What happens when you learn by doing

I've started a new group on the LinkedIn networking site called "Hands-on Learning." and we are already having interesting discussions and have 13 members already. If you want to join in, email me and ask for an invitation to connect at LinkedIn.

The following is from yesterday's discussion:

EB: "I'm currently reading Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner (Multiple Intelligences researcher from Harvard). As a building principal for over 1000 students, I'm VERY concerned about making sure that we are preparing students for the very uncertain future ahead of them. He has identified five things that he believes will be crucial to future career success (discipline, synthesizing, creating, respect, and ethics). I have been surveying other thinkers on this topic too. Arthur Costa (Learning and Leading With Habits of Mind) has identified 16 characteristics of success. What aspects of the mind/body do you believe are crucial?"

DS: Academics like to take things apart, so we have a mind/body, 9 different kinds of intelligence and 16 characteristics of success, so it all appears like a replicable recipe that can be tested, proved and measured. I know that may sound sarcastic, but I mean no disrespect. I have the greatest respect for Howard Gardner and know that Costa is probably onto something. But you ask a very important question that I could spend days in contemplation and attempted response.

I have come to the conclusion that the real challenge is to constantly lure students into engagement with ever expanding sense of self. So we start with the mind/body.

There are two directions for the expansion of self. The first is vertical in which the student becomes aware of and challenged to reach things like skill and increased understanding. The other is the part that schools seldom teach, lateral sense of self, in which each student discovers that the assumed boundaries of personal mind/body are illusion. In essence each of us is reflection of greater mind/body of culture, society, species, life, and planetary consciousness that demands response.

Educational Sloyd was a deliberate attempt to extend Froebel's theories of "self-activity" into the upper grades. The belief was that what you learned required balance in action to express and reflect heightened awareness and understanding. Schools have become passive places when they need to be active and expressive. So in order to integrate mind/body, you can see that you need to teach the mind while the body expresses learning. It is a two way street. You know there are two meanings of the root word of educate. One is to teach in the common sense, and the other is to draw forth. We too often do the former without the latter.

The interesting thing about the wood shop is that all Howard Gardner's intelligences are expressed in its activities... Even music, which is what the trained ear hears when children are equipped with hammers and saws.

This may be a little deep for a discussion that began, How do I get my kids involved in the woodshop. But I have hopes that the new group will become a place for exchange of ideas and advocacy for hands-on learning.