Gadfly does not try to note every expression of pedagogical silliness out there - otherwise, he'd do nothing else! But once in while you have to stop and smell the skunk cabbage. This week, Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology and author of a book on learning styles, had a column in the New York Times so absurd as to be noteworthy. Dr. Gopnik uses words like a fog, to mask meaning and blur distinctions, so everything becomes hazy. (The better to sneak up and hit you over the head, we guess.) At base, she distinguishes "routinized learning" from "guided discovery," generally to the detriment of the former, though she insists, mind you, that this is not a "touchy-feely progressive prescription." Rather, one should have a balance of the two. The problem is that so many children are just too brilliant: they can't shed their natural inventiveness to take on the mindless routinization required to master "unnatural skills like reading and writing," which are "meaningless in themselves" - unlike, apparently, making tortillas, a task she is much taken with. Dr. Gopnik finishes off this ramble with a baseball analogy that mostly serves to highlight her unfamiliarity with America's pastime. In the end, you can't make heads or tails of this essay, which means it will likely show up in ed school curricula soon.
"How we learn," by Alison Gopnik, New York Times, January 16, 2005