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Posted on 07/06/2013 5:28:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Learning, and thinking, are deeply social activities.
This is not the traditional view (Rodin's iconic sculpture, "The Thinker," is conspicuously alone in his chin-on-fist musings), but it's the view that is emerging out of several decades of social science research. Our minds often work best in interaction with other people's minds, and there are particular kinds of relationships that are especially good at evoking our intelligence.
One is the master-apprentice relationship, which I wrote about here. Another, of course, is the teacher-student relationship—but today I want to talk about the benefits of this relationship for the teacher. For thousands of years, people have known that the best way to understand a concept is to explain it to someone else. “While we teach, we learn,” said the Roman philosopher Seneca. Now scientists are bringing this ancient wisdom up to date, documenting exactly why teaching is such a fruitful way to learn — and designing innovative ways for young people to engage in instruction.
Students enlisted to tutor others, these researchers have found, work harder to understand the material, recall it more accurately and apply it more effectively. In a phenomenon that scientists have dubbed “the protégé effect,” student teachers score higher on tests than pupils who are learning only for their own sake. But how can children, still learning themselves, teach others?
One answer: They can tutor younger kids. The benefits of this practice were indicated by a pair of articles published in 2007 in the journals Science and Intelligence. The studies concluded that first-born children are more intelligent than their later-born brothers and sisters and suggested that their higher IQs result from the time they spend showing their younger siblings the ropes.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
That is why large home schooling families have the older kids helping to teach the younger ones.
This is an area that has always interested me as a trainer/consultant/facilitator because this certainly applies to my experiences. Thanks for the post — saved the article!
According to my Dad, who is now deceased, students tutoring students was a method used in the old one-room school houses that taught multiple grades.
Education has not improved, it has regressed exponentially. A very high percentage of HS grads, and many college grads for that matter, are dumb as rocks these days. That observation is not casual, but is garnered from working with them and trying to train them.
Had a wonderful professor who said if we catch him making a mistake, we get the next class off. This was a high tech engineering course, so many opportunities.
Of course we gott'm.
Which would also mean if you are teaching liberal propaganda you would become a more rabid liberal.
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