Trails to the Past

23 May 2013 at 9:11 pm (Essays)
Tags: ,

Trails to the Past

Looking at the Ground

One day as my daughter and I sat down in Ponduru, we found in our hands a piece of the ground. It was coming off like puzzle pieces, revealing a layer of moist earth underneath. Someone had laboured to spread this layer on the ground outside their home. Though we knew this, it was so easy pick off, and so hard to resist doing so. What lay beneath? Why had the two layers dried differently? What were they made of and why?

A few neighbours gathered, perhaps amused by our curiosity. They had laid this ground, or ground just like it, adjacent to it. On ground like this they had learned to walk. They thought no more about it than second-generation city-dwellers like ourselves think about the tiles in our house.

Layers of Mud1But here we were, observing the different properties of the layers of ground. The upper layer was made of cow dung, and we could still see some grass in it. “The cow did not chew properly,” my daughter remarked. Why had they spread the cow dung in front of their home? Fertilizer? Good luck? “Antiseptic,” we heard someone say. How would we know? Could we test these three properties?

Fertilizer, being the most widely known use of cow dung, was also the easiest for us to test, having had some experience with it in our own garden. Last year we collected dung from a local cowherd to make gobbamalu for Sankranti. Afterwards we used these in our garden and saw a marked difference in the growth and flowering of the plants, especially the bougainvillea. We could easily repeat this and even do a controlled experiment using dung in one part of the garden but not the other. How to design a test for good luck? Or antiseptic? How would these tests, and our interpretations of the results, differ?

Feeling the pieces of ground, we saw how the top layer had dried, cracked and curled up at the edges, almost inviting us to pick it up and examine it like a puzzle piece – or like countries and continents. We could make pieces drift apart or come together, as if the moist earth below was the ocean.

Lifting one layer of dirt had sent us far back in time.

What Happened Here?

Sometimes we play a little game. Let’s call it “The History Game.” At home or outside, we look around and ask, what does what we see tell us about what happened here in the last few hours? Or the past few days? What is our evidence for saying so? How reliable is this evidence? Could someone conclude something different from the same evidence? What might possibly make us doubt this evidence? What alternate explanations are there?

We once asked these questions about a round pile of leaves, a few inches high. It was just a few feet outside of our gate. My daughter said, “this pile of leaves has been here for weeks. I have seen it here many times before.” Pointing out the different kinds of leaves, she added, “the leaves have come from near and far trees, because see this kind of leaf did not come from any of these trees.” So we talked about how they might have arrived – by the wind? or did someone sweep them? How long would such a neatly swept pile stay that way? How often do leaves fall? Now did we still think that the same pile of leaves had been there for weeks?

My daughter asked, “Why would anyone want to know the history of a pile of leaves?”

The Lie of the Land

“As it happens,” I warmed to my story, “several years ago, an important question was answered by asking just such questions about a pile of junk in a particular village in the Narmada Valley.” People living in the valley were told by the government that their village was not in the submergence zone of the planned Sardar Sarovar Project, and therefore they were not eligible for rehabilitation. People did not believe this, but who would believe them? It was their word against government records. The indigenous people were unlettered, and spoke Pavri on one side of the river, and Bhilali on the other. Together, they had weathered rains, floods and had observed the changes in the valley as each inch of the dam came up. They had lived there for generations, worked the land with their own hands and honoured the river as their mother. They knew it would rise more than the level forecasted by Central Water Commission. To challenge the government engineers however, they would need to prove it.

It turned out the location of a particular collection of debris yielded evidence of the level to which the Narmada river had risen during the floods of 1970. It matched levels indicated by people living on the other side of the river. With that piece of data, the people living in the Narmada Valley challenged the government survey records of their villages, that had erroneously resulted in a lower flood level calculation. Accurate land records were crucial in the people’s struggle over land rights and rehabilitationi. To plan for the future it was vital to know the past.

* * * * *

A Critical Discipline

 …. history is a critical discipline, a process of enquiry, a way of knowing about the past, rather than just a collection of facts.

These bold words on the study of history come from the Central Board of Secondary Educationii. But how many students experience history this way, whether in school or out? Are teachers and students encouraged to criticize and enquire? What if the critical enquiry led us to question the very statements presented as “facts” in our history books? Why these facts and not others? Are these facts even facts? What if they are lies?

What if a historian did for Indian History what James Loewen did for American History?  He not only identified lies told and retold in history books but also in museums and monuments across the United States. His two books, Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America have helped teachers and students seeking to bring out other stories, to challenge the heroic national narrative, and recognize the aspirations of people working against the grain of that narrative, or even crushed in the process. Next door, journalist Raza Rumi has written critically about the textbooks of Pakistan.

Indian history textbooks have undergone an overhaul since I last taught from one twenty years ago, when I found myself explaining and apologizing to students for inaccurate, inconsistent, and injurious statements in every chapter. Today’s NCERT History textbook offers a refreshing approach to the study of history. The book itself acknowledges the limitations in our knowledge invites the reader to question sources of information and to interpret from diverse perspectives.

And yet.

Are students today asking questions in the class? Or are they waiting for the “Question Answer” sheet to be dictated so that they can prepare for the exam? Can you guess whether the following statements come form a primary or secondary, private or government, elite or international school?

“The only questions I heard asked during my classes were about whether the material being covered that day would be on the examiii.”

“[Students tend to] focus on recalling the content of the varied materials they read rather than analyzing them as historical evidenceiv.”

The first comes from Thane Richard, a student of St Stephens College, University of Delhi and the second from Victoria Brown, professor of history at Grinnell College in Iowa.

To encourage students to overcome this tendency, Victoria Brown has written a history textbook Going to the Source, that would help students practice history, to think like historians rather than simply read the works of other historians. The Central Board of Secondary Education expresses a similar vision. Here is the introduction to the history syllabus:

The syllabus would help them understand the process through which historians write history, by choosing and assembling different types of evidence, and by reading their sources critically.  They will appreciate how historians follow the trails that lead to the past, and how historical knowledge developsv.

Follow the Trails

Must this approach to history wait until the secondary school or college level?

Reading sources critically involves just the sorts of skills that children exhibit from the time they become verbal. Why? How do you know? Who said? But … What if? Answering these questions requires us to go backwards in time – to explain what came before, and what that is related to this. Children are actually begging for history and answering such questions is our first opportunity to follow the trails that lead to the past.

A persistent “why?” or a sharp “how do you know?” from an upstart toddler makes many an adult cringe. Yet it is this enquiring spirit that blazes the trails to the past by making us remember explanations for procedures we have long taken for granted. Will they withstand the questioning? Or will they have to be changed? What is history for if not for social change – beginning at home. When we see that potential at home, we gain courage to practice this in the world, to question authority and believe and to have the courage to search for the answers, even as each answer leads to a further question.

It is easy to blame history books and history classes for the dullness of history. But would class be dull if students could talk back? If students could say what came to their minds, without fear of looking dumb or distracting from the lesson? Many teachers recognize the value of the student’s skepticism and offbeat questions but shush them out of pressure to complete the syllabus, even if that very syllabus calls for the encouragement of critical questions?

In fact, it is the refusal to entertain irreverent questions from young children that dullens the sharp inquiring spirit which they express almost as soon as they learn to talk. The National Curriculum Framework textbooks call for that inquiring spirit – in history as well as in science. NCERT Director Krishna Kumar says, “ The books are based on the recognition that the children construct knowledge with the help of experience and activities. In every area, from science and maths to social science and language children must be given a space to reflect, ask questions, wonder, and probe sources of knowledge outside the textbookvi.”

