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Poem:  “The Naming of Cats” by T.S. Eliot, if you like, here Eliot reads it himself

Statement of the Whole: Jerome Bruner said, “Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.”  Is this true?  If it is, how does this work?  Anything or just some things?  Steve and Jason have fun discussing this statement for half an hour.

1. The stated position — Jerome Bruner: “Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.” (Rose, p. 142)
2. What it is arguing against: Modern Overly Air Tight Developmental Theory
   1. Are certain subjects only appropriate at certain ages?
   2. Or can, as Bruner states, any child learn anything?
   3. Many today believe strongly in “age appropriate” learning, but don’t we hide behind the “developmentally ready” words because what is really happening is that we have not yet developed our own minds as teachers to be able to give a clear simple straightforward “even a little kid can get it” explanation of whatever we are thinking about. 
   4. Simple is not the same as dumb; often it is indicative of much hard and deep thinking that resulted in a clarity unknown to the novice.
   5. The key here is the phrase, “intellectually honest form”
      1. We must, as teachers, reduce the temptation to “dumb down” an idea. 
      2. When we do this, it short circuits the students’ thinking and growth.
      3. While dumbing it down provides for no pain of learning, but there is also no pleasure, no celebration.
3. What it is not arguing
   1. It is not arguing against real maturity – a more mature mind can learn things more deeply
   2. It is not arguing against the need for layer learning – the same item may need revisiting regularly throughout a student’s life – you don’t learn life in one lesson.
4. How does this work?  How do we call students to higher learning from where they are?
   1. Recounting conversations from faculty development/joking around to students, bringing them into a conversation they can’t fully grasp, but can enter only partially into.
   2. Break it down to the characters. Who are they? What are they doing? Limit them to one sentence each.  Simplifying is not dishonest.
   3. Images help. Classic example: Raphael’s School of Athens.
   4. Write out on the chalkboard a thesis as it develops. When you introduce something new, when a student uncovers something good that must be included, add to it, so they see it literally fitting in.
   5. Maybe the same as “d” but consider building what Steve calls “classroom doodles” which are documents started for a given discussion, put up on the monitor, and we thus can build across multiple days a map of our discussion without it getting erased after class.  Often this becomes the “notes” of a humanities class.

Concluding Thought:  Do we justify our pursuit of the “objective” piecemeal, fact-focused teaching and testing not because our student’s age demands it but because we fear the failure of our students?  We “dumb it down so as to not let them fail. Unfortunately, if they can’t fail, they can’t succeed! So don’t do that.