I think I'll begin by saying that in the last 6 months or so. I have attended a number of meetings at conferences on education of one kind or another. And at one time or another in these conferences, I have heard a number of pairs of speeches, which I'm going to compress and give you now. Speech one in the first group goes very briefly something like this. Most children are not very curious. and will not learn or learn anything very important unless compelled to left to their own devices. The chances are that most of them will not do anything very useful or important. Or it may actually do things with your downright bad. Speech number two of that group would go take more or less the opposite View. children being human beings are born Curious by by Nature by Genetic inheritance. They are extremely eager from birth to learn as much as they can about the world about them. and Beyond being curious their social that is to say they Have a very strong desire to. Play a part in that world around them. And which means to do mainly what they see the big people doing. if they well whatever that may be speech to as I say is is my own. and it is the the heart of what I have come here to talk about. The next part of the speech to will skip the speech once I guess you can perhaps infer what they are. has to do with the question of authority What's your sign? A difficult idea. I think for many people. I think a lot of our problems in the modern world, and I don't just mean in the US have to do with a very real confusion about Authority and perhaps Above All In Schools. What I come to understand over the years and considerable part. Thanks to the help of George Dennison in his book the lives of children, which I most earnestly recommend to you. Is that there are in the first place that there are two quite different kinds of authority. One I will call coercive Authority. Authority which Reston for Sunday power to threaten and punish well understood idea and the other I will call Natural Authority. Not quite as easy to explain. It's an authority. Which one person or some people? Has for another person or other persons? because Of having or seeming to have greater understanding. competence skill judgement virtue dedication Any one of a number of factors like that? It is an authority in other words, which has nothing to do with the power to threaten and punish, which is altogether independent of it. an authority which is rooted in the trust respect or and love which some people feel for others. and I'll give everyone brief illustration of this just to Show that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with age. It's been about 10 years since I last did any downhill skiing? And when I last did it it was about four years since I had previously done it. I was skiing at the ski area in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which my brother-in-law runs, which is one of the reasons I was skiing here. and my nephew who was then 7. Ask me if I wanted to ride one of the lifts up to the top of the mountain. I said yes hadn't been up. There there been a lot of new trails cut since I hadn't been up there for years and they've been a whole lot of new slopes open. Now I should add that. At age 7 my nephew was a much better skier than I ever was or will be. It was a short time in his fifth year when I could ski with him, but that quickly passed. Honey, regularly at age 70 regularly skied with my brother-in-law's been an expert all his life in the ski patrolman and I mean that kind of proof through the trees Etc. So when we got up to the top I said, well, what's the best way to go down Dave and he said well follow me. He knew several things that I didn't know when he'd been up there. He knew what the trails were. He skied a little bit with me he knew about how well I could skis so he knew. What trail would be interesting for me and yet not impossibly difficult and he knew about how fast he had to go or I should say how slowly he had to go. So as not to lose me and the distance and he knew about how often he had to stop so that I could fill my sea level lungs with air. Anda so off he went and I simply I followed him and when he stopped I stopped and in such. Away, we had a very pleasant run down the mountain. He knew that was what I didn't know and so there was no question or argument or no problem in my mind about following this small boy. He was the expert. I was the novice I simply tell that story to show that. The natural Authority can occur. I mean it's not something that necessarily resides in age or position. And it's the thing, which is freely. and happily given I suspect that much of the time in our history is a nation and this may be just as he just as true for people anywhere that on the whole we Americans have tended to think of only two responses to Authority Warren, are you kind of slavish submission to it? And the other assorted Furious Rebellion against it? are the other thing I've learned about natural Authority is that is a little more. I took longer to learn and his I think even more important. And that is a natural Authority is not undergirded and supported by coercive Authority. They are not allies their enemies. They do not complement each other. They oppose each other. The more coercive Authority we have or exercise the less natural Authority. We're likely to get. Many people who understand what I mean or what is meant by course of a natural Authority still has perhaps I did myself. Cherish an illusion that course of authorities can somehow turn into natural Authority in other words. I'm going to start making you do this because I tell you to do it but after a while you're going to discover how wonderful isn't it going to want to do it. Anyway, and I sure you had very rarely happens. The third thing. Oh, I hope you're not taking that baby away on a kind of meat. I'm happy to have a baby. I mean, I like to see babies going to my meeting and the baby may have plans of its own. I like the idea of children going to adult activities and functions is extremely important to me and one of the things I was planning to say perhaps later but will say now is it I think one of the many misfortunes