TEACHING WITHOUT TEACHERS
Can we really manage to teach without teachers, of course we can, natural evolution has endowed as with the ability to both teach and learn sometime around 50,000 years ago, we can communicate, and with that communication we naturally teach each other through question and answers virtually every minute of every day.
Our imagination and response to the spoken word is the most vital part of being human, it is now over 10 years since I discovered the abacus, I realised within 10 minutes of watching it, that nothing in the world could beat the abacus or any abacus as a foolproof method of teaching mathematics, but I have beaten any abacus, I have created an abacus that is written in words, an abacus that can be written in any language, an abacus if necessary that can be printed on the back of the page of waste paper an abacus that would cost less than a penny to produce all it needs are seven stones and a few hours teaching time for anyone to be able to use it.
But even better than an abacus for a penny I have produced an abacus which we are making in China to be sold in every country around the world, it will be produced and marketed at the cheapest possible price, in order to spread the basic abilities, which the abacus endows in its users, it is the ability to understand the meaning of numbers, a child teaches itself to speak by copying the sounds that he or she in its daily life it imitates those sounds and associates the meaning of the sounds with the articles and language that surround it.
It is not natural for us to read, but it is perfectly natural for us to be able to read, yesterday I sat with my brothers granddaughter, she is only four years and six months old, when her brother who was a year and half older was being taught the alphabet in rhythm she was able to sing the alphabet almost as quickly and as well as he was able to, after showing me how well she was able to read, which was extremely well for her age, I took her through the abacus one, she has done some work on it but very little, because of her ability to read she was able to read and manipulate the abacus to illustrate her counting to over 500 before she became bored.
With good teaching and more abacus before she is six years old, the rest of her education will be a mere walk-through.. As I see it we need to spend more time working thoroughly with symbols, my own granddaughter who is 3 1/2 can recognise every letter of the alphabet and make all the associated sounds with every letter of the alphabet, I was able to set out simple three letter words which she was able to read, if her progress is as good as that of a half-cousin then I shall be most pleased.
Teaching very young children how to use the abacus has convinced me that we are generally underestimating the abilities of the child and that it is that every healthy child in learning to do mathematics quickly adapts what the child is learning into perfect understanding of numbers, I also feel that the part of the brain the child is using to work with numbers is being exercised allowing it to understand all visual symbols and groups of symbols and associating those symbols with the sounds they represent.
My belief is that nursery and primary schools should develop fully integrated teaching programmes which throughout the day concentrate on symbol recognition sight and sound.
Over writing and copying symbols along with working within groups of different ages establishes and reinforces the sounds of symbols as well as the meaning of those sounds and their associated combination within language. Most of my observations are contained somewhere within my websites.
Geoff has illustrated far better than I could have done the principles and suggestions that I have been trying to incorporate within my observations on this website.
Obviously the principles that I am advocating need to be practised researched and trialled properly, there is only one day that we can use to start this program, and that is tomorrow, don't we all will naturally use the information we gather today to improve our own and everyone else's tomorrow. If the information that I have researched and proven to myself had been of an agricultural nature, farmers would have been using it, from the very first day they heard about it, but the teaching profession is extremely slow, at taking up new concepts and developing them.
The television and the computer is to where we must look for secondary and ongoing education put to practical teaching of everything that we humans need to know and do only showing and doing is ever liable to provide the ongoing lifelong education we virtually all realise is possible.
Geoff. i doubt wether i shall live to see a better day for me thankyou.
Maybe I need to buy an abacus for my seven year old who I am trying to homeschool, but I would have to learn how to use it. He was able to read Alice in Wonderland at 4 1/2 and can now read magazines like Time and National Geographic independently. I am afraid that I might be neglecting his math ability. He does play online educational math games and has learned a lot that way. Math always seems to be at the bottom of my list of things to teach him. Reading, science, history, and geography are so much more fun. Actually I don't think I am teaching him anything and at times he has taught me things that I never even thought about. He taught me to ask why. Long ago, when I was in public school, I sat back and did exactly as I was told and I learned to not ask anything. I usually made straight A's. I didn't learn half as much as this child because he is allowed to ask why and given time to find answers. We enjoy educational television shows together, play a lot of educational computer games and read together. He thinks learning is fun. It is sad that most of his friends who are several years older and go to our local public school don't think learning is fun at all and won't read anything for pleasure.