I have witnessed the potential of freedom from the expectation of giving the right answer. We don’t even realize how much this colors our response to the content of textbooks until we see someone who has not yet absorbed this expectation. A child who is not yet used to the idea that what she is supposed to do in response to a question appearing in a textbook is to “get the right answer” or even answer the given question, may offer a whimsical answer, ask an entirely different question, or find fault with the given question, going off on detours from which s/he may or may not return, sooner or later, to the route mapped in the syllabus. What happens when a child does this? Do we encourage them, listen to them, follow their train of thought? Or do we steer back to the syllabus, and to the (right) answer and on to the next question?

If we do the latter, we will be getting colder and colder on the trails to the past.

i Ravi Kuchimanchi, who helped the villagers expose errors in the government survey records, explains this in “The Height of Inaccuracy,” published in The Hindu, June 17, 2001.

http://www.hindu.com/2001/06/17/stories/13170612.htm

ii Annexure K of the History Syllabus issued by the Central Board of Secondary Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development

http://cbseacademic.in/web_material/Circulars/2012/47_ClassXII/K_History_XII..pdf

iv Victoria Bissell Brown and Timothy J. Shannon, Going to the Source:  The Bedford Reader in American History.  Boston:  St. Martin’s Press, 2004.

vCBSE History Syllabus.

vi“Teaching profession is in a deep crisis.” Interview with Krishna Kumar by Vasantha Surya, Frontline March 1-14 2008  http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2505/stories/20080314250509200.htm

2 Comments

Is there a curriculum in this house?

6 April 2013 at 11:25 am (Questions)
Tags:

Is there a curriculum in this house?
Kanti wakes up and starts telling the story of her dream to her mother, Shanti.  The story involves some balls rolling down some hills or steps or slides – she can’t really tell and in the dream they sort of morphed one into another.  She closes her eyes again for some time.  Then she jumps up to find some balls and starts rolling them down the steps and then creates a slanted surface with some pillows and rolls the balls down that.  She folds her sheets, lays them over the pillows and rolls blankets down that too.  Over breakfast their conversation goes to bicycles, how you can tell the slope of a road by riding your bike (more easily than you can by walking), how you can gain momentum to continue riding uphill without pedalling, and how long that will last.  She also tells her father, Ganti, what her friend told her the other day when they rode bicycles together.  The conversation reminds her of another friend and she goes to skype with that friend.  On skype they play a guessing game for a while and then decide to login to Khan Academy together to show each other their programs.
At lunch she has pulusu and rice in a steel plate and when she spins the plate she observes the pulusu spin to the edge of the plate while the rice and vegetable pieces remain in the middle.  Then she spins faster and sees the motion of the vegetable pieces and rice as well.  She puts the rice and veggies in different parts of the plate and observes the motion when she spins the plate.
She reads a book and later enacts some of the scenes of the book using some beads (pretending they are the characters).  Afterwards she makes some things out of clay and pretends that she is running a shop.  She makes some clay money as well.  She keeps accounts, tracks expenses and profits as well.  Some objects cost more because they use a lot of clay, some because they require more skill.  Some are made of clay plus other things like toothpicks or cardboard pieces.
In the bathroom she watches the water dripping from the tap into a mug and overflowing into a bucket and observes the ripples as they fall.  Because the mug is tilted the ripples are not circular but in an oval shape.  She recognizes the focal points.  She observes the periodic nature of the overflow from the mug to the bucket.
“Kanti!” her friends calling at the window shake her from her thoughts.   “Coming!”  she shouts back in reply.   She quickly finishes her bath and gets ready to go out to play.  Outside she and her friends decide what game(s) to play using an elaborate decision making process.  Then they play the various games until every one has to go home.
Ganti asks her if she wants to go to the store.  She says, “can we take the long cut?”  ”Okay,” he says as they go out.  Rather than walk on the main road, she walks across the open lot behind their neighbourhood, around some drainage pipes that she can climb, and through a cluster of houses that have come up near a construction site.  She plays with some dogs along the way.  On the way back it starts raining and she knows where on the open lot the puddles would start to form and goes there to splash and also to look for earthworms.  She can not find any worms and so plans to come back the next day.
When she gets back home her shoes and clothes are thoroughly muddy and she stops first at the bathroom to change and dry off.  She asks her dad not to scrape the mud from her shoes but to leave them to dry like that so that she can walk with heavy shoes and then hammer the dried mud off with a rock, as she had done once before.
She and her mom start making rolls. She plays with the dough for a long time, which is useful because it needs to be kneaded.  Otherwise it will not rise.  ”Why?”  she asks.  She explains that kneading the dough combines different proteins to make gluten which is more stretchy.   They place the dough in a bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave it to rise.  After dinner they punch down the dough and form it into rolls.  These will now rise again for an hour and then bake for half an hour.  But now they are so tired that no one wants to stay up and bake them after an hour much less eat them when they are done.  They decide to make them the next morning – but they don’t want the rolls to use up all their rising capacity overnight so they put the entire tray of rolls in the fridge.
Her dad tells her a story of Akbar and Birbal.  She interrupts frequently, leading to a number of tangential conversations, but always coming back to the story, until they fall asleep.
In the course of the day a variety of questions have come up – about fluid flow, forces, shopkeeping / economics, properties of materials, biochemical reactions, emporers, worms, and so on.   These questions will remain and help to sort out other experiences and data that she comes across, and in turn she will have further questions.   In fact Shanti is already prepared for the next time she and Kanti will talk about gluten as she has looked up some information about how it gets activated in the kneading process and is ready to show its molecular structure using paper clips.  Is this conversation about gluten child-led?  Adult-led?  Led by the desire for bread?  Kanti plans to go back to the ground the next day to search for earthworms.  Had she not gone the previous day with Ganti, she might not have made this plan.  If she lived in a house where getting muddy was frowned upon, it would be less likely to happen.  Or more likely – depending on how risk-averse (or frown-averse) Kanti was and other factors.
This path, wondering, pondering, meandering as it may be, comes from within.  Suggestions, expectations, requirements and other stimuli come from the outside world but the way one receives and responds to them comes from within.  Though the specific things Kanti says and does cannot be predicted in advance, they are influenced by whatever she and those around her have said and done before.  Underlying it all is an intricate fabric.

Is there a curriculum in this house?

I ask this question with an echo.  An echo that, like every echo, echoes another.

This echoes Stanley Fish:  ”Is there a text in this class?”

“Is there a text in this class?” is a question posed by a student to a teacher who then reported this question to Stanley Fish, who then shared the story in the opening paragraph of his essay titled, “Is there a Text in this Class?”  It is published in a book of essays, under the title, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Harvard, 1980).

You can read the article online here or download a copy of it from teacherweb.

“Is there a text in this class?”

Here is how Stanley Fish encountered and in turn posed this question:

On the first day of the new semester a colleague at Johns Hopkins University was approached by a student who, as it turned out, had just taken a course from me.  She put to him what I think you would agree is a perfectly straightforward question:  ”Is there a text in this class?”  Responding with a confidence so perfect that he was unaware of it (although in telling the story, he refers to this moment as ” walking into the trap”), my colleague said, “Yes; it’s the Norton Anthology of Literature,” whereupon the trap (set not by the student but by the infinite capacity of language for being appropriated) was sprung:  ”No, no,”  she sad, “I mean in this class do we believe in poems and things, or is it just us?”

The question “is it just us?” refers to the idea that the reader is part of the text, and that the meaning of the text comes from the experience of reading, and is not a fixed and finished product of writing.
But is there such a thing as “just us?”  Are we not in turn formed by our interactions with everything around us, including the text before us?  Rather than conclude that a text has no meaning, Fish proposes that we find that meaning in the interplay between reader and text.

 ”Meaning is an event, something that happens, not on the page, where we are accustomed to look for it, but in the interaction between the flow of print and the actively mediating consciousness of a reader.”

- Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin:  The Reader in Paradise Lost
And so it is for curriculum.
Curriculum is determined not by the external sources (where we are accustomed to look for it) but by the interaction between the flow of external sources and the actively mediating consciousness of the living learner.

Curriculum is not just that thing that schools or traditional homeschoolers use.  Curriculum is a path of thought inherent to everyone who thinks.  Like a river charts a course by flowing, and explorers blaze trails by walking, we pursue ideas by thinking, in communication with the sea of ideas that surrounds us.

What it would it be not to follow a curriculum?
To follow whim?
What is whim?  Does it come from nothing?  What is nothing?  Is there (ever) nothing?  Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ”Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Is there such a thing as “no path?”
Was Kanti walking where there is no path when she rejected the main road in favour of the open lot and through the neighbourhood?  Let us look at the factors that influenced her decision:
  • open lot route was interesting – pipes to climb, puddles to splash,etc
  • road was same old route, hence boring
These are just facts about the two routes.  These alone might not determine her preference each time.  What influenced her decision that particular day?
  • had time to take the “long cut”
  • had taken it before and hence knew about it
  • wanted to feel the mud on her shoes
  • dogs
  • vehicle traffic on the main road
  • position of sun, which way the wind blew
  • other factors we don’t know
Her path was as much influenced by the existence of the main road, which she found unattractive, perhaps because it was too neat, orderly, paved and fixed, as by any particular feature of the open lot and winding alley paths.
Though the path may not be there on the ground, the path is there in the mind, and that directs one’s footsteps on the ground.  Every time we take a step, there is something behind our step, leading us to take this step and not some other step.  And one step leads to another.
Writing in Mud

Leave a Comment

Khandala and the Yule-tide Spirit

30 March 2013 at 2:27 am (Uncategorized)

Article sent to Swashikshan, March 2013.

Khandala and the Yule-tide Spirit

"Does one desire the yule-tide spirit, sir?"
"Certainly one does. I am all for it."
- P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves

We were looking forward to the India Homeschoolers’ Conference from even before it was proposed, wishing and hoping that there could be a time and place for all of us to be together for days. I signed up to help with Activities Planning and my daughter helped me help. Together we pored over spreadsheets trying to put all the activities that various people proposed into the time slots, without crowding the schedule too much nor leaving anyone out. And not to forget free time!

At last the day came. When we arrived our daughter surprised herself by climbing up and hanging down from the rope ladders tied to the beams of the roof over the porch area. Later Ravi told me that she had told him, "This place has the yule-tide spirit. It makes me spring and jump." As we strolled around we saw all of the lovely artwork that people had already made in the dazzling Art Corner set up in an open area overlooking the hills. Since coming back from the conference I have seen the many photos that different people took of the Art Room but none captures its busy, bustling brilliance. Even if you threw paint on a canvas (and believe me we did!) it became something you would want to put up and look at. Going strong throughout the conference, the Art Room continued to churn out dozens of new objets d’art every few hours.

Soon it was time to gather in the main hall, get an introduction to the sessions for the morning and disperse accordingly. I led a little theatre workshop, which turned out quite fun – even though we had a group ranging from age 5-15, meeting for the first time, and speaking many different languages. For our first exercise, we introduced ourselves in a language other than our first language. We went on from there and soon the hour was up and we proceeded to the Mela. Kids and grownups had all kinds of stuff spread out and we just went from stall to stall trying things out, looking, tasting, wearing the various products on display. Looking back I think we should have had this on all three days, especially so that the kids who had stalls would have some more time to look at other stalls.

Over the three days, we had various planned and unplanned discussions about learning, playing, society, family bonding and even farming. Every night we gathered outside for song and dance or both. As well as storytelling, puppet show and other cultural sharing. Of course we sang "Ati Kya Khandala," led by an actual Bollywood actor. Amidst it all there was a scavenger hunt, some outdoor sports and games, and even a visit to Tungarli for a refreshing swim and short hike. Many kids found treasures, in the form of shiny rocks that were scattered around the rocky path from the pond back to the woods leading up the hill.

Apart from discussions related to homeschooling and parent, child and family relations, we also had opportunities to play with dough, make movies, learn to knit, make Arvind Gupta "Toys from Trash" and even explore particle physics. Near Hema’s amazing Art corner, (another) Hema and Ranu set up a handwork station and Sejal, Megh & Ashna sat and made / demonstrated Arvind Gupta Toys for a few hours each day. On Sunday morning, with a small group of kids and a handful of parents, Ravi eased into the topic of Particles in our Universe. Questions went all over the place and it was fun to see how he brought all of them into the flow of the talk. Rather than wow the children with the vastness of the universe or the infinitesimal smallness of the particles, Ravi lingered on the question of how do you know? He asked the children to suggest explanations for the movement of the curtains in the room. To the window flocked the children, checking for causes of this motion. Ravi encouraged them to come up with any number of explanations, as well as ways to test these. Though few children attended, many interesting questions came up, and continued even after the session.

One of the central spaces at the Villa was a large porch on which we had hung up a couple of swings and this proved to be the most popular place for kids and adults alike. Kids used to keep swinging late into the night. Surrounding the area were long benches and parents would gather around and chat while their kids played late into the night.

Monday morning came and it was hard to say goodbye to this rich environment swarming with interesting people and so much open space to roam, hide, seek and breathe.

While we are all waiting for the next conference, we can look at the reports and recordings from different sessions that are gradually coming out. I have started writing about the session on Attachment Parenting and Continuum Learning. Of course one never knows what thread from the conference will get picked up where – on the last day someone happened to ask me about the menstrual cup and when I mentioned that momentary conversation on a note I wrote in India Homeschoolers (After the conference), I got more correspondence about that than anything else. Often we feel too shy to talk about certain things … staying together for a few days helped bring about a sense of confidence, empowering us to share and ask questions we have no one else to ask. And to spring and jump.

Leave a Comment

Attachment Parenting and Continuum Learning

7 March 2013 at 3:13 am (Essays)
Tags: , , , ,

Attachment Parenting and Continuum Learning

If play-school and pre-school prepare a child for school, how does a parent prepare a toddler or young child for a lifetime of learning?

As homeschoolers, we say that homeschooling begins around the time of school age.  So when someone says they are homeschooling their 3-5 year old we gently suggest that they are planning to homeschool but that at this age there is really no schooling or homeschooling to be done.

Meanwhile we are getting to hear of more and more people who insist upon saying that they are homeschooling their 1-2 year old, or even their children whom they are still expecting.  Each and every time we consistently reply that “you are not yet homeschooling” or sometimes even that “you cannot homeschool” someone so young, our interlocutor smiles a brief, knowing smile and continues to list their homeschooling goals and objectives.  Such as:

I don’t want her to get caught up in the rat race.
I don’t want to pressure him.
I don’t like competition.

I want her to be creative!
I want him to love learning!
I want to encourage curiosity!
I want them to express themselves!
I want them to think independently!

What can parents of young children and babies do to help achieve these goals and objectives?There are a dizzying array of parenting books, experts, training classes and most of them will promise all of the above and more.  Try to think for a moment of the time before there were any parenting books, and even before there were books at all.  How did parents and children interact in those times?  Can we learn anything from their practices?

Jean Liedloff lived for several years among the Yequana, who are an indigenous people in Venezuela.  She did not go there with the intention of studying the people or their parenting, but she was drawn to observe the way they were with their children.  She felt that in fact there was a great deal that we could learn from their way of life, especially the lives of their infants and the relationships among adults and children in the family and community.

In the few weeks I stayed among indigenous people in the Narmada Valley, I noticed, mostly in passing, some differences in the way parents related to children.   Once when I was there during the rains, when the Narmada river was rising and flooding people’s homes to waist-level, I observed the behaviour of the people, children and adults alike, efficiently organizing means of carrying their household items to higher ground while also taking part in the protest against the dam which was the cause of their submergence.   Specifically I saw that they did not not order their children, whether in ordinary times or in a time of crisis.  Later I could see the relationship of this to other aspects of their society, especially while reading Jean Liedloff’s observations of the Yequana people.

