Learning without a teacher

I'm being taught about how people learn - I'm in school getting a master's in elementary ed.

I didn't read your post except for the questions and for definitions of terms you used therein.

Do you think serious self-learning after schooling is complete is important?
Yes.

Why is learning "disinterested knowledge" important?
Because when you learn something new, you remember it by connecting it to prior knowledge. For example, when a child learns the basics about the water cycle in 1st or 2nd grade, she associates the new information with what she already knows about rain and clouds and rivers, etc. When she learns more detail about the water cycle in, say, 4th or 5th grade, she connects to all the previous knowledge she has gathered up to date.

So, the more info you know, even if it seems irrelevant when you learn it, the more options you'll have for making connection when you learn something new in the future.

Do our schools teach students to understand or just to know?
Depends on the school. Most public schools are guided by the No Child Left Behind act and the standardized testing that goes with it. Schools which are under-scoring are under more pressure to teach just what the students MUST know for the tests. The tendency is to then slip back into classical teaching styles: lecture, rote memorization, etc.

The push in schools that teach teachers is for us to use methods that allow students to understand so that they truly can know. It involves the ideas of prior knowledge as mentioned above. It also advocates for teaching students critical thinking and problem solving skills which aid in understanding in the classroom AND BEYOND.

Can a person learn serious domains of knowledge without a teacher?I think so. But, it would work best if that person started with the basics and took each new study in a proper order. It would involve lots of reflection. Theories and experiments would probably be necessary. I think that as an educated person, who knows how to learn already, one can teach one's self a new field of study. But, maybe the books you'd read would equate to teachers?

You might find Foucault's History of Sexuality an interesting read. Foucault claims that there is no such thing as "disinterested knowledge," that all knowledge is implicated in power relations (i.e. the attempt of one party to impose a certain framework of understanding upon another), and that those who claim knowledge can be disinterested are invariably the ones most ideologically committed to an underlying agenda.

Foucault aside, it is surely an exaggeration to say



Who is this "we"? If you're worried that "we" are undervaluing "knowledge for its own sake," you could easily put your mind at ease by talking to any number of graduate students, especially in the humanities, and asking them what the term "ivory tower" means. It might renew your faith in the continuing vitality of the (quintessentially Romantic) pursuit of disinterested knowledge.

Two generations ago CP Snow authored the book "The Two Cultures", which identified the two cultures to be ?'literary intellectuals' (humanities) and natural scientists. He constructed the problem in this way:

"I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?"

This is considered to be the equivalent of asking: "can you read?" My point is that the gap between the two cultures today is as wide as it was when Snow drew attention to it two generations ago. At one time in the past this divide might have been considered to be bridgeable by the two cultures; I suspect that is not a possibility. I think it is not a possibility because both cultures have been co-opted by industry.

Our intellectual cities are filled with skyscrapers of narrowly specialized knowledge; all owned by corporations. We have only highly specialized intellectuals focusing ever more narrowly on a specialty that will gain high pay with bonus or life-long tenure with high paying grants.

Corporations will never allow this specialization to cease and so we must find another way if we hope to retake our lives from the grasp of corporations.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider?
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give, yes or no, or maybe
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
-William Stafford

I have for some time been interested in trying to understand what ?'understand' means. I have reached the conclusion that ?'curiosity then caring' is the first steps toward understanding. Without curiosity we care for nothing. Once curiosity is in place then caring becomes necessary for understanding.

Often I discover that the person involved in organizing some action is a person who has had a personal experience leading her to this action. Some person who has a family member afflicted by a disease becomes very active in helping support research in that disease, for example.

I suspect our first experience with ?'understanding' may be our first friendship. I think that this first friendship may be an example of what Carl Sagan meant by "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy".

I also suspect that the boy who falls in love with automobiles and learns everything he can about repairing the junk car he bought has discovered ?'understanding'.

I suspect many people go their complete life and never have an intellectual experience that culminates in the "ecstasy of understanding". How can this be true? I think that our educational system is designed primarily for filling heads with knowledge and hasn't time to waste on ?'understanding'.

Understanding an intellectual matter must come in the adult years if it is to ever come to many of us. I think that it is very important for an adult to find something intellectual that will excite his or her curiosity and concern sufficiently so as to motivate the effort necessary to understand.

Understanding does not come easily but it can be "a kind of ecstasy".

I think of understanding as being a creation of meaning by the thinker. As one attempts to understand something that person will construct through imagination a model--like a papier-mâché--of the meaning. Like an artist painting her understanding of something. As time goes by the model takes on what the person understands about that which is studied. The model is very subjective and you and I may study something for some time and we both have learned to understand it but if it were possible to project an image of our model they would be unidentifiable perhaps by the other. Knowledge has a universal quality but not understanding.

Understanding is a tipping point, when water becomes ice, it is like a gestalt perception it may never happen no matter how hard we try. The unconscious is a major worker for understanding.