Fast forwards in education.
Let us look forward into the future, not only the future of education, but let us also examine the future of the world itself. Modern technology is being developed faster than we can ever conceive, because I am trying to illustrate a particular point, I am thinking clearly in between each sentence that I speak. Technology is translating my speech directly into written words, my basic understanding of words is one where each word that we use is a separate idea. Combining words into sentences allows us to develop single ideas into complex ideas. If we look into the future obviously some of the ideas we have had in the past will be relevant, but simply because we are not aware of what is to be developed and the possibilities of those developments we are not able to conceive some of the things which will be available in the future.
If we are to consider education as vital to the progress of the last 50 to 60 years, and we look at a situation where I am now able to speak and write the words down instantly almost perfectly, we are looking at a world where the written word will become ever more important, on the face of it who would ever bother to learn to type when you can just sit there and write the letters without touching the keyboard. The human brain responds instantly to the sounds of words, when we read something we are creating with and our own brain words, and interpreting those words into meaning instantly.
“And interpreting those words into meaning instantlyâ€
Purely in order to illustrate what I mean I have rewritten this sentence which is at the crux of human understanding, just as I am sitting thinking before I write the next sentence so is the human being in repose. Most of our thinking is in relation to the work or the life we are living, we may be sat on a bus casually looking through the window, part of our brain is observing what we see, and part of our brain is considering what we are going to do next, how long before we get off the bus, the explanations we need to give to our colleagues, whether those colleagues may be friends or family or workmates a similar principle still applies.
Human beings and probably very many animals are equipped with the ability to think instantly virtually at the speed of light, if we consider that if we see or hear or smell danger we react instantly to save ourselves, many animals do just the same.
If we are to think about the future and specifically what type of future do we wish to have, education plays a large part within that future, not however education as we have considered it in the past, but education as we can consider it in the future.
Unlike animals we are able to communicate, our ability to think on whatever subject, is most likely to be affected by words either spoken or read rather than being affected by what we are doing or even not what we are thinking, as the main part of that thinking is related to our daily working and resting lives.
What I have written previously concerning this paper is specifically directed at enabling the reader to consider what I'm saying, I am not asking you to agree with it, only to consider it. After almost 10 years of directly thinking about thinking I would specifically make the point that probably only 1% of what any human being understands has to be taught directly, I constantly refer to the fact that children are able to teach themselves to speak purely by listening and associating meaning with the world around themselves, this is proven over and over again by the fact that we speak many different languages with many different accents.
In normal speech as we make enquiry of each other and make explanation to each other, we have no need to think about the sentences we are going to use they are available to us naturally at the speed of light, and just as quickly as we can we give explanations or make enquiry this is the manner in which I believe we teach and learn on a daily basis, however much we think we know it is most likely that we know very little about any subject
More research is being done constantly even this morning we were given an instance of a heart having been stopped ten years previously being restarted and available to a child who had previously been given a donor heart. It is most unlikely that we shall ever be able to conceive the workings of the human brain and to the extent of the possibilities which that brain can be taken.
Part of the one percent that has to be learnt/taught, is a small section of education, this section of education is in what we generally described as basic skills. My belief is that every child in normal health that has the ability to speak, has the ability to learn to read and to do mathematics easily. Provided of course we teach it systematically and thoroughly.
People of the Moslem faith are able to memorise the Koran, by repetitive chanting, we have in the European alphabet and the ten symbols in mathematics what are most likely to be, the most simple and comprehensive keys (symbols) that human communication will ever produce, what little wrote learning we need to imprint them and create simple utilisation rules can be achieved by rhythmic chanting, first of the alphabet in order to establish the alphabetic sounds of the letters, and then by chanting of the times tables, in order to establish a permanent instant perfect memory, they are perfectly logical steps to take in establishing permanent and ineradicable memory.
We must never disregard Maria Montessori who was probably the most outstanding and successful mass educationalist of the last century her research and findings when incorporated successfully are vital in accelerated comprehensive learning, it is no surprise to me that she spent a whole life designing and creating effective simple resources by which to enable children to learn quickly and thoroughly. I am positive that she would utilise an abacus in the teaching of arithmetic, my own enchantment with the abacus has led me to understand how essential repetitive movement is in establishing permanent memory, the transfer ten techniques in using the abacus rapidly becomes an imperceptible movement for any child that is well acquainted with it.
