Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Gestalt learning

Thanks to the contributors at UnschoolingDiscussion, I have some reasonable descriptions of the way Fish & Cricket learn:

"One way you can put this idea across, is to borrow some teacher jargon to stun the next person who tries this {examining & criticising children's knowledge}. Say "My kids are whole-to-part learners, not part-to-whole learners." Or if you want it to be more understandable you could say that they are "holistic" learners. When I want to be LESS understandable, I toss in the world "gestalt", even though I'm not completely clear on the meaning."

{to which another unschooler added:}

From Dictionary.com

Gestalt:

"A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts."

Sounds like a perfect way to describe a learner, and also Unschooling.

I have also heard the definition that the "whole is greater than the sum of its parts"


So, Fish and Cricket are pursuing a gestalt education.

No comments:

Post a Comment

COMMENT POLICY:
Thank you for taking the time to give me and other readers your comment (even disagreement), particularly if it is relevant, respectful and constructive.

We do not generally post on contentious issues so we do not expect problems.

However, we will delete comments we consider to be:
disrespectful, destructive, irrelevant or SPAM (even disguised SPAM such as sucking up: praising our posts without reason while linking to a business site: that will be deleted).