Because Wisdom Can’t be Told (or Read Online)
This is my take on an article written in 1940 by Charles I. Gragg for the Harvard Alumni Bulletin titled Because Wisdom Can’t be Told. (Buy this article, it's worth every cent of the $6.50). In this article, Gragg dissects and criticizes the stand-up lecture based method of teaching and compares it with the case-based approach for learning. His main arguments for the case-based approach center around the purposeful thinking and collaboration of groups of students engaged in learning activities around real-world situations. What I found really surprising is that we in the e-learning industry are facing the same problem that Gragg faced with the lecture mode way back in 1940: wisdom can't be told (or read online). Here are some lines of Gragg's lines of reasoning:- “It can be said flatly that the mere act of listening to wise statements and sound advice does little for anyone. In the process of learning, the learner’s dynamic cooperation is required”
- “Thinking out original answers to new problems or giving new interpretations to old problems is assumed in much undergraduate instruction to be an adult function as, as such, one properly denied to students. The task of the student commonly taken to be one chiefly of familiarizing himself with accepted thoughts and accepted techniques, these to be actively used some later time. The instruction period, in other words, often is regarded both by students and teachers as a time for absorption.”
- “…the business school must be able to do more for its students than could be accomplished in a corresponding period of actual business experience.”
- “Yet no amount of information, whether of theory or fact, in itself improves insight and judgment or increases ability to act wisely under conditions of responsibility.”
Permalink | Thursday, December 09, 2004
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