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18 Teaching Minds
deliberation and the gaining of knowledge that will enhance our abil-
ity to reason. But suppose this conception we have of ourselves and
our ability to reason logically is simply wrong?
Our entire education system depends on this debate. Actually the
word debate is really not right here as there is no debate. The other
side, the side that says we need to teach our unconscious because our
conscious isn’t capable of listening, has not really been expressed di-
rectly very often. It is, however, indirectly referred to often enough.
Plato comments:
The most important part of education is right training in the
nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be guided to
the love of that sort of excellence in which when he grows up to
manhood he will have to be perfected.
Why should this be the case? Why should it be in the nursery where
real training takes place? And, what kind of training could the nurs-
ery provide—the kind of the football coach or the kind of the history
teacher? And, what can we learn about education by considering seri-
ously what Plato said?
The principles of learning in childhood are rather simple really.
The first and most important part of an analysis of early childhood
learning is an understanding of where the motivation comes from.
If learning starts with a goal, as we have said, one question is, What
goals do children have and how do they happen to have them?
When people mention motivation, the word reward often is added
into the discussion. What kinds of rewards do children receive and to
what extent are these involved in learning? Bear in mind that there
are three kinds of rewards: intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic. If it makes
me happy, I don’t need you to tell me I did well. If the activity doesn’t
really matter to me (an algebra test, for example), I will need some
outside reward to even try. When do kids learn because of the use of
external rewards? If I do well on an algebra test, it might be that it
gives me intrinsic happiness to know I did well at algebra. As a math-
oriented kid, I did get that kind of reward. It also makes you happy
when your parents are proud of you. And it makes you happy when
your grades win you admission into Yale or get you something else
you might want. Which types of rewards figure into early childhood
learning and what can we learn from this about learning? And, what
will this tell us about teaching?
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