Please feel free to comment on your thoughts from this article in the 1970's. Ideas you agree with or disagree...
YOU MEAN A RABBIT CAN BE TAUGHT TO FLY?
As an individual you must not be satisfied with just becoming like everybody else.
By Leo Buscaglia, Ph.D.
Busscaglia: "I teach seminars in graduate school. It's amazing how people have learned to parrot by then."
A rabbit, bird, fish, squirrel, duck and so on, all decided to start a school. The rabbit insisted that running had to be in the curriculum. The bird insisted that flying be in the curriculum. The fish insisted that swimming be in the curriculum. The squirrel insisted that perpendicular trees climbing be in the curriculum.
All the other animals wanted their specialty to be in the curriculum, too, so they put everything in and then made the glorious mistake of insisting that all the animals take all of the courses. The rabbit was magnificent in running; nobody could run like the rabbit. But they insisted that it was good intellectual and emotional discipline to teach the rabbit flying. So they insisted that the rabbit learned to fly and they put her on this branch and said, "Fly, rabbit!" And the poor old thing jumped off, broke her leg and fractured her skull. She became brain-damaged and then she couldn't run very well, either.
The same way with the bird -- she could fly like a freak all over the place, do loops and loops, and she was making an A. But they insisted that this bird burrow holes in the ground like a gopher. Of course she broke her wings and everything else, and then she couldn't fly.
We know this is wrong, yet nobody does anything about it. You may be a genius. You may be one of the greatest writers in the world, but you can't get into a university unless you can pass trigonometry. For what? Look at the list of drop outs: William Faulkner, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Edison. They couldn't face school. "I don't want to learn perpendicular tree climbing. I'm never going to climb perpendicularly. I'm a bird. I can fly to the top of the tree without having to do that."
"Never mind, it's good discipline."
As an individual, you must not be satisfied with just becoming like everybody else. You must think for yourself. For example, art supervisors. I can remember when they used to come to my classroom in elementary school, and I'm sure you can remember it, too. You were given a paper, and the teacher would put up the drawing in front of you and you were really excited. It was going to be art time. You had all the crayolas in front of you, and you folded your hands and you waited. And soon the art teacher would come running in, because she had been to fourteen other classrooms that day teaching art. She ran in, and she'd huff and puff and she'd say, "Good morning girls and boys. Today we are going to draw a tree." And all the kids would say, "Goody, we're going to draw a tree!" And then she'd get up there with a green crayola and she'd draw this great big green thing. And then she put a brown base on it and a few blades of grass. And she'd say, "There is a tree." And all the kids would look at it and they'd say, "That isn't a tree. That's a lollipop." But she said that was a tree, and then she's pass out these papers and say, "Now, draw a tree." She didn't really say, "Draw a tree" -- she said, "Draw my tree." And the sooner you found out that's what she meant and could reproduce this lollipop and hand it to her, the sooner you would get an A.
But here was little Janie who knew that wasn't a tree, because she'd seen a tree such as this art teacher had never experienced! So she got magenta, and orange, and blue, and purple, and green, and she scribbled all over her page and happily brought it up and gave it to the teacher. She looked at it and said, "Oh my God...."
How long does it take somebody to realize that what they're really saying is, "To pass, I want you to reproduce my tree." And so it goes through the first grade, second, third and right on into seminars in graduate school. I teach seminars in graduate school. It's amazing how people have learned to parrot by then. Think? Don't be ridiculous. They can give you the facts, verbatim, just as you've given it to them. And you can't blame those students, because that's what they've been taught. You say to them, "Be creative," and they're fearful. And so what happens to our uniqueness; what happens to our tree? All this beautiful uniqueness has gone right down the drain. Everybody is like everybody else, and everybody is happy. R.D. Laing says, "we are satisfied when we've made people like ourselves out of our children.
Excerpted from the book, LIVING, LOVING & LEARNING by Leo Buscaglia
4 comments:
Dan, I just love this article! I'm currently working with a nonverbal autistic child and struggle on a daily basis with the "parrot" theme. I think this could be both positive and negative. I have to use visual and verbal cues when trying to get this student to perform certain tasks. During art class, as hard as it is to assist the student, I let him do his own work no matter what because as a parent I would want to see my child's own personal work and not the teachers. I love this article and have passed it on to many educators.
This article, or a version of it, was circulated to our school through an email. I thought it was great. We really need to start looking at the students as individuals and help them develop their unique qualities WITHOUT fear. I know teachers who will NOT diferentiate their lessons to accommodate different learning styles. This is so wrong. I know it is not always possible to help every student, but we need to look at who we are teaching and TRY to get to know how they learn, and work with them. I teach Math and often students will say "I did it a different way, BUT I got the same answer." I tell them that is OK as long as the steps they took are done correctly, that we don't all solve the problems the same way. My own daughters are in college and sadly I do tell them if you want a certain grade, you will have to "spit out" the answer the teacher wants to hear even if it is not what you think. My daughter is a History, Political Science Major and often has different opinions but is stifled by many of her teachers and classmates. How sad... I let her vent her opinions to me when she is completely frustrated by her peers. Great article, one EVERY teacher, administrator, and person working with children should (MUST) read.
This article is so on target. I always think about teachers I had and which ones I remember. I remember the ones who let us be ourselves in the classroom. As a parent, I always tried to let me kids do their own work no matter how the finished product looked. I would go to Open House and see the "student" projects and would know immediately who really did the work (mom or dad). As a teacher, I try to let personal styles and personalities shine through. The part about the rabbit trying to fly etc, reminds me that all students learn differently too. We can't always teach a child to learn the same way every time. And, we can't expect that a poor writer will become a skilled writer in our classroom. We can hope that we can peak their interest in writing and understand why it is important. The same would be true for many subjects. I plan to pass this on to my colleagues. Great article!
I definitely identify with this article. Each student has strengths and weaknesses. While we want them to have a well rounded education, we need to remember that each child learns differently. It's really interesting to ask them how they got their answer (even if it isn't "correct.") There is often more than one correct answer and many ways to get there. It's amazing how differently their minds work. They also can learn so much from each other. I often share new methods I learn from previous students with my new class. Being open minded is very important.
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