SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Those Who Can, Do. Those Who Can’t, Develop Theories.

It must be the dog days of summer - there’s not much in the news. So here’s an excerpt from the perennially-valuable John Mighton (The End of Ignorance).

“In talking to various artists and scientists or reading their biographies, I’ve found that people who have actually made scientific discoveries or created works of art (as opposed to people who theorize about these things) tend to acknowledge the role of practice in their work. Writers and artists, for instance, know from experience how many years of studies and student exercises it can take before they find their voice or style. Ernest Hemingway, who eventually achieved a remarkable economy of style, as a young writer set himself the task of producing one decent sentence per day, and Paul Klee, whose mature paintings are imbued with a profound sense of mystery, spent ten formative years painting tonal exercises that would help him understand colour. Scientists and mathematicians in particular understand how much time they must devote to learning basic skills - as well as everything previously discovered in their area of specialization - before they can do original work. It is no accident that parents and academics who have a background in these fields have led the campaign for more rigorous standards in schools. When so many experts acknowledge the importance of training in the development of talent, and when so much evidence in cognition suggests that experts can be trained, why are schools so reluctant to expose children to anything that looks like rigorous training?” (p. 60)

““Kierkegaard once said that Hegel would have been the most profound thinker who ever lived if, when he had finished creating his monumental system of the world, he had simply admitted to himself that it was all only a beautiful thought-experiment. Anyone who works in education and develops theories about how children learn would be wise to keep this comment in mind.” (pp. 260-261)