of present the Civilized life is that such an enormous Gap has been opened up between the lives of children in the lives of adults, and I'm concerned to find ways to close a bridge that Gap. Heart the third main part of the next set of main section of what I wanted to say. Has to do with the relationships between teaching and learning. Of course, we can define words. Anyway, we want of Humpty Dumpty said that Alessandra when I use a word it means just exactly what I say. It means in a very real sense. That's true. That is our words mean what we want them to mean when we say them just one of the difficulties of language. We never know completely what the other person means when they use the word and we can spend a long time struggling to find out or at cross-purposes because we don't know. Obviously if we Define teaching as whatever helps learning then it follows from that definition that teaching necessarily helps learning. That's simply circular. but let's take a more usual view of teaching and I don't mean usual in this audience because you've already proved to me you're an unusual audience, but I think usual among the general public and I think I would say usual and are the predominant view in most of the educational meetings. I have attended. And this definition of teaching begins with the teacher deciding what the learner is to learn? Or the teacher. Is it any raid a spokesperson for somebody or some group of people who have decided? So the teacher instructor says here the rest of the learner here is what you learn. and then the teacher says since this is very complicated and difficult. And in order to make it easier for you. I have broken this learning task down into a number of steps. Worked out the proper order in which this is to be learned. So here are the steps by which it is to be learned here is the order in which it is to be learned. And then the teacher has a schedule as they say of reinforcements or rewards penalties bribes threats. Says if you learn what I want you to learn and this nice thing will happen and if you don't this not-so-nice thing will happen. What is the definition of that this particular definition of teaching? Is that learning the learning process? Is owned and controlled by the teacher? The teacher creates the learning by doing these things you suction is that if the teacher didn't do these things the learning wouldn't happen. Either the learner wouldn't be interested in learning the material or would not know how it would be baffled by. Now the opposite view of learning back off from that. This was what I thought teaching was when I began teaching. and I thought that if the teacher did these tasks sufficiently. Well had the well, the curriculum really determined pretty much what was to be learned. but if the teacher could somehow make a convincing case that it ought to be learned so sell it and if the teacher could lay out that series of steps cleverly enough and provide the right kind of schedule of February and penalties reinforcements as the fashion now is to say that learning would happen. How are they very surprising and painful things that happened to me when I was going through those processes for the first few years of my work as a teacher that I found most of the time learning did not happen. had my Since I'd had no training, it did not occur to me to blame this somehow or other on the students in whatever fashion. That is I had never heard of the word learning disabilities hadn't come into fashion. Then all the word brain damage had because actually the first person I took in my tutored actually in my work as a paid teacher was a 17 year old boy from a wealthy, Texas Family who had the school skills of about a second grader and we'll all of the high-powered help in his hometown had pronounce to be brain damaged. I didn't know what those words meant. This was a very small school and we faculty and students wearing very close Association. We did a lot of the manual work at the school. I had observed this young man and many aspects of life and found him an exceptionally intelligent and thoughtful and reasonable guy so it didn't seem Didn't seem to me that there was anything wrong with his brain handle since he wanted to learn to read like other folks his age. And and since the school wanted me to help him. It seemed to me that my task was to find somewhere to do it. well, I won't say that I found any particularly quick way to do it, but I'm not sure that I communicated anything to him except the conviction that I way could be found that they're in short that there wasn't anything in his nervous system that was going to make it impossible for him to read and indeed. I had a letter from him perhaps Turn off guessing a little bit now, maybe for 5 years. Later. He had not gone too early. We had gone to college he was then in the Army, but he wrote me that at the Army Post where he was stationed. It was a very good Library NE wrote off a bunch of list of the number of the books. He was reading which four are you grown up books. So clearly he solved that problem. Probably mostly for himself. But I still felt that if if I could find the right method of teaching. If I could make the right explanations if I could duck lay out the steps a little better make a better path ER. or think of more effective Rewards or which was very important try to remove as far as I could the whole element of threat of of threatened penalty from the situation at this learning would begin to happen and indeed by a few years later. I was convinced that That anxiety fear the threat of failure in the humiliation and pain how we're very powerful obstacles to learning. it took me much longer to discover or come to believe was that the most important obstacle to learning of all was Was still my belief that as a teacher, I was creating learning that I was making learning happen. But I finally learned and I learned it mostly I think through watching human beings of 2 years. 