Education as Spiral
ROSS, RALPH
Education as Spiral The Process of Education. By Jerome S. Bruner. Harvard. 97 pp. $2.75. Reviewed by Ralph Ross Professor of Humanities, University of Minnesota THIS BOOK CAN revive an almost...
...Perhaps we can look forward to a day when the elementary and secondary schools will not dull the edge of intelligence and dampen the fires of creativity...
...It is also theirs...
...A superb way of learning anything is by teaching it...
...They know that mastery of a subject is essential to teaching it well...
...They understand that information is neither important nor remembered unless it is part of an intellectual structure...
...In the earlier stages, the child's intuition must be developed and relied on, so he can see (however dimly) the principle that underlies the concrete operation...
...Bruner and his colleagues are aware of the staggering amount of work that remains to be done...
...Obviously, much that is asserted here by Bruner needs to be tested, and what is true needs development...
...How can intuition as informed guess and insight be distinguished in the child from irresponsibility...
...But at first, because of the character of the young mind, we must teach concrete operations, not formal statements...
...The group is some 35 men in natural and social science, mathematics and education selected by the National Academy of Sciences, who met in September 1959 to discuss the improvement of scientific education in primary and secondary schools, but went beyond their avowed subject to education as such...
...Still later, complete formalization can take place, based on familarity and practice with the concrete...
...3) that intuition is the chief sign of the thinker and creator...
...and 4) that interest in what is to be learned is a greater incentive to learning than external competition or grades...
...What should be taught are "the great issues, principles, and values that a society deems worthy of the continual concern of its members...
...One can teach fiction at any level, from The Little Red Hen to War and Peace, but can one teach War and Peace at any level...
...Perhaps it is impossible to teach some subjects to some children, but possible to teach them to others...
...Reviewed by Ralph Ross Professor of Humanities, University of Minnesota THIS BOOK CAN revive an almost extinct belief in our educational future...
...Allowing the student to discover a generalization may be more valuable than telling it to him and then proceeding to prove it...
...As it is now, many tests penalize "guessing" and many teachers associate it with ignorance...
...These educators believe in teaching what children want to know, as though that were what children ought to know, but they are little interested in teaching such "skills" as writing an English sentence, which they regard as a vocational study, like plumbing...
...The reaction of educated men to this "philosophy" is often as extreme: It becomes an insistence on drill, external discipline and acquiring information...
...How can creativity and intellectual independence be fostered...
...They may be stated briefly : "Intellectual activity anywhere is the same, whether at the frontier of knowledge or in a third-grade classroom...
...What social and institutional conditions create first-rate teachers...
...With this as goal, he develops four basic themes: 1) that intellectual and esthetic structure should be central to education...
...Any subject can be taught in some honest way to any child at any stage...
...he simply hasn't enough experience...
...The a priori mind often develops young...
...He also includes helping every student to attain his best...
...They have at least asked many of the right questions and pointed a way to get some answers...
...Professor Bruner was chairman of the conference, and this book is his report...
...The young genius is often curbed and at last robbed of independence and vigor...
...Out of all this comes the suggestion of a "spiral curriculum...
...Jerome Bruner speaks for a group of scholars who take education seriously and are intelligent about it...
...As the student matures, the same matters can be introduced again (the spiral) at a higher level and considered more abstractly...
...Bruner's group starts, in a way, afresh, and uses what is known about learning and child development...
...Can anything really be taught anybody at some level...
...2) that the basic ideas and themes in science and art "are as simple as they are powerful...
...But he can't be much of an historian or a novelist...
...Since these, like anything else, can be taught at any stage of development, we should start with them...
...Were the members of the conference misled by their theoretical interests into thinking that empirical subjects can be taught as early as theoretical ones...
...Under what conditions are internal rewards more powerful than external rewards...
...Many professional educators are, unfortunately, more concerned with "life adjustment" in the schools than with knowledge, as though students had no families, friends or churches...
...Bruner accepts the cultivation of excellence as perhaps the single most general educational objective, but he does not limit it to the cultivation of the most excellent...
...It is dangerous to make a child's whole career depend on success in competitive examinations...
...And so on and on...
...And they see that while analysis and rigor are the basis of education, intuition and creativity are its crown...
...They realize the importance of "learning to learn...
...At 16, one may be a fine mathematician or musician, a Pascal or a Mozart...
...One wonders whether the application of Bruner's principles to the humanities is as straightforward as he makes it seem...
...The corollaries and consequences of these propositions take up most of the book...
Vol. 43 • December 1960 • No. 50