It was my understanding and appreciation of the abacus that led me on numerous occasions to investigate the possibilities of producing something as simple to teach reading, I considered the beginnings and middles and endings of words using three discs I was able to produce a multitude of words, it was something that I had worked on for hundreds of hours, it was just as I was about to produce a reading wheel, that the true value of the alphabet and its comprehensive simplicity became crystal clear to me, any child that could recognise the letter “a†could recognise 26 symbols, establishing that memory easily, became part of my research, I have developed a simple system of playing cards, which clearly establishing which way up the card needed to be viewed in order to establish perfect memory, and avoiding the child mixing up the significance of the letter, working entirely in lowercase simplifies the child's understanding of the letters initially, there is no practical reason why a child needs to be taught capital letters, the recognition of capital letters is automatic and subconscious as a child proceeds to read simple books.
A parent or teacher without professional training when they are equipped with these two simple resources is able to achieve the training of any healthy child with competent reading ability and basic understanding of mental arithmetic, provided of course they have spent some time learning to use these two simple low-cost resources, and of course being diligent within their application and continuation until such a time as the resources naturally become out grown.
Once the child can mentally do a three figure sum in notation it has no need of an abacus to do the calculation effortlessly, in a similar manner were the alphabet is clearly mentally established there is no further need for the individual letters other then, building simple words for recognition exercises.
The Concept School
Having spent such a great deal of time looking for a perfect resources to teach reading and mental arithmetic, it would be most unlikely for me to suggest any other method of teaching reading and establishing basic mathematics knowledge whether it was a parent working one to one or a single teacher working with anything up to 100 children, my approach would be exactly the same, I would be trying to establish simple symbol recognition by repetitious chanting, take for instance the tapping of the fingers bringing the fingers down onto a table with 100 children chanting and copying one two 3 4 5 rest then using the right hand, 67 8 9 10 .
The teacher would then use the mental concept of twin kittens called five and the simple wording of the statement, “this hand is five†looking at the left-hand and then looking at the right-hand say “ this hand is five†finishing with the words “together they are tenâ€. The purpose of this exercise is to establish the sound and association of the numbers one to 10, by tapping on a table or a tree or the Childs own knees we are providing sound and linking that sound with an individual finger and linking that finger permanently with a written symbol, singing in rhythm establishes the memory of those 10 numbers very quickly, and tapping on a table with those fingers establishes the mental link between the sound and the individual finger, getting the child to imagine a kitten called five establishes a picture of one hand and five fingers, and simply by saying this hand is five and this hand is five finishing with they are ten together, quickly establishes a mental truth the fact that each hand is five, this truth allows the child to simply start with five, as it learns to add one to five fingers to it.
This simple exercise could be achieved in 10 minutes even on the first day it was introduced, using it 10 minutes a day for five days would establish it as a permanent memory for most children, within a nursery school it needs to become an everyday permanent chanting exercise the older children will continue to lead the younger children and obviously take pleasure in showing the younger children and showing their parents their achievements. In a reception class of four to five years of age, after using it for a couple of weeks using the technique once a week or so would be sufficient.
The Abacus one teaching resource can be introduced to a child at any age, were the child's parents are willing to devote their own time to teaching their own child, a great deal can be achieved between three years and four years of age, at four years of age it is quite a simple matter to teach children the abacus in large groups, using small groups and one-to-one teaching after the initial familiarisation of associating the right-hand column of the abacus what we described as the finger column, which is in reality the Childs own two hands.
Whether we are teaching one or a hundred children pushing at the centre column of the abacus can be done using both hands together we are attempting to register within the child's mind that each counter represents 10 fingers when it is the middle column of abacus one. Chanting numbers ten to one hundred in tens is simple as is adding the word hundred to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and finally shouting out the words ONE THOUSAND.