While modern life has changed very rapidly in the past few centuries, birth and infancy are governed by the same expectations as they have been for millennia.   What has changed today is that we are not necessarily meeting those expectations, often misled into ignoring or rejecting our natural instincts and those of our children.   This, according to Jean Liedloff results in a break in the continuum.   The book she wrote to explain this is called The Continuum Concept.

This book is available in English and Hindi on Arvind Gupta’s website: The Continuum Concept
[Note - this site is currently down  but I am hoping it will return soon.]

The Hindi translation of The Continuum Concept, सातत्य अवधारणा is available on the Banyan Tree website.

Liedloff believed that the Yequana people were the happiest people she had ever seen and explained this happiness and peace as an honouring of the continuum - the continuum of society, the continuum of work and play, the continuum between the world of adults and the world of children.  This continuum guides us emotionally, physically, and intellectually whether we are growing up in the jungle or in Mumbai.

One of the key practices that she described was the practice of carrying babies unreservedly.  In infancy the baby would be in-arms as the default position.  Rather than picking a baby up when needed, one would put the baby down when needed, and carry him or her at all other times.   A simple piece of cloth would make it possible to carry hands-free and thus allow the baby not only to be carried but also integrated into the world of those who carried him or her.  This makes available interesting sights, sounds, smells and movements, much as the baby enjoyed while in the womb,  but with greater opportunity to listen, observe, interpret and eventually get involved in whatever is going on in the surroundings.  Rather than being in a cradle or stroller and looking for ways to get carried, the infant in-arms can turn his or her attention to diverse interests.  At the same time, baby expends little energy in communicating his need to eat, sleep or relieve himself because a squirm, a stiffening, a tired look is picked up and responded to without having to turn into a full blown cry for help.

So impressed with the practice of continuous carrying was California based pediatrician Dr William Sears that he introduced the baby sling to all new parents who came to him and included a full chapter on the sling in The Baby Book, his popular manual for parents.   In its first edition, The Baby Book was called, Creative Parenting: How to use the new Continuum Concept to Raise Children Successfully from Birth.

He outlined a basic set of practices that flowed from the continuum concept and called this style of parenting by the name Attachment Parenting.

     The Baby Book and many other resources will describe the benefits of these practices for the health and happiness of the baby, mother, family and indeed, the community.   They include bonding at birth, breastfeeding, babywearing, and sleeping close to baby.  He also asks parents to “believe” in the baby’s communications and to “beware” of baby trainers who would counsel parents to ignore crying or other efforts baby makes to be heard, held, nursed, or otherwise attended.  Although Dr. Sears only hints at it, I would also include diaper-free hygiene, also known as elimination communication, as a practice that encourages parents to listen and babies to communicate and be heard.

These practices also have a direct relationship to learning because they are based on a fundamental principle of trust in the motherbaby who become mother and baby. Each of these practices help the baby’s parents and other associates (as Jean Liedloff endearingly calls the family and community that together brings up a child) to learn to listen and thus model the skill of listening, for the baby to learn in turn.

[to be continued]

1 Comment

Never Enough Time

13 February 2013 at 12:00 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags:

In my younger and more flippant days, I liked to call my chosen approach to homeschooling, "do nothing" after Fukuoka’s method of farming.

Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka practices what he calls the "no-plowing, no-fertilizing, no-weeding, no-pesticides, do-nothing method of natural farming." To him it is ego-centric to think that people grow crops. Ultimately it is nature that grows crops.

– from Green University

Calvin: There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.

Do you have enough time to do nothing?
from Bill Watterson, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, p213

1 Comment

Question Answers

3 February 2013 at 11:59 am (Questions)
Tags:

Question Answers

Walking around the neighbourhood, I heard a boy and girl talking. Both were in 4th standard, one in a government school and one in a private school.

"Everything they are teaching me in school … I have already learned beyond," the boy commented.

My ears perked up. I caught up with them and casually inserted myself in their conversation. "How did you learn it already?" I inquired.

"Reading!" he said.

"Reading what?" I asked.

He named Magic Tree House, and some other titles.

He continued, "All our teachers have changed this term. Our new teacher for social studies is so slow. We have finished only 4 lessons. There are 8 in all."

The girl had a similar story with certain subjects in her school that were progressing too slowly for her liking as well. Both of these kids are bright and studious, with parents very much involved in their education.

"But you can always read ahead if you want," I countered.

"No but the question answers!" they both said at once.

"Question answers?" I asked, puzzled.

The long and short of it is that for each chapter or lesson in a given subject, the teacher assigns some questions. Apparently, they also give out the answers. Even if the kids read ahead to the later lessons, in order to prepare for the exam, they must wait for the "Question Answers."

From where do the teachers get these answers? I asked

"She will look at last year’s papers, from someone who wrote a good answer and tell us all to write that. For example, if the question is, ‘what happened to the boy?’ We will have to write ‘the boy fractured his leg.’" A sing-song tone automatically came into their voice when they recited the answer.

"What if you write something else that happened to the boy?" I asked "Or might have happened?" I wondered – something I could well imagine my daughter writing.

"No we have to write the answer they give us."

So their answers would all be the same? Word for word? Or could they write it in their own words?

"Only for some answers we can write in our own words. The rest of them have to be in the same words." they replied.

Isn’t this what those students at Harvard got sacked for? "[O]n final-exam questions, some students supplied identical answers …" (The Hindu, 2 February 2013)

However what is different here is that writing identical answers on the exam is not considered cheating, it is in fact what the students are instructed to do. The better they can do it, the higher will be their grade and thus the higher the ranking of the school itself. Who benefits from this?

These children in my neighbourhood have opportunities to learn outside of school. The flaws of the school may have frustrated them at times but on the whole they did not seem to mind and even found them amusing. They had learned how to work the system, much as I had when I was a student. Though no teacher ever dictated word-for-word answers, we often had multiple choice questions, which still amounted to identical answers expected from all students.

We learned how to work the system and we learned to be happy about that. We learned not to ask for more and to save our curiosity till after school. What we did not have was a place to be curious together and in the open, or even know that we were not alone. We knew about what we did from 7:30 – 2:30, and we knew about all the homework we did afterwards … these were all the things we had in common. What in retrospect seems obvious now, is that we must have all indulged in wandering thoughts. After class and even during class …

In school, we had to answer questions. To question answers we slipped into our own worlds of beckoning possibilities, where nothing was dumb or embarrassing or took up valuable time of other students or risked offending authorities. There normal force, set, commutative property – these had to answer to us. What on earth are you and if you are so obvious why are you in our textbook? Clearly there is more than meets the eye … only no one would tell us about it or even admit it - it is so easy, the impatient silence seemed to insist whenever I even began to raise a doubt about these concepts in the classroom, get on with it!

Leave a Comment

Slow Learning

13 November 2012 at 5:02 am (Observations)
Tags: , , , , ,

We often ask, what is learning?  Now let us ask, what is slow learning?

1. Slow

In Space and Time in Classical Mechanics, Einstein asks to imagine that he has dropped a stone while in a moving train.  As it happens he asks us to imagine that he has dropped it outside the train, from the window, as the train moved.

Inside a moving train, if we drop a stone we will see it fall down in a straight, vertical line.  If we are inside the moving train but drop the stone outside the train, we will see the same thing.  To the falling stone, once released from his hand, it makes no difference whether it is inside or outside the train.