2 years old or less that the human animal is a natural learner and not only a natural one, but an extremely skillful one. Norma SLI energetic persistent resourceful inventive I finally came to realize that it is not teaching that creates learning and the notion that without teaching there is no learning or the moral teaching them or learned. These are very very seriously mistaken ideas. What makes learning? Is Learners more specifically what creates learning is the in the very first place the Curiosity? How's the learner the desire for more understanding Mastery competence skill? and the energy and the resourcefulness and the inventiveness and the persistence in the courage and willingness to take risks and to fail without getting discouraged and going to snow as a host of other qualities and and as I say a kind of built-in facility for making structures in our mind, which I don't think any of us understand much about and perhaps never will. the teachers task is to support these qualities, which already are there? Don't have to create them make them come out of thin air. They are there the task of teachers. The useful work of teachers is simply to support them. by giving the learner or access keyword, I think access to materials which may be books or tools or measuring instruments or sticks or stones are paper and pencil ink typewriter musical instruments sporting equipment laboratory 2, I mean, whatever you and access to other people who prefer to do things a little better access to experiences to places a very important motto. The helping hand strikes again. It took me a long time to realize that unsolicited help unasked-for help. Let me help you. carries with it a profound message of distrust in contempt And children who are immensely sensitive to unspoken message is really much more than we are for obvious reasons catch this message, even when we not only not conscious of sending it but would swear we didn't mean to send it. I have hundreds of letters from parents who tell me that they tried to help their two or three or four year old with something and the child flew into a rage. At this hurts the niacin parents feelings naturally and I right back I say. but in giving the son asked for help you are inferring that the child couldn't get along without your help and the child keenly resents that inference. So don't do it. I think of another think of attending a meeting of Catholic Educators in Chicago and hearing a wonderful man. And who had been teaching in parochial schools all his life say it was among many other funny and true things. A word to the wise is infuriating. That's worth keeping in mind. Not for people who have made teaching their life work or an important part of it or who have identified themselves as teachers to give up the notion of themselves as creators of learning as the people who make learning happen. is is not easy it wasn't easy for me. Wasn't easy for me to realize that it wasn't a question of whether I was teaching well or badly. I'm simply taking too much, but I really had to learn it was get out of the way. Shut up, and that's why I Don't lecture all the time. And that the less I did the the more of my students did I suck to say that I never did anything but I learned to do I learned that in this drama of learning and it's very well understood as a drama. I played a bit part. For those of you who remember the Rogers Astaire movies kind of like Eric blore and supposed to be sore or C Aubrey Smith and movies of which David Niven might have been the hero at least old folks Tales go to the movies and then every movie play me that's that's our work. We are bit players the heroes and heroines are the Learners if we can get that into our heads mine. Well, that's where my work has led me know. I want to make a couple of more distinctions and then say a couple of words about people teaching their children at home in that part of my work at one time. And at one time I was talking about education vs. Learning and by education I met as I think most people do that process. I've described under teaching where somebody decides what other people are learning how they are to learn it and then goes about making them learn the checks up to see if they're learning it and I said that process seems to be to be mistaken and harmful and prevent learning. so in that in that sort of opposition education is generally understood comes out more or less the bad guy and learning the good guy, but I there's things about the word learning that I have some very serious troubles with also the word learning carries where that I like all words all words carry along with them a trailer train of meanings and associations, which we may not be conscious of in the word learning tends to carry with it some some ideas which seemed now seem to me to be quite mistaken. The first is Well, I never my first that learning is an activity somehow separate from the rest of life. Something we do best when we're not doing anything else. And best of all in places where nothing else is done. I think this is probably one of the truly univ almost universally accepted ideas of the modern world wouldn't have been a hundred or even fifty years ago. But at least in the developed modern world, most people I think 10 to believe this to learn anything important. You have to go to a special Learning Place. Where nothing except learning happens and get some special learning helper who doesn't mostly do anything except that to to teach you whatever it is. You want to learn and it seems to me these are very mistaken and harmful ideas. the most powerful and successful Learning Community. I was ever a part of what is a community in which I don't believe I heard the word learning in a space of three years and that was an American submarine in World War II. SS 317 USS barbero in case any of you folks should have been on it, which guys see me after class. Talk about learning. We were busy. Running our first place figuring out how to run finding out how to run this very complicated piece of machinery and then running it in more or less hazardous conditions and trying to sync. Enemy ships and try to keep their ships from sinking us and in the process of doing this we all of us picked up an enormous amount of Knowledge and Skills, which we shared and spread as widely as we could because the smarter we all were the better our chances were things