Every time I write or explain the simple rules of my Systematic Education which are etched into my own mind by consideration and experience, I am reminded of a story I was told in my own infant class, the story was about a general collection of birds who build their own nests without a roof, they had engaged the only bird they knew that built a nest with a roof to explain to them just how this bird put on the roof, every time the bird that knew how to build a roof started to explain how all this was done, he started his explanation with the most basic methods of starting to build the nest, the birds around him, who were appalled at being told what they thought they already knew, would cry tell us how to put the roof on, time and time again the roof builder began his explanation, and time and time again the other birds could never bear to listen, the consequence of this was of course very simple, very few birds are able to build a nest with a roof.
It is own private experience that when we come down to a very detailed examination of anything, that many small details are totally unrealised, observation and consideration of just how we'd learn anything, are totally dependent, on a great deal of subconscious knowledge associated with total concentration and very much associated with physical repetition of process.
Any nationality of child using any type of abacus very quickly builds up an appreciation of the abacus simply by repetitious movement and explanation been given from parent’s teachers or other class members.
I would like you to consider a remark of Richard Feynman's at this moment.
Richard Feynman said that once outside science a scientist was as much in the dark as any other fellow.
Whatever we are doing we all depend upon a great deal of background information and that background information has to be built up over a long period, a simple illustration taken from my own experience, at 65 years of age and often pestered to death, by people with problems, it is not my habit to carry a mobile phone, although I have had periods where I did so, quite recently I was given a mobile phone and after carrying it I hardly ever became proficient with it, yesterday we were entertaining a 10-year-old boy who discovered my unused telephone, he told me that he had telephone something similar to it, and he explained to me how to switch it on, how to switch it off, how to start a text, how to enter numbers, how to close a text, in fact he gave me the most comprehensive lessons in multiple telephone use that I am ever likely to receive, and especially lessons where I would be so enthralled with explanation.
I left school at 15 years of age, having attended a local English grammar school, my real education began then, following my mother the pacifist, four adults started my general education, two elderly farm workers, the elderly gamekeeper and my own father, the first was a farm worker who told me that everyone knew many things that I didn't, and that I should listen to everyone and consider what they had to say. The second farm worker told me that you could never get to the bottom of a liar; It has been my long-held belief, about people that lie, they are believed mainly because we simply wish to believe what they're saying, in the end probably only scientific truths will ever be enough for us. The gamekeeper was a man of great experience he had travelled around England with a former schoolteacher, a minor relation of Winston Churchill a man called Percy Marlborough Stewart, who had himself travelled around the world on numerous occasions having written about his experiences.
My close and dear friend Ernest Haig taught me the value of good company and very good stories and English public houses, his opinion was the same as Dr Johnson if there was a place more convivial than an English public house or Inn then he had never found it, going on from these excellent teachers, I was taught farming, and business by my father, he told me that you could never trust, a businessman or a farmer, who had major problems, he told me that a man with such pressure, would do almost anything to survive, and so it is from these four individuals, and my own consideration and experience, that my life has been formed.
Passing all the knowledge that was so readily available to me as a young man to my own family and friends is an enjoyable experience however it is only in terms of extreme stress that we really appreciate those golden rules of life which the elderly try desperately to pass on to the young.
The major responsibility of teaching your own child, will always be your responsibility. Within a modern world where we have a surfeit of useless information beamed out to us on a daily basis it is vital that we are able to read, to instantly calculate mathematical situations which occur within our daily lives to be able to process and consider what we are being told, maximising our own personal ability, is the only way we can combine with the others in order to build a safe and democratic world where individual injustice is minimised, where life is allowed to be lived with both pleasure and tranquillity as a major part of our lives.
Scientist’s claim that over 90% of the world's present knowledge has been acquired over the last nine years, my observation is that common sense and reasonable human behaviour and collective wisdom has not come about in the last 9000 years.
If we are to utilise this vast wall of scientific knowledge which descends on was like an avalanche, only democratic government and the individual appreciation and concern within human behaviour will give us the long term viability that the planet needs.
Dramatically improved teaching practices are vital to the future of a safe and peaceful world, utilisation of the developments within science need to be broadly spread.
From this standpoint let us consider concept schools of the future, from the information now available to us at the moment let us consider what is possible within school teaching and the advancement of individual personal knowledge acquisition.
My research and enthusiasm on basic seals teaching reaches far back into history, establishing a simple and universal Basic skills teaching programme would have as much advantage to the human race, as those advantages created by the simple universal acceptation ten symbols in mathematics.
Let teachers of all nature; consider my words as to the value of education.