An observer outside the train, on the platform, (or on the embankment, as in Einstein’s tale), will see the stone come down in a parabolic path.  As if it were not merely dropped but thrown.  To those inside the train, moving forward at the same rate as the stone itself moves forward, the forward motion of the stone is invisible.  We might say it is non-existent or cancelled out, like the motion of the earth – which we do not count we are sitting still.  Or when we drop a stone while sitting still.

Now the question Einstein asks us is:  What did the stone do?   Did it fall in a straight line or along a curve?

As Einstein goes on to explain in the rest of the book, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, questions of speed, distance and time become relative to the frame of reference.

Learning also takes many paths, perhaps all paths, as the quantum physicists say of particles.  Is one path longer than another?  Faster?

What parent or teacher is not familiar with this experience – in a conversation with a child, a flurry of ifs and buts arise, so that a simple point that that you thought you would explain in five minutes gets deferred for hours or days.  Meanwhile as you follow the tangents, further questions arise.  Is your original question forgotten?  No, it is still out there, drawing you towards it via this loopy, squiggly path.  Schools run like factories may not allow for such digression and yet the curiosity of children will keep these questions alive, patiently or impatiently awaiting their turn on the front burner.

If it takes two days to communicate a point that you thought would take five minutes, do you feel that time has been lost?  What about teaching complex concepts and skills – what if your child learns something months or years after the expected date?

Is this child slow?  Is s/he falling behind?  Will it be difficult to catch up later?  Will it hurt if I push her or him?  At what point should I intervene?

Many people have written about these questions with reasonable points supporting a spectrum of approaches.  Some offer suggestions to encourage progress, indicators for intervention when there is no progress, or reassurance that it will happen in its own time.

Some will say, “they will learn it when they learn it.”  Some will say, “they will learn it when they need it.”

But what is it?  Do we know?

Maybe we do.  Or maybe we only think we know.

Is my understanding, Wittgenstein asked, blindness to my misunderstanding?

2.  Learning

Let me tell a story about our daughter and the (suddenly glamourous) subject of arithmetic.

From as far as we can remember, our daughter delighted in number, shape, order, series and various mathematical concepts.   She would observe various shapes and patterns and then one fine day tell us something about them that would wow us.  She was equally thrilled to hear about math.  Indeed she heard math in places we would not have expected.  While listening to a Carnatic vocal performance in Pune, she looked up from her doodling to remark, “This music is very satisfying, like adding up the rows of numbers in a long multiplication problem.”

Everything reminded her of math.  She knew it too, and delighted in it.  Even while arranging her clothes in her shelves she referred to priority and order of operations.  While overhearing us refer to combinations and permutations in the context of tracing old classmates she immediately corrected us – “you can’t have permutations!”  Seeing our blank looks, she explained, “what would they do, enter the room in a different order?”

When it came to basic sums, though, she was adding on her fingers most of the time.  Would this be considered late?  Slow?

One day she arranged her dominoes in a pattern and called me to see that it served as an addition table.  I have described this in a comment posted on Peter Gray’s article, “Kids Learn Math Easily When They Control Their Own Learning“ in his blog Freedom To Learn.

Had she memorized her basic addition facts, would she have devised an addition table?  Perhaps.  When?  Would that have been considered late?  Or slow?

What did she learn by making the addition table?  How was this learning facilitated by the fact that addition had not yet been ticked off her list of skills to master?

Learn as if you would live forever, said Mahatma Gandhi.  Not only will you be unafraid to learn something new, you will be unafraid not to know, and unafraid to say “I don’t know.”    You will not fake it, you will not be rushed to learn something when you are arrested by something more fundamental.  And as we approach the answer to one question we may again find our path slowed by still further questions.

For example – when coming across the phrase “first prime minister” (of India), my young friend was not interested in the name corresponding to this epithet.  She wanted to know what this phrase meant.  A question about what the “first” of a kind could be, how a given specimen could be “first” of a kind at all.

Her question:  So did they already decide to call the person a Prime Minister?

As I collected my thoughts to answer, there came another question - But who, they?

A question about the nature of authority itself, who vests it in whom.   (Is this history?  Or math?  Or politics?  Or philosophy?)

And then:  When did they call it India?

Those who “know” the answer to the question “Who was India’s first prime minister?” would probably answer the question, quiz-show style.

But how would they “know” such information?   And how would they “know” that one responds to a question with “the answer” rather than further questions?

Slow learning empowers the learner over the learned and values the slow in the spirit of the movements for slow food, slow money and slow love.

Of slow love, it is said,

Slow love is about knowing what you’ve got before it’s gone.

- Dominque Browning, Slow Love, pg. 5.

You can look up the name of the prime minister.  But when you stop asking questions about first-ness and prime-ness, where do you go to tap into your earlier wonder about these concepts?

“Slow Learning” also  appears on the website of Swashikshan: Indian Association of Homeschoolers.

2 Comments

Studying History

19 October 2012 at 8:00 pm (Observations)
Tags: , ,

“Studying history is …. pretty much useless, isn’t it?” my daughter asked, as if it was fairly obvious.  ”I mean why read about Columbus discovering America, when it isn’t even true?”

Alarmed.  All senses alert.
Mission: Rescue the field of history.   Why?  
 
Think.  Think.  
 
Meanwhile, don’t answer.   A weak response merely invites rebuttal.  Then what?  Stay calm.  Say nothing.  No one need get hurt.
 
Ah, now I remember what to do.   Listen. 
 
Do something.  Explain why we need to study history.   Justice – that’s right, we can start with justice.  Rosa Parks.  Freedom struggle.  Forest Rights.   Let’s just take care not get to too complicated.
 
The next morning as my daughter ate breakfast, I combed her hair.  I had my question ready and eased it ever so casually into the flow of braiding and talking. 
 
“Have you ever come across something that is not fair?”
 
“Yes,” she said, wailing.  She tends to take on the mood of whatever she is talking about.   “Like right now, I am finished with my oatmeal but you are only finished with one జడ (braid) and I don’t have anything to eat during the other జడ.”  
 
Okay.
 
As I took that in, she asked, “why did you ask me that?”
 
“Oh,” I chirped cheerily, “I just wanted to hear what you thought.”  
 
“That is nice” she said, genuinely appreciating it.  Trust me, she is not one to say “that’s nice” for no reason. 
 
On that happy note, we carried on an easy banter as I finished up the other braid.  No further inquiry.
 
Throughout the day I kept my troubles regarding the beleaguered field of history to myself.  I think a couple of times she may have continued thinking aloud about how she did not like history.  It was almost as if she liked the sound of it:  ”I don’t like history.”  I thought, but did not say, things like, “you like history, you are only saying that because you have gotten some idea that history is boring …. probably picked this up from some character in one of your books[1].”
 
Later that night she asked me, “what does Machiavellian mean?”  She was reading The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, in which Anna had used the word, saying only “I will explain later,” when Batty, another character in the novel, asked her what it meant.
 
I couldn’t resist.  I said, “well I can tell you but it might involve a little bit of … history.”  We both giggled. 
 
In small bits, I explained, proceeding further only as the questions directed. 
 
It reminded me of an incident some years ago when cleaning our pichkari in preparation for Holi.  Branded in the plastic were the words “Made in Mumbai.”   Mumbai … Bombay … English … British … the conversation went all over the world and back.  Language, culture, power, land, water, salt, spice, east, west … we are still talking about it.  
 
Last summer in Maryland, we saw a car with a Delaware license plate.  Across the top it said “THE FIRST STATE.”
 
“Why does that say Delaware – the first state?” my daughter asked me. 
 
By now it was a running joke:   ”Just to let you know, this might involve a little bit of history.”  As it turned out, it involved politics and ontology as well.  
 
Were they already called states?  she asked.  Who named it Delaware?  Was it like New York – named by the British, before they decided not to be British? 
 
