Here’s a new poll for you summer visitors.
Which of the following treatments for Learning Disabilities do you find the most bogus?
- Brain-wave synchronizers (43%, 19 Votes)
- Chiropractic manipulation (36%, 16 Votes)
- Colored lenses and overlays (16%, 7 Votes)
- Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) (5%, 2 Votes)
Total Voters: 44
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How about an option to select all of the above? How do you choose between four forms of utter nonsense?
I agree with MArgi, but I’ll tell you how I did it. I picked the one that is most likely to surface right now. Seems like anyone who puts the words “the brain…” in a statement gets traction with the looney platoony. One my favorite that shows up in every report by an evaluator in my area is:
“Use color, the brain responds to color!” No kiddin’ she actually puts in the exclamation point. Doesn’t put in any suggestions about about how or for what to use color. Given that olfactory senses are actually stronger in the memory for most of us, I think we should suggest, “Use odors the brain responds to smells!”
Margi, watch for the next poll. It’ll have a different spin on it (and you may then want to suggest another alternative).
Rick, I remember a classmate who suggested the GO-VAKT approach. In the interest of inclusiveness, he wanted to employ all the “senses,” so he added gustatory and olfactory. He argued, much as you did, that olfactory input, given its prominent roll in memory (Proust’s madeleine) was wrongly overlooked. And, he suggested, Skinner’s research had clearly shown the importance of the gustatory factor. He recommended pronouncing the name for his approach as one would sound it out if it were a two-syllable word.
Learning styles: Freud’s seminal contribution to learning styles
Kerry Hempenstall
It is difficult to argue with the proposition that every child is unique. A less readily accepted assumption is that such uniqueness necessitates that all children learn differently. An assertion arising from this assumption is that teaching to a student’s natural learning style will lead to higher quality learning. Thus, it is argued, there are those visual learners for whom instruction should involve a visual format; audiles who learn best when listening; and, tactiles who need to touch for optimum learning. Learning styles remains remarkably popular in education, despite the absence of significant empirical support that such classifications are valid or reliable, or that attempting to teach to a dominant modality improves the outcomes for students. As the belief has been so resistant to contra-indicative research findings, the writer elected to consider how far the concept could be carried.
A seminal paper in The Onion entitled Parents of Nasal Learners Demand Odor-Based Curriculum (www.runet.edu/~thompson/obias.html) provided the impetus for a search for more than the few simple categories currently considered critical.
Looking into the learning styles movement from a historical perspective provides some surprising information about its origins. A search of leading academic databases indicated that Freud was the first to recognise a “You say tomaytoe, I say tomartoe” instructional dichotomy. He pointed to differences in style among learners based upon the degree to which they successfully completed early developmental stages.
Thus, oral learners are those who are fixated at the oral stage or who regress to that style under stress. Bill Clinton is of course a classic example of the oral learner, despite Freud’s famous dictum that “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”.
All students have an inalienable right to a preferred style of education, and young oral learners are those whose primary sense involves the palate. “I eat, therefore I learn” provides teachers with the challenge, and thereby the inspiration to meet these students’ distinctive needs. Although much NICHD research is yet to be completed, an empirically validated strategy for this group involves teaching reading through the ingestion of alphabet soup. Some critics have argued that the force-feeding approach to teaching leads to simple regurgitation of facts; however, this may be the ideal system for oral learners as it provides learning opportunities at both the input stage and the output stage.
The ability-training model has been treated with undue harshness by researchers in recent times. Popularised during the 1960′s, it proposed that training the underlying processes behind any given skill will overcome learning difficulties and accelerate learning. Many internet marketers have recognised the potential in this once forgotten sidetrack, and have enthusiastically filled this market niche. For oral learners, opportunities include tongue callisthenics, epiglottal biofeedback, and mouth aperture training programs in either small group or mouth-to-mouth instruction.
Anal learners have always been misunderstood and harshly treated in school. Learning blockages are a common problem, and teaching that does not allow for this specific zone of proximal development often goes to waste. Anal students have suffered discrimination, and their innocent attempts to communicate anally have been met with disdain, disgust and punishment. Teachers must now become alert to the needs of such students, and provide encouragement for particularly insightful examples of anally produced responses to, for example, reading comprehension questions. Incorrectly interpreting these contributions as mischievous flatulence is demeaning to the students, and massively diminishes their self-esteem. Communication is the key to civilised discourse and all attempts must be respected. Surely we’ve learned something from the wonderful way in which Facilitated Communication has resolved the communication issue in autism. As teachers we must become alert to the anal learners’ construction of the world. This alertness was defined by Rogers as “entering their phenomenological field”. Entering the field of an anal learner is invariably a rousing, unforgettable experience.
