the need to do real things.

My essay in the Front Porch Republic will be published in mid January, so in the meantime I'm reviewing material for a second essay that I hope will find a home in another publication.

It is interesting how deep the resources are that promote hands-on learning over the lecture style teaching that we normally subject students to. It is shameful what we put students through in school. That such boredom is acceptable illustrates how little we value human culture and our kids and the development of their minds.  Lecture based learning is proven to be strikingly ineffective, and yet, in schools teachers and administrations persist for they are given little opportunity to  make the changes that are most necessary.

This snippet from an article by Korwin and Jones tells a great deal:

Jerome Bruner, a supporter of varied learning experiences, stated that "...increasing the manipulability of a body of knowledge" creates both a physical and mental optimum learning structure and con-tended that physical operations create feed-back of learning that allow children to seeit happen. 

 Lipson and Fischer sustained this reasoning, stating "Experiences without words are difficult to integrate, describe, and retrieve. Yet, words without experience tend to have limited meaning. The two reinforce each other and are defined by one another". 

Martinez, further explains this in saying that a student who is introduced to a concept such as walnutwood will grasp a different meaning than a student who actually uses walnut and experiences its properties firsthand.

https://ideas.time.com/2012/10/02/why-lectures-are-ineffective/

It was proposed that we actually have four different memories involved in learning:  auditory, visual, tactile, and body motor functions. This implies that information that more fully utilizing all four memories would be stronger and more easily retrieved. Hence, the need for students to do real things.

Make, fix and create... assist others in learning lifewise.