others. The more us who can begin trying to do this, the greater the chances of making a big difference.

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Bateson, N. (2015). Symmathesy — A word in progress: Proposing a new word that refers to living systems. A manuscript in review for publication.

Capra, F. (1982). The turning point: Science, society, and the rising culture. New York: Bantam.

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Corporatization of Colleges and Universities

“Corporatization of Higher Education” from Salon.com

The above linked article from last October is a good short piece on a few of the problems involved in the corporatization of universities.

This change in how universities are run is a huge problem. University decision-making used to be based primarily upon “learning,” which included bringing in high level tenure-track/tenured faculty (who shared in the governance of the university); materials, equipment, and teaching facilities; libraries; student academic support; and research. But, now almost all universities make decisions based on money, with learning way down the line of priorities. Advertising, distance learning (which is an abomination and a learning scam), sports and recreational (country club-like) facilities, student (resort-style) housing (where they live in fancier housing than many faculty and staff), and high administrator salaries (and too many administrators… way more than are necessary) have taken over the budget sheets. Faculty members tend to be the “enemy” as seen by administrators. Administrators create a culture of fear and use whatever tactics they can to try to intimidate and control faculty. Gone are the days of faculty governance, faculty autonomy, and academic freedom. Faculty members inflate grades to keep students happy, so that they can get high end-of-semester evaluations. These student evaluations of faculty hold way too much weight in decisions about retention, promotion, and salary increases. And, students suffer the consequences. Their learning has been trivialized and is shallow at best. And, faculty suffer, as well. They are no longer supported in issues with teaching. When students complain about language, ideas discussed, teaching style, grades, etc., administrators tend to support the students views and not the actions of the instructor or professor. Many faculty suffer from stress related health issues. And, this stress is way beyond that of doing the work (teaching, research, and service to the university community) required of the profession. The additional stress from negative treatment, fear, lack of voice, and a loss of one’s academic freedom and ability to make appropriate decisions about course content, teaching, etc. is enough to create havoc with people’s health.

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“Knowledge and Thought Have Parted Company”

“If it should turn out to be true that knowledge… and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is.”

— Hannah Arendt (1958). The Human Condition (p. 3)

Knowledge and thought are parting company due to the politics that has perverted our educational system under the guise of “raising standards” and “teacher accountability.”

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Epistemology, Epistemological Shock, and Schooling: Part 1

I want to elaborate on a discussion that followed a re-posting of call for university students to stop whining and suck it up when “scary new ideas that challenge your beliefs…” (supposedly by Larry Winget) are presented. In my re-posting, I said:

Mary Catherine Bateson called this experiencing epistemological shock. I have felt that as a teacher (even when I was a grade school teacher) I was obligated to provide opportunities for students to experience epistemological shock. For what other reason was I in the classroom? Reading, writing, and all the rest were important, but the most important reason was to provide opportunities for children or adult students to grow, to learn how to think more deeply, to re-evaluate what they thought they knew. Everything else was secondary. Some of my own and biggest epistemological shocks occurred in junior high and high school. And, I don’t even think the teachers knew what they had done to me, but the impacts were huge. I’ve tried tracking them down to thank them, but by the time I found them, they had already died. They had given me a great gift. I hope they knew.

The more I think about it, the more this idea of epistemological shock seems to be of critical importance to teaching. We formulate epistemologies or explanatory ideas for just about everything about our world: cultures, relationships, communities, natural phenomena, living things, technology, and so forth. We are epistemological beings, but then most living things are probably epistemological beings. Dogs, cats, horses, rats, and birds certainly have epistemologies. They have understandings of their social and physical worlds and their relationships. They have expectations of their relationships. My dog expects to go to the dog park or go for walks at certain times during the day. She knows where the rabbits hang out. And, she knows where each PetSmart store keeps their Guinea pigs. My cats expect to be given attention, especially if we are sitting on the toilet or sitting at specific locations. The rats I’ve had acted much like dogs and had expectations for petting, cuddling, and receiving treats. I haven’t had horses, but from what I’ve heard they have complicated expectations and thought processes. I suspect epistemologizing (to make it a verb) is a common characteristic of living systems. Bacteria, plants, fungi, protists, and the full range of animals most likely have epistemologies that provide frames for understanding or making sense of the world.

That’s what we do… we create epistemologies to help us make sense of the world. But, such epistemologies do not guarantee any sense of accuracy or truth. They just provide a frame of reference that may seem to work. A racist may have an extensive epistemological framework that justifies his or her views of the world. Every input seems to make sense in terms of this framework. If it doesn’t make sense, then it is dismissed as nonsense, as a lie, or as some other blasphemy. At the other extreme, we may create what seems to be a fairly equitable and accurate epistemology. But, whatever epistemologies we create, they certainly are not absolute truths. They are subject to change, no matter how much we’d like to solidify them and believe that they are absolute truths. Every time there is a scientific revolution at whatever scale, there is an epistemological shock running through a particular scientific community. The scientists in that community may have thought they had pretty solid evidence for a specific theoretical framework, then all of a sudden it’s turned upside down. People get defensive, angry, and lash out. But, the old epistemological framework no longer works.