It is time to desist from the persecution of anal learners, and instead become attentive and accepting of their natural communication style. Because we appreciate that one-way communication is inadequate as a teaching strategy, we recognise a need for training how to communicate in like manner, just as some dedicated teachers learn finger spelling, sign language, or cued articulation to aid those with other special needs. A preliminary survey of young teachers known to be sensitive to unique student needs has reported their preparedness to do whatever it takes to redress this communication problem. Indeed, some remembered (in their teacher training) constructivist professors providing many lectures that could only be anally-inspired. There are rumblings from less flexible teachers, however, that only massive in-service re-education will enable them internalise the skill level required.
If we are truly to integrate those with such very special talents, we must also make every attempt to normalise their experience. How can a school demonstrate to these students that they are valued just as the way they are? It is not hard to imagine a school anal choir. What parents of the anal learners would not feel proud of their children, performing a beautiful piece of music in their natural and inimitable manner – thereby enhancing acceptance by teachers and peers alike? It would surely provide a public validation of their style that would elicit improved social cohesion and tolerance in the school.
The overt and covert behaviours of phallic learners have also been misinterpreted in the past. A category with more boys than girls, the apparent self-absorption has tended to leave them isolated in class and sometimes overlooked by teachers. Paradoxically, they often prefer their educational activities to occur in private, whilst sometimes relishing the opportunity to display their achievements to the whole class.
The phallic learner has a reputation for having a rather narrow perspective, and thus relatively few instructional windows of opportunity are possible. However, inspiration to teachers is provided by the many successful phallic learners working in the advertising industry. They have demonstrated that it is not difficult to cover a diverse range of topics while employing only one thematic tool. Teachers should consider the use of the double entendre to hammer home major conceptual points. Of course, the subtle introduction of Playboy into the beginning reading program is entirely consistent with the important role of pictures in learning an alphabetic language. “It’s not what you’ve got, it’s the way that you use it” is the phallic mantra. The phallic learning style appears to be a common and an enduring one, as in a large scale New York Times survey, many women reported awareness that most of their partner’s cognitive functioning occurred below the waist.
Freud’s description of the latency period as one in which very little happens obviously fits a significant number of students. The latent learner is one who is not ready for learning yet, and the appropriate teaching strategy is to do nothing. DO NOT TEACH! We are indebted to the far-sighted whole language pioneers who recognised this increasingly large group some time ago, and have ensured developmentally appropriate practice (in this case, no practice) is applied. Though it may be difficult to accept for some teachers, it is the normal style of these learners to do nothing. Latent learners should be accepted and celebrated, rather than badgered by well meaning, but behind the times, instructionally-obsessed teachers. The latent learners’ conception of the universe is as valid as any other, and teachers should resist the temptation to shift them into any artificial learning model, such as mastery learning or precision teaching.
So there you have it. An acknowledgement of the wonderful, previously unsuspected diversity in our students can open new vistas to teachers, albeit with a few associated challenges. Learning styles teachers appreciate that if children are to take risks as learners, it is incumbent upon teachers to provide the unconditional positive regard (Rogers again) towards their students’ preferred modes of learning. As Marie Carbo clarified so succinctly, when we consider all of these traits as strengths rather than as teaching problems, difficulties simply evaporate.
Howard Gardner added an eighth intelligence to his profoundly important Multiple Intelligences framework, but it is obvious that he has missed something. It is time Gardner recognised the work of the pioneering Freud by inclusion of these additional categories. Oral intelligence, anal intelligence, and phallic intelligence must have their day in the sun. Surely, however, the most profoundly instructive of the Multiple Intelligences must be latent intelligence. This is an intelligence of which there are no observable signs in any domain. It’s criminal the way in which this group has suffered discrimination. But, no longer. We’ve finally reached that most desirable of educational states – complete recognition, inclusion, and celebration of the brilliance of every student. Everyone in the world can now be above average in one of the expanded Multiple Intelligences framework. Thank you, Sigmund.