Or later when they decided to call it the United States did they realize that the first one was Delaware?    What did it do first to become the first state?   Is Delaware also a Native American name?  Did the Native Americans want to name the state?
 
One day we saw Bhakta Prahlad (1967).  While observing the crowning of Prahlad, she asked, “how did the first king become king?”
 
Oh, yeah …
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
Now you may ask, can you really pursue history through the questions that come up while walking around and doing other things?  What about the people to whom you ask the questions … would the meandering route get you anywhere if those people hadn’t ever learned about the European Renaissance, and how the American constitution was ratified?  At some point don’t you also have to do the heavy reading for yourself?
 
And till that fine day comes when your curiosity drives you to read those works, what can you do to prepare?  Sure, maybe you spend years randomly asking questions and getting quick fill-ins from Wikipedia and then suddenly start reading Romila Thapar or Amartya Sen or Howard Zinn or Victoria Brown.  I can well imagine doing that.  I could also imagine missing the boat entirely.  Do we leave it up to chance?  
 
Such questions come up from time to time, especially for those whose children are learning outside of school, and possibly without any standardized curriculum.  Is there a plan to the learning, or is it driven by whim and fancy?  Granted, whim and fancy can take you a long way, usually via the scenic route.  But what about structured learning?  I think that structure materializes in various ways, and if we observe we might find, for example, that a child’s mind goes into active mode while taking a bath or getting ready for bed.  Some kids think better when in motion, or when they are interrupting you (as opposed to when you ask them a question and wait for them to answer).  Some kids cry when they don’t understand something, but that crying is part of their grappling with the problem.  Recognizing and respecting the structure that goes into each child’s learning process will help to keep the channels clear and unobstructed. 
 
Apart from the patterns that emerge, are there practices that we can encourage, that will help to build our capacity to learn various things?
 
This brings me to another answer on structure.  Consider a subject like history.   History is not something that others create and we consume.   History must be questioned at every turn - who said? how do you know? what if…?   But how do we learn how to question history?  
 
In fact children do ask these questions about every day happenings.  We can draw upon this inquisitive nature and apply it to the study of the past as well.  At the very least we can avoid suppressing these questions when they arise.  Questioning authority, vital for investigating the past, starts with questions like “why do we have to do this?” that can spark intriguing discussions. 
 
I believe that one should learn history by learning to work like a historian, to think like a historian.   Before my child reads the history that is written by others, I would like her to try coming up with some of her own questions and finding something out about history.  We have, for example, interviewed people in the neighbourhood.  So far we have found out more about the mechanics of setting up and conducting an interview than about any particular historical or social question, but this is important too.  When we read interviews of others, it gives us some insight into what it takes to set the stage.  We have also looked around the house and neighbourhood and made a kind of game of asking, “what happened here in the last few hours or days and what is our evidence for saying so?”  ”How reliable is this evidence?”  ”What might possibly make us doubt this evidence?”  ”What alternate explanations are there?”  
 
This practice will equip us to ask similar questions while reading history, so that we can evaluate sources and compare perspectives.  At a more elementary level, a game like Chinese whispers, illustrating how a message gets distorted as it passes through various transmitters (people) can also sharpen one’s critical faculties when reading others’ accounts of what happened. 
 
[1] Or was it in one of my books?  I had recently been reading James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me.  Loewen writes,
“[P]rofessional historical organizations for at least a century have repeatedly exhorted teachers not to teach history as fact memorization. ‘Stir up the minds of the pupils,’ cried the American Historical Association in 1893; ‘avoid stressing dates, names, and specific events, ‘historians urged in 1934. . . . Nevertheless, teachers continue to present factoids for students to memorize.”  
I don’t think she read the book, but I am just saying, I need not turn to a juvenile novel to track down the sentiment that history class is boring.  Historians themselves have been complaining about it for years.

Leave a Comment

Right to Education

2 August 2012 at 6:24 pm (Observations)
Tags: , , , , ,

After reading Alfie Kohn What does it Mean to be Educated? and Jonathon Kozol On Being a Teacher I am all fired up. Must do something, etc etc.

A few weeks ago I was all fired up when my neighbour told me what happened to her son at school. The English Ma’am wrote something on the board. It contained an error, which the boy noted (aloud). The Ma’am reprimanded him and he remained silent.

Considering all the bad grammar I hear routinely, I guess I should not be too surprised at this. But an English teacher? This boy is an avid reader so I am sure he has an ear for correct English, certainly at the grade school level, and apparently more so than that of his teacher. The word in question was the plural of sheep which the boy correctly pointed out, was sheep. Now in this situation, did the teacher

a – acknowledge her error and appreciate the alert student who cared enough to point it out?
b – say, oh, is that so, let me look it up and confirm?
c – say, “Do you know better than your teacher?”

The correct answer: c. No prizes for guessing and no extra credit for realizing that the tone and volume in which it was asked meant that there was only one acceptable answer to that question. The boy said, “No, Ma’am” but later confided to his mother that he had wanted to say, “Yes, Ma’am.”

Is this not a violation of this boy’s right to education? He may be in school, attending class, doing homework, getting marks. But is his right to education respected? When he speaks is he heard with interest, with patience?  When he asks a question, is he encouraged? Answered? Or told not to ask? Even when he responds correctly he risks being silenced. Is honesty something to be read in the Morals class textbook1 or is one encouraged to speak the truth, even when your voice shakes2? What is the role of the teacher? What power did she hold that caused this boy to back down, even though he believed what he said? Grades? Punishment? I doubt he was thinking so far ahead. Being snarked at by the teacher when he was merely making a grammar correction, as he would expect her to do if he made an error, was no doubt disturbing enough that his only aim at that moment would have been to make it stop.

And what about something more consequential than the correct plural of sheep? What about questions of history or science or social studies where there can indeed be multiple approaches and viewpoints, leave alone errors in the textbook or in the teacher’s lecture? We have even faced ambiguity in the grade 1 math textbook! Do students stand a chance at having their voices heard on such matters?  Are students allowed to try out ideas or methods that they may eventually discard, i.e, make mistakes?  And what would we in fact prefer, that they think and develop a viewpoint, compare with others, examine consequences, test against evidence, revise and refine …. or that they repeat the views provided by a textbook author or a teacher? Doing the latter ostensibly requires less effort and yet most children, given the chance, will do the former unless constrained to do the latter, for the sake of the grade and the teacher’s approval. Such constraint, which is the norm in the vast majority of the schools in India, public, private, elite or international, is a stark violation of children’s right to education.

How do we want to read our history lessons? Ahimsa, satyagraha, are these formulae to be memorized for an exam? Or are they living principles?  Can we too speak truth to power? Can we unearth the lies told in our history books, as James Loewen has done for US History? Can we question authority? Are we willing to risk our comforts for our values? Or vice-versa?

Emphasis on rote learning and standardized testing widens the gap between the haves and have-nots, and not only because it renders students passive consumers of pre-fabricated knowledge.  The haves, after all have opportunities outside of school to explore ideas freely. They may converse daily with family and friends and at some point, usually quite early, recognize that school tests are a game they play and but a thin slice of the wide arc of learning that beckons.  Even if they have little time outside of school,  whatever original observations or experiments they make are duly recognized and valued.  In our neighbourhood the children have buried various objects, planted seeds, made up imaginary games and plays – when children in poorer communities do such things they may get reprimanded for “wasting time.”   In our neighbourhood when parents  come to drag their kids home from the playground, they do so wistfully, and often try to compensate for it during other times.  Even this modicum of awareness of the value of free play is denied to many children.

Standards are not confined to “the basics” of reading, writing and arithmetic but extend to social and economic values, which are increasingly dictated by corporate interests, either through direct intervention in school programming, or through emphasis on ranking and testing. Alfie Kohn talks about this: .