As teachers, at whatever level (K-graduate school), we are faced with the responsibility of confronting a vast array of personal and “official” epistemologies. These epistemologies may have to do with the subject matter we are teaching or they may have to do with students’ assumptions about the nature of the professional community or the nature of our professional work or the nature of one’s relationship to oneself as a learner or inquirer or whatever. If we take our work as educators seriously, we examine where our students are and teach to their particular needs or situations. We may feel obligated to cover certain material (depending upon our field and the particular course), but somewhere along the continuum of [student situation—-to—-subject matter] we are going to address epistemologies of students and epistemologies of the field.

However, the way the institution of education is moving, grade school is more concerned with subject matter coverage than with any concern for epistemology, whether personal or official. The approach is to memorize content to pass a test. The content doesn’t have to make sense, which would be an epistemological concern. At the university level, we’re not that far away from the grade school version. We don’t have the high stakes tests, but the underlying drive for profit is still there. Online learning, large classes, and multiple section classes that follow the exact same template are all aligned with the same approach to minimizing a concern for epistemology, while maximizing superficial coverage of content.

There were times when I was teaching multiple sections of the same course when I felt like I needed to keep all sections at the same point along some arbitrary continuum of content and to cover the exact same material. But, every time I tried, I found it impossible. Each group of students took the material in class in different directions. They had different questions, different ideas, and different interests. Each section became its own distinctive epistemological context. And, this epistemological context is what we need to remember when teaching. Each individual makes sense of the material in her or his own way by drawing on individual experiences, previous epistemologies, and all kinds of idiosyncratic contexts of meaning. Put a bunch of people together in a room and you have a social context of epistemologizing that can’t be replicated.

To view teaching as an epistemological endeavor, you need to see classrooms as social contexts where students are trying to make sense of whatever it is they are studying. As an epistemologizing mentor, you as the teacher need to encourage exploration, inquiry, questioning, critiquing, challenging, and examining things from multiple perspectives. You need to encourage your students to be scientists, poets, artists, writers… and not just get stuck in one perspective. We should be encouraging epistemological flexibility.

Epistemological shock occurs when a solidified structure is shaken by a new insight that undermines the solidified epistemology. If we can help students create flexible epistemologies based on the idea of changeability, maybe the shocks will not occur, but will be part of the expected changeability.

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Learning Content is the Trivial Part of Learning

We really have it all backwards. We are completely focused on having kids and adults learn copious amounts of content as the supreme goal of education. But, such a goal is really rather trivial within the entire scope of learning. This is blasphemy in the politico-corporate controlled institutions of education, testing, and publishing, but I do believe we’ve completely gone astray. We’ve lost sight of the depth and extent of learning. We’ve lost sight of children (and adults) and all of their abilities, capabilities, characteristics, and needs. We no longer value curiosity, creativity, inquiry, play, time to ponder and process, time to make mistakes and try again, time to explore, time to talk and argue, time to negotiate.

I’m not suggesting that content knowledge is useless or irrelevant, but it is superficial knowledge compared to other kinds of learning. And, what we have done is create a world of superficiality, while thinking it’s the most sophisticated knowledge ever. It’s an extraordinary illusion. Or, rather it is an extraordinarily confused view of knowledge and what is worth knowing. A mistake that is strikingly apparent in the move to online courses and online degrees, which really amount to no more than a grand scam.

And, let me say here that while this superficial knowledge may have some importance and interest, when it stands as alone as the total package of knowledge, it is more or less meaningless, disconnected, and irrelevant. The way we package knowledge into textbooks and then test the supposed acquisition of this knowledge is just further testament to the decontextualized and disconnected approach we have developed to our relationship to knowing and knowledge. We think that all of these bits of information mean something, like money in the bank, but unlike money in the bank they are worthless without context, meaning, and relationship. On the other hand, these bits of information are money in the bank for testing companies, publishers, and politicians; and very big money at that.

But, what is misunderstood and misrepresented about learning is the big issue. Learning is dynamic and continual. We are always learning … in all situations, whether we like it or not. Learning is not an accumulation of static information in neatly packaged structures. Learning about any kind of relational information is always changing and morphing as new connections are made and lost. Learning doesn’t just happen in the brain, but is distributed throughout our bodies. And, in fact, there seems to be ample evidence that social learning is distributed among people. Look at a highly coordinated sports team where the thinking and immediacy of learning is taking place within the team and no one individual. In fact, learning seems to be distributed among individuals in coordinated contexts much more often than we ever imagined. Our bodies are comprised of more microbes than human cells. And, on top of that, we have millions of other inhabitants living in most parts of our bodies. This vast ecosystem is not just a bunch of individuals disconnected from one another, but is a community of different species living in an interdependent, coordinated way. And, this whole ecosystem has to learn together in order to survive. We are just beginning to understand how complex these interactions are, but we can get a sense that our learning is not just what some book says, but is about how we respond to, adjust to, react to, and make sense of all kinds of information with which we are confronted all the time. Most of the time, we don’t even know we’re learning or where the learning is taking place, but it is happening.

