Martin Minsky

I’m still trying to wrap my head around a meeting that we had with Martin Minsky during the Constructing Modern Knowledge Conference. We met him at the offices of the One Lapton per Child initiative. Since there was just a small group of us meeting with him, the discussion was fairly informal and was structured as a question and answer with conference participants questioning Martin Minsky about his beliefs and experiences.

I had never heard of Martin Minsky but got carried along with the enthusiasm of the the rest of the participants. The discussion was interesting and got me thinking; it helped me affirm my views of education. I won’t write what I personally thought of Martin Minsky from that one meeting but will highlight some of his comments below.

Martin Minsky’s Comments:

• “Teach children science, and let the learn history”
• Pleasure is over-rated. What should motivate us is the quest for understanding/knowledge for the ability to invent/create.
• Religion is blind faith and Roman Catholicism stunted the growth of science for many years.
• Instead of creating horizontally, we should create vertically. This lead to a discussion of his disgust for athletes as there is nothing that we can learn from them about how the brain works, and about the process of creation/invention.
• Painters and other artists don’t have a vision but rather sees how many principles they can incorporate into their creation for some end result.
• Engineering and science are most praiseworthy because of the process that results in a product or invention.
• Children have individual abilities and potentials. It may be possible for all children to learn Math etc.
• Running cars on water, or from corn, is impractical, inefficient
• Fugues are the only music worth playing because there is more creativity and innovation than repetition.
• Pop music and jazz are a waste of time as they incorporate too much repetition.
• The current state of research in North America is despicable. t is difficult for people to get long term research money. People used to spend 20 or more years doing a Phd to actually invent/discover something; now they do one in much less time, of much less depth.

Alfie Kohn at CMK08

Some notable thoughts of Alfie Kohn’s

Constructivism is concerned with how learning occurs which informs teaching.

Giving children brick after brick [of knowledge] does not mean that they have a house; what they have in the end is a pile of bricks.

Grades lead to

• students choosing the easier task when they are given a choice of tasks
• students performing more superficial tasks
• less questioning for understanding and less making connections

We don’t need to fix kids but rather to fix the system so that we can keep the kids

Essential question: What does it mean to be well educated?

Resources mentioned

“Rethinking Rubrics”, Alfie Kohn

Linda McNiel (MET Schools)

My thoughts

Advice worth considering …

Peter Taylor, co-creator of FableVision

July 28, 2008

“Art should be part of the experience every single day.”

“Inspire imagination and creative thinking in your school and in your life.”

Help kids find their dot (re: “The Dot”, Shel Silverstein) and to connect their dots to other dots. His dot was art which he connected to storytelling and to math.

What’s your mission?

Thoughts

I like the idea of helping kids find their dot. I think that we often try to fit kids into courses and into ways of thinking, even while talking about child centered learning and constructivism. It’s a real challenge to take the time to know each student well enough to recognize his/her specialty and to help him/her use that specialty to understand, explore and experience the world. This idea challenges me to re-evaluate how I deal with student behavior in the classroom.

Such a simple idea that causes a whole paradigm shift. “What’s your mission?” That encompasses so much more than simply saying what’s your job. It begins to get to the reason for doing that job. It requires reflection, self-awareness, a purpose. I’ve been pondering on my mission since then and thinking about how to align my actions more closely with my theoretical mission.