In India, where test-based teaching is unlikely to be dethroned anytime soon, even corporations are making fashionable noises against “rote learning.” They are not against standardized tests, mind you, they just believe they can get better results on those tests through hip means such as independent, innovative and critical thinking.

from The Unschool Bus

I expect you all to be independent, innovative, critical thinkers ….

Thanks to The Unschool Bus  for this apt illustration.

The press drums along with them without questioning the goals of education, appropriately shocked (shocked!) that children can’t keep their Gandhis straight or give liberal minded answers to questions on rights of women and immigrants. See The Hindu, 12 Dec 2011, “Learning by rote prevalent in top schools too.”  In the entire article neither the top-ness of these schools or the validity of the tests are called into question.  Nor are we invited to wonder why the children have “wrong” answers.  For the record I would be open to hearing about how the “shape of a square object would change if it is tilted,” as nearly half the sampled children apparently opined.

If the powers that be in the classroom are not answerable to the students, if the questioning goes only one way, and answers are determined by the questioner, then it is inevitable that the those who succeed in this path would need to keep it that way.

But do students, parents or teachers really believe that it should be that way? I don’t think so. We also believe that education and literacy enable us to go to the source, to look for evidence, to take it apart and see how it works and how it doesn’t, and even make our own models and theories and stories.  Insofar as everyone gains these abilities, no one can cheat another, and therefore we can, together, build a more just society.

Serious change is required for education and literacy to achieve their potential to act as tools of empowerment. Today we see them promoting conformity and consumerism and widening inequality. Right to Education, however, must not only mean right to be admitted in a school and consume the information and ideas dictated, and speak only on command, but right to express ideas, ask questions and actually learn without fear. On not need to be in school to exercise these rights, but certainly no school should infringe upon them. Outside of school, children do ask questions, question the answers, and even question the questions.  Right to education must include the right to make mistakes, not only the right to be right.   Unfortunately in school, the vast majority of students get little time or space to ask or even answer questions in their own words, or ponder questions tangential to what the teacher or test-book has asked.  Their role is to reproduce the answers provided to them. Children who step outside of this expected role will typically be punished by a bad mark, humiliation or even physical punishment. There is no grievance redressal mechanism for children whose right to education is violated in this way.

to be continued…

[1] In the closing scene of Bangaru Papa, Sekhar, regretting his inability to stand by his principles when his family prohibits him from marrying Papa on grounds of her caste and class, says his high status demands that moral values remain confined to the textbook.  See from 6:34 in this .
[2] Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn is noted for saying, “Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind – even if your voice shakes.”

1 Comment

What is number? and other Insights

10 July 2012 at 10:59 pm (Questions)
Tags: , , , ,

When one appreciates the value of slow learning, one does not “teach numbers” or “teach letters” but simply notices the moments when one’s child stumbles upon these concepts and tries them out. Most likely one might miss “the moment” when a child first encounters these, if there is such a thing as the first encounter, but whenever it comes to one’s notice that the child is versed in these concepts, one can discover new things by observing how they approach and resist them, how they question and use them. Whenever this happens with my daughter, I tend to stop whatever I am doing and almost slow down the moment, just to make sure I don’t speed it up. I respond very slowly, refraining from giving any additional information, but asking questions in language as close as possible to what my daughter has used.

For example recently she said, “Do you ever wonder why you are you and not just someone playing with a doll that is you?” Whoa! I stopped in my tracks, as if into my lap had floated a gift wrapped in layers and layers of delicate paper … that one must open with care, so as not to disturb the next layer or remove too many layers at once, and risk missing some nuances of meaning.

Similar treasures are packed into questions and comments or even gestures, if we know how to notice them, of infants and toddlers.

- lines / mountains
- place value – value of the number zero.
- two, two …

Among the most precious gifts of slow learning is the chance to ask questions such as “what is number” and observe how someone who is pre-numerate approaches this concept. While today one might worry if their child “learned numbers” later than the expected average age, one may instead appreciate this rare opportunity to become privy to insights on such basic questions as “what is number?”

Elizabeth Spelke, psychologist, asks such questions:

‘What is number, space, agency, and how does knowledge in each category develop from its minimal state?’ ”

Here is the article.

New York Times

Profiles in Science | Elizabeth S. Spelke

Insights From the Youngest Minds

Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

Elizabeth S. Spelke: A video interview with the Harvard cognitive psychologist on babies and the nature of human knowledge.

By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: April 30, 2012 199 Comments

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Seated in a cheerfully cramped monitoring room at the Harvard University Laboratory for Developmental Studies, Elizabeth S. Spelke, a professor of psychology and a pre-eminent researcher of the basic ingredient list from which all human knowledge is constructed, looked on expectantly as her students prepared a boisterous 8-month-old girl with dark curly hair for the onerous task of watching cartoons.

The video clips featured simple Keith Haring-type characters jumping, sliding and dancing from one group to another. The researchers’ objective, as with half a dozen similar projects under way in the lab, was to explore what infants understand about social groups and social expectations.

Yet even before the recording began, the 15-pound research subject made plain the scope of her social brain. She tracked conversations, stared at newcomers and burned off adult corneas with the brilliance of her smile. Dr. Spelke, who first came to prominence by delineating how infants learn about objects, numbers, the lay of the land, shook her head in self-mocking astonishment.

“Why did it take me 30 years to start studying this?” she said. “All this time I’ve been giving infants objects to hold, or spinning them around in a room to see how they navigate, when what they really wanted to do was engage with other people!”

Dr. Spelke, 62, is tall and slim, and parts her long hair down the middle, like a college student. She dresses casually, in a corduroy jumper or a cardigan and slacks, and when she talks, she pitches forward and plants forearms on thighs, hands clasped, seeming both deeply engaged and ready to bolt. The lab she founded with her colleague Susan Carey is strewed with toys and festooned with children’s T-shirts, but the Elmo atmospherics belie both the lab’s seriousness of purpose and Dr. Spelke’s towering reputation among her peers in cognitive psychology.

“When people ask Liz, ‘What do you do?’ she tells them, ‘I study babies,’ ” said Steven Pinker, a fellow Harvard professor and the author of “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” among other books. “That’s endearingly self-deprecating, but she sells herself short.”

What Dr. Spelke is really doing, he said, is what Descartes, Kant and Locke tried to do. “She is trying to identify the bedrock categories of human knowledge. She is asking, ‘What is number, space, agency, and how does knowledge in each category develop from its minimal state?’ ”

Dr. Spelke studies babies not because they’re cute but because they’re root. “I’ve always been fascinated by questions about human cognition and the organization of the human mind,” she said, “and why we’re good at some tasks and bad at others.”

But the adult mind is far too complicated, Dr. Spelke said, “too stuffed full of facts” to make sense of it. In her view, the best way to determine what, if anything, humans are born knowing, is to go straight to the source, and consult the recently born.

Decoding Infants’ Gaze

Dr. Spelke is a pioneer in the use of the infant gaze as a key to the infant mind — that is, identifying the inherent expectations of babies as young as a week or two by measuring how long they stare at a scene in which those presumptions are upended or unmet. “More than any scientist I know, Liz combines theoretical acumen with experimental genius,” Dr. Carey said. Nancy Kanwisher, a neuroscientist at M.I.T., put it this way: “Liz developed the infant gaze idea into a powerful experimental paradigm that radically changed our view of infant cognition.”

Here, according to the Spelke lab, are some of the things that babies know, generally before the age of 1:

They know what an object is: a discrete physical unit in which all sides move roughly as one, and with some independence from other objects.

“If I reach for a corner of a book and grasp it, I expect the rest of the book to come with me, but not a chunk of the table,” said Phil Kellman, Dr. Spelke’s first graduate student, now at the University of California, Los Angeles.

A baby has the same expectation. If you show the baby a trick sequence in which a rod that appears to be solid moves back and forth behind another object, the baby will gape in astonishment when that object is removed and the rod turns out to be two fragments.

