Andrew Seaton (aseaton@tpgi.com.au)
Wed, 15 Sep 1999 17:27:28 +1000
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 17:27:28 +1000 From: Andrew Seaton <aseaton@tpgi.com.au> Subject: Plato: "Learning Occurs in the Mind
List address to send message to everyone: ifets-discuss@LISTSERV.READADP.COM
Details of current discussion: http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arun quoted Plato: "Learning Occurs in the Mind, Independent of time and place".
How dearly we have all paid for that mistaken notion, which is at the heart
of the ills of our education system, not to mention our civilisation.
There is now wide consensus among learning and curriculum theorists,
confirming the commonsense of the layman, that context, purpose and
experience are essential aspects of learning, and that the separation of
cognition, affection and conation is entirely artifical. Even Benjamin
Bloom, whose taxonomies of educational objectives have contributed so much
to the dissection and abstraction of curricula and of lives, quotes Scheerer
as follows: "...behaviour may be conceptualized as being embedded in a
cognitive-emotional-motivational matrix in which no true separation is
possible. (B.S. Bloom, et al., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook
II: Affective Domain, London, Longman, 1964, p.45.)
Bloom also notes how William James, writing in 1890 and using the term
'subjective' in place of 'affective',
recognizes a fundamental unity of affective and cognitive behaviour, and how
one is involved in the
other:
"The contrast is not, then ...between certain subjective facts called images
and sensations and others
called acts of relating intelligence. ...The contrast is really between two
aspects, in which all mental facts
without exception may be taken; their structural aspect, as being
subjective, and their functional aspect,
as being cognitions. In the former aspect, the highest as well as the
lowest is a feeling. ...In the latter
aspect, the lowest mental fact as well as the highest may grasp some bit of
truth as its content. ...From the
cognitive point of view, all mental facts are intellections. From the
subjective point of view, all are feelings.
"...And then we see that the current opposition of Feeling to Knowledge is
quite a false issue. If every
feeling is at the same time a bit of knowledge, we ought no longer talk of
mental states differing by
having more or less of the cognitive quality; they only differ in knowing
more or less, in having much
fact or little fact for their object. The feeling of a broad scheme of
relations is a feeling that knows
much; the feeling of a simple quality is a feeling that knows little."
(Quoted in B.S. Bloom, et al., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook
II: Affective Domain, London, Longman, 1964, p.46.)
As we consider educational theory and practice in the light of the essential
unity of cognitive, affective
and conative behaviour, we can begin to understand the limited success we
have had until recently in
educational theory and practice with our virtually exclusive attention,
within artificial contexts, to
abstractions, to dissected and symbolically represented fragments of reality.
Cheers
Andrew
______________________________
Andrew & Pamela Seaton
www1.tpgi.com.au/users/aseaton
---------------------------------------------------------
Forum website: http://ifets.gmd.de/
Forum's contact person: kinshuk@ieee.org
Info on Join/Leave List: http://ifets.gmd.de/maillist.html
---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Wed 15 Sep 1999 - 11:25:42 MEST