get tough. We have no vested interest in in hiding knowledge in private monopolies of knowledge. More people on that ship knew how to do a particular task the better off. We were in case something bad should happen to a whole lotta. So the idea another words that learning happens is best or only happens in special learning places as I see is a mistake. It's no part of my Utopia. That's just going to come out right one. People say to me you're willing if you think about your ideal Society what kind of schools would it have? I say for the most part it wouldn't have any I mean it would be a place in which every place would be a learning place. at other times I have felt that if we were to travel in a time machine or something back into some of the most vigorous and creative Parts of human history and you might name. Classical Greece or you might name post-colonial United States was which was a. Of immense growth and Discovery or perhaps Elizabethan England or pick some other. That you happen to like. We if we were to go back to that. We would probably find it. There was very little talk about learning. People would be too busy doing interesting things that mattered. and the thing that really makes human people smart is not learning experiences, but the opportunity to do work, which is Challenging and demanding difficult requires skill and judgment and which has purposes which people clearly understand. What is society? Environment makes that possible to people when another was everyone's life is full of work, which makes great demands on their intelligence and skill. Will you go to hell you get a society of smart people. The absence of that kind of work for most people cannot be made up. 4 with Better Learning experiences people who spend the day doing, you know, this modern times Charlie Chaplin work now tightening up the bolt on the assembly line or its counterparts in the office pool are not going to go dash off in the evening to some fascinating seminar about macroeconomics or whatever. It may be they're going to slump down in front of the screen and try to forget the boredom of their and uselessness of their ordinary life by disappearing into some kind of fantasy landed pretending that they're one of those great powerful sexy Rich high-speed moving people on that screen. There's no way in which there can exist why differences between the qualities of people's work and the qualities of the rest of their life. And I guess in that connection I would also say that I don't think this very much we can do your baby do things we can do when we ought to try to do them, but I don't think there's a great deal that we can do to improve the quality of children's lives in a society accept as we do things to improve the quality of adult lives. The main part of my work these days is talking or writing to people. Erotic responding to people who phone me or talk to me or write to me saying one way or another. I am extremely unhappy with what is happening to my children at school or what I fear may happen or what happened to some of them and what I don't want to have happened to the others. And what should I do? What are used to say is I go reform the schools? I don't say that anymore because Because in most of the meetings I go to the kind of talk. I've been giving to you this evening. About the nature of learning and teaching meets angry silence and that speech one that I gave it the very beginning gets tumultuous Applause. So I have accepted. As a reality not likely to change in the near future that in under most circumstances in schools or out. I am a member of a fairly small Menards. Time that may change because everything changes but it isn't going to change in the school life time of present children. So what I'm saying to these people these days is there if there isn't something around that you can afford and like then you better do some serious thinking about taking your children out of school altogether and teaching them yourself. Happy birthday doing this. People have always done it I never was a time in the history of this country when there weren't a lot of people doing that and right now in Alaska because things are so spread apart and there are no roads. There are probably tens of thousands of families in the Alaskan Bush that are teaching their children using perhaps correspondence materials furnished by the state perhaps using other materials, perhaps simply letting the curriculum grow out of the interests of their children. This is not a new idea. Not a mysterious idea. I guess one of the other things I want to say about teaching is that it's an activity as old as a human race just as we have always been a learning Adamo Lacy Seekers of skill and knowledge. So we have always been a teaching animal shares of skill and knowledge and the task of passing on to the young whatever we knew and were able to do has traditionally been one which was done by everybody in the community and they didn't do it. I mean they did it in the course of their regular lives. They did what they did and children were around and they didn't saw them do it. And I said, you know that It was it was never seen as a task for specialists. To help people have find out how to do this. Find out what by what pass they may. I've got to think of the right. How they made a deal with the restrictions are requirements of compulsory schooling laws. How they may get materials what they will do with their children. Once they get them out of school and began having to learn at home to help people do this. I publish a little bi monthly hesitate to know what to call and I started calling it a newsletter, but it's not mostly news and then magazine but it isn't like I mean magazines at least news magazines get out of date. It's like much more like a reference book, which is published a little hunk at a time. Anyway, that's a very important part of my work. I won't say any more about it except as people may want to ask questions in this next. . Well ending a speech is a little bit like leaving a party there really isn't anything to do except go out in the hall and get your hat and coat and go out the door. So that's the end of the speech.