🚀 go-pugleaf

From: Frank Bokhorst <bokkie@uctvms.uct.ac.za>

Thanks, Danny Choriki, for your long posting on this topic.
It should help to clear up some misunderstandings that seem to
have followed my posting: these distinctions between education,
learning, and discovery, are necessary if we are to communicate
effectively with each other here on IPCT-L.  To schematize and
simplify matters to the right degree, together with the necessary
qualifications and readiness to admit exceptions, is the way
to advance understanding of complexity.  I was pushing the point
about "transfer of information from head to head" because it
seems that with CMC the proliferation of data, and given the ease
with which it can now be stored copied, and transmitted, one has
to re-consider models of learning, discovery, education.

Joel Beeby's doubts about the transfer of knowledge in the absence
of a relation to personal experience are important, but miss
the mark I had set, which was about transfer of information.
Perhaps we should say "transfer of data"?  As Danny points out,
what happens after the transfer, if it becomes knowledge or not,
is another matter.  That is where Vygotsky et al. come in.

Two examples come to mind.  One is Ulric Neisser's phrase that
"reading is externally guided thinking".  With this he meant to
emphasize the active role of the reader - a point I fully agree
with.  The other is a cartoon by Doonesbury, in which a frustrated
teacher tarts his students by writing on the board a splash of
slogans like "Black is white", and gets as response from the kids:
"Gee wizz, we didn't know all these things!".

In juxtaposing these examples, I just came to the thought that
of course it does matter who is in control!  "Externally guided
thinking" can also mean "mind control",  but that is not the
point Neisser was making as cognitive psychologist.

WRT the "cultural tit": I was not referring to nursing a baby.
It is an expression here, perhaps colloquial, used by persons
of european descent who see Europe as the source of culture.
(Yes, and if the kids see their teacher as the source of
culture, they will likewise imbibe).

Ha! Of course now the WWW is our new cultural tit!

Frank Bokhorst       personal e-mail: bokkie@psipsy.uct.ac.za
Psychology
University of Cape Town