So, we have this distributed learning happening all of the time as we encounter new situations and new contexts. We walk on a new hiking trail, swim in the ocean, ski, ice skate, go to a new country or any new place, we are renegotiating the ways we do things, re-assessing our assumptions, reworking our relationships and ways of relating. These new renegotiations are new learning.

But, let’s return to what I’ve referred to as superficial textbook learning. What this textbook learning tries to address is the accumulated depth and expanse of learning that has occurred by organisms, ecosystems, and living systems of all kinds. Authors and publishers try to condense this knowledge down to discrete bits of disconnected, decontextualized, static informational strings. The vast depth and extent of interrelationships are never explored and discussed. The dynamic, changing, and uncertain nature of our knowledge is never recognized. The knowledge claims are all very clinical, dry, lifeless. We are not presented with the complexity of interacting systems that affect one another in countless ways, and that within these systems are even more relationships affecting aspects of all of the players in the systems.

In a world where the issues are increasingly intense and increasingly important to our continued survival and well-being, we and especially our children need to be learning in ways that enable us to make sense of what is happening. We need to be able to dissect out the nonsense from the sensible. We need to see the complexities and interrelationships. We have to see the faulty assumptions that we and others are making and then take appropriate actions. We can’t do this by learning lots of disconnected, superficial information. We must be learning at deeper levels of relationship and context.

For a great treatment of a different way of viewing learning, read Nora Bateson’s Symmathesy: A Word in Progress.

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Being in a Learning System

Last evening, I had the pleasure of participating in the International Bateson Institute session at the October Gallery in London with a number of wonderful IBI colleagues and extraordinary guests. Our discussion skirted around the notion of how systems learn. At one point, one of the guests asked, “What is it like to be in a learning system?”

Of course, all living systems are learning systems, but I think what he meant was what is like to be in a learning system that has the characteristics of the kind that supports the learning the IBI team had just observed at a Reggio Emilia inspired nursery school a few days before. This school and schools with similar learning “systems” lack the typical authoritarian relationships between teachers and children. Children control the flow of their own learning within stimulating contexts developed by the teachers. Learning emerges, percolates, and loops back and winds its way through the day. Children follow their curiosities and interests. They share and negotiate knowledge, while developing relationships with one another and among rich conceptual contexts. They seamlessly integrate sensory and disciplinary explorations.

But, back to the question about what is it like to be is such a learning system. As I pondered this question, it struck me that I had experienced such learning systems with my dog. I, of course, took her to dog training classes, which were as much about training the owners as about training the dogs. However, much of her learning was outside of these contexts. And, some of the most powerful learning for both of us occurred on our twice daily excursions into the forest near our home. For her, she lives in a world of relationships. It’s incredibly apparent as you walk through the forest with her. She is completely engaged and paying attention to as many sights, sounds, and smells as she can handle. She watches birds and things I couldn’t see with great intensity. She followed scent trails, and listened intently. And, with all of this she kept an eye on me. She’d run off exploring and following smells, but she’d keep track of where I was. And, sometimes our communication became coordinated without any verbalization needed. Sometimes just a glance and eye contact was all that was needed to coordinate which direction to go or when we needed to stop for a drink or a snack. At one, point we were off trail and climbing up the side of a mountain. We reached a point where the only way to go was both me to crawl under a tree to reach a more open area beyond. Part way under the tree, she became very agitated and looked at me saying, “we have to leave.” My initial impulse was to push on, but I “listened” to her, and backed out, then proceeded back down the mountain. I realized, she probably knew there was a mountain lion nearby.

The only other time she acted with such intensity was after we had moved to another city and went to a new veterinarian for an ear infection. When the new veterinarian entered the exam room, she reacted as if a threatening entity had just entered the room. I controlled her, but dismissed her behavior as a weird aberration, but I shouldn’t have. She was right. The veterinarian was a genuinely nasty person, not only in her demeanor, but also in her approach to sucking as much money out of her clients as possible… $677 in this case. I will listen to my dog from now on. (A week later we went to another veterinarian for a urinary tract infection. When the vet walked in to the exam room, she greeted her as she usually does with a kind of “oh, you’re okay” greeting. It was an interesting contrast… and $77 in comparison to the previous vet.)

But, the point of this learning system between my dog and I during these outings is that they involve mutual learning based on relationships of trust and respect. In the good learning systems of children in schools, the learning systems are based on relationships of trust and respect. But, most schools blow it. They may say they value trust and respect children, but it doesn’t take long for them to undermine the very tenets they say they hold.

The minute they raise their voices or exert authoritarian control, they have undermined trust and respect. The minute they take away what the children value as important, they have undermined trust and respect. And, of course, with most schools, when children enter and are immediately subjugated by the official curriculum, codes of conduct, grading systems, and high stakes tests, we have taken away all trust and respect.

The same holds true for taking a dog and putting her into a cage, followed by harsh treatment with hitting, yelling, etc. The dog has received no respect and trust… and will not respect and trust its owner.

What other learning systems function on trust and respect?

What systems are not based on trust and respect?