“The visual system comes equipped to partition a scene into functional units we need to know about for survival,” Dr. Kellman said. Wondering whether your bag of four oranges puts you over the limit for the supermarket express lane? A baby would say, “You pick up the bag, the parts hang together, that makes it one item, so please get in line.”

Babies know, too, that objects can’t go through solid boundaries or occupy the same position as other objects, and that objects generally travel through space in a continuous trajectory. If you claimed to have invented a transporter device like the one in “Star Trek,” a baby would scoff.

Babies are born accountants. They can estimate quantities and distinguish between more and less. Show infants arrays of, say, 4 or 12 dots and they will match each number to an accompanying sound, looking longer at the 4 dots when they hear 4 sounds than when they hear 12 sounds, even if each of the 4 sounds is played comparatively longer. Babies also can perform a kind of addition and subtraction, anticipating the relative abundance of groups of dots that are being pushed together or pulled apart, and looking longer when the wrong number of dots appears.

Babies are born Euclideans. Infants and toddlers use geometric clues to orient themselves in three-dimensional space, navigate through rooms and locate hidden treasures. Is the room square or rectangular? Did the nice cardigan lady put the Slinky in a corner whose left wall is long or short?

At the same time, the Spelke lab discovered, young children are quite bad at using landmarks or décor to find their way. Not until age 5 or 6 do they begin augmenting search strategies with cues like “She hid my toy in a corner whose left wall is red rather than white.”

“That was a deep surprise to me,” Dr. Spelke said. “My intuition was, a little kid would never make the mistake of ignoring information like the color of a wall.” Nowadays, she continued, “I don’t place much faith in my intuitions, except as a starting place for designing experiments.”

These core mental modules — object representation, approximate number sense and geometric navigation — are all ancient systems shared at least in part with other animals; for example, rats also navigate through a maze by way of shape but not color. The modules amount to baby’s first crib sheet to the physical world.

“The job of the baby,” Dr. Spelke said, “is to learn.”

Role of Language

More recently, she and her colleagues have begun identifying some of the baseline settings of infant social intelligence. Katherine D. Kinzler, now of the University of Chicago, and Kristin Shutts, now at the University of Wisconsin, have found that infants just a few weeks old show a clear liking for people who use speech patterns the babies have already been exposed to, and that includes the regional accents, twangs, and R’s or lack thereof. A baby from Boston not only gazes longer at somebody speaking English than at somebody speaking French; the baby gazes longest at a person who sounds like Click and Clack of the radio show “Car Talk.”

In guiding early social leanings, accent trumps race. A white American baby would rather accept food from a black English-speaking adult than from a white Parisian, and a 5-year-old would rather befriend a child of another race who sounds like a local than one of the same race who has a foreign accent.

Other researchers in the Spelke lab are studying whether babies expect behavioral conformity among members of a group (hey, the blue character is supposed to be jumping like the rest of the blues, not sliding like the yellow characters); whether they expect other people to behave sensibly (if you’re going to reach for a toy, will you please do it efficiently rather than let your hand meander all over the place?); and how babies decide whether a novel object has “agency” (is this small, fuzzy blob active or inert?).

Dr. Spelke is also seeking to understand how the core domains of the human mind interact to yield our uniquely restless and creative intelligence — able to master calculus, probe the cosmos and play a Bach toccata as no bonobo or New Caledonian crow can. Even though “our core systems are fundamental yet limited,” as she put it, “we manage to get beyond them.”

Dr. Spelke has proposed that human language is the secret ingredient, the cognitive catalyst that allows our numeric, architectonic and social modules to join forces, swap ideas and take us to far horizons. “What’s special about language is its productive combinatorial power,” she said. “We can use it to combine anything with anything.”

She points out that children start integrating what they know about the shape of the environment, their navigational sense, with what they know about its landmarks — object recognition — at just the age when they begin to master spatial language and words like “left” and “right.” Yet, she acknowledges, her ideas about language as the central consolidator of human intelligence remain unproved and contentious.

Whatever their aim, the studies in her lab are difficult, each requiring scores of parentally volunteered participants. Babies don’t follow instructions and often “fuss out” mid-test, taking their data points with them.

Yet Dr. Spelke herself never fusses out or turns rote. She prowls the lab from a knee-high perspective, fretting the details of an experiment like Steve Jobs worrying over iPhone pixel density. “Is this car seat angled a little too far back?” she asked her students, poking the little velveteen chair every which way. “I’m concerned that a baby will have to strain too much to see the screen and decide it’s not worth the trouble.”

Should a student or colleague disagree with her, Dr. Spelke skips the defensive bristling, perhaps in part because she is serenely self-confident about her intellectual powers. “It was all easy for me,” she said of her early school years. “I don’t think I had to work hard until I got to college, or even graduate school.”

So, Radcliffe Phi Beta Kappa, ho hum. “My mother is absolutely brilliant, not just in science, but in everything,” said her daughter, Bridget, a medical student. “There’s a joke in my family that my mother and brother are the geniuses, and Dad and I are the grunts.” (“I hate this joke,” Dr. Spelke commented by e-mail, “and utterly reject this distinction!”)

Above all, Dr. Spelke relishes a good debate. “She welcomes people disagreeing with her,” said her husband, Elliott M. Blass, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts. “She says it’s not about being right, it’s about getting it right.”

When Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard, notoriously suggested in 2005 that the shortage of women in the physical sciences might be partly due to possible innate shortcomings in math, Dr. Spelke zestily entered the fray. She combed through results from her lab and elsewhere on basic number skills, seeking evidence of early differences between girls and boys. She found none.

“My position is that the null hypothesis is correct,” she said. “There is no cognitive difference and nothing to say about it.”

Dr. Spelke laid out her case in an acclaimed debate with her old friend Dr. Pinker, who defended the Summers camp.

“I have enormous respect for Steve, and I think he’s great,” Dr. Spelke said. “But when he argues that it makes sense that so many women are going into biology and medicine because those are the ‘helping’ professions, well, I remember when being a doctor was considered far too full of blood and gore for women and their uncontrollable emotions to handle.”

Raising Her Babies

For her part, Dr. Spelke has passionately combined science and motherhood. Her mother studied piano at Juilliard but gave it up when Elizabeth was born. “I felt terribly guilty about that,” Dr. Spelke said. “I never wanted my children to go through the same thing.”

When her children were young, Dr. Spelke often took them to the lab or held meetings at home. The whole family traveled together — France, Spain, Sweden, Egypt, Turkey — never reserving lodgings but finding accommodations as they could. (The best, Dr. Blass said, was a casbah in the Moroccan desert.)

Scaling the academic ranks, Dr. Spelke still found time to supplement her children’s public school education with a home-schooled version of the rigorous French curriculum. She baked their birthday cakes from scratch, staged elaborate treasure hunts and spent many days each year creating their Halloween costumes: Bridget as a cave girl or her favorite ballet bird; her younger brother, Joey, as a drawbridge.

“Growing up in my house was a constant adventure,” Bridget said. “As a new mother myself,” she added, “I don’t know how my mom did it.”

Is Dr. Spelke the master of every domain? It’s enough to make the average mother fuss out.

NEW EXPERIENCES Elizabeth Spelke with her daughter, Bridget, in France in 1988, on one of many family trips.

Enlarge This Image

DAUGHTER Bridget Spelke, who is a medical student, in South Africa. “My mother is absolutely brilliant, not just in science, but in everything,” she said.

Readers’ Comments

A version of this article appeared in print on May 1, 2012, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: From the Minds of Babes.

Profiles in Science

Elizabeth S. Spelke

This is the ninth in an occasional series of articles and videos about leaders in science.

1 Comment

« Older entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.