Can we still learn from one of the great minds in the
history of the western world? I am
referring to Leonardo da Vinci. While
not a great deal is known about da Vinci’s early life, he likely did not have
much of a formal education. He was not
university-bound, was not well-versed in the classics, Latin, and other
subjects, and throughout his life he was largely self-taught. Along with this, he also made sure to put
himself in situations where he would meet other intellects of the fifteenth
century so he could learn and collaborate with them. One of the most important lessons to learn
from da Vinci’s approach to and thoughts on education is his mantra, Learn by Experience. To get a feel for how da Vinci approached
life and learning, I recommend Da Vinci’sGhost by Toby Lester.
Da Vinci fumed at inaccuracies and blatant mistakes that existed
in some of the textbooks of the day, where scholars simply believed what was
written down. Why would these ‘scholars’
never question accepted ideas and principles?
A good example of this might be how the Aristotelian, intuitive
conclusion that heavy objects should fall faster than lighter objects was
truth, simply because it made sense to the mind. For many centuries people simply accepted
this, and not long after da Vinci, Galileo finally actually did the experiment
to disprove this long-held conclusion. I
often wonder if da Vinci ever did this on his own, but never published it.
Leonardo took a different path, one that in modern edu-speak
could be called ‘active learning’ or ‘engagement in the learning process.’ He observed Nature, did experiments, built
models, sketched scenes, did dissections of animals and humans (to learn about
anatomy), studied architectural designs both for artistic features as well as
from an engineering perspective, collaborated with other experts in the fields
he was studying, kept prolific journals with all his thoughts and ideas and
re-read them to keep the ideas fresh, and never stopped asking endless
questions about seemingly everything around him. Granted, some might say that the pace he
thought about everything, and the fact that he could think about any subject at
any time, was superhuman, and obviously this is one of the near unique minds in
human history and we can never expect us or our students to have this level of
non-stop curiosity and drive to learn, we can and must learn from da Vinci’s
approach and attitude to learning.
Learn by experience.
This approach was certainly picked up half a millennium
later, in the 1930s, by John Dewey.
Dewey was perhaps the most influential educator/philosopher of education
in the United States during the twentieth century. In his published essay, “Experience andEducation,” Dewey argues that traditional classes and traditional teaching
(i.e. lecturing with the intent that students are sponges for information and
will simply learn from a babbling teacher) must be replaced by an evolving
active learning process. This is the
progressive education approach in Dewey’s language of 1938. As we presently debate what is best for the
21st century student, teacher and classroom, could it be that we
finally listen to and accept what da Vinci practiced five hundred years
ago? I hope so.
Dewey writes that ‘traditional’ education, where all
students move together through classes at the same pace and the teacher and
textbooks provide the information students must study, produces an attitude in
students of “docility, receptivity and obedience.” The subject matter and rules and standards of
conduct are simply passed down from generation to generation, as education
prepares students for success in life.
The curriculum is not challenged from year to year. There is not necessarily any logic behind the
order things are studied, and subjects are disconnected from each other,
meaning kids are going from math class to science class to English to social
studies, and they learn about topics with no relationship between the
topics. Math topics are done in their
order, with no consideration of how those topics may be related and applied in
science, and reading strategies and vocabulary in a reading class are not at
all related to vocabulary and the readings being used in social studies, etc.
Does this sound familiar to you as you think back to your own
education experience? It certainly does
for me!
Dewey’s vision of what he called progressive education
paints a different picture. Education
should provide a means to cultivate individuality. It should allow for some
free activity, which will get students involved with their learning, rather
than just sit and absorb information from teachers and textbooks. Students must be able to learn through
experience (ah, da Vinci!). Present
issues and topics in life should be included in curriculum, and not just the ‘classics’
that have always been studied and may have no relevance any more for students –
so the curriculum must be changing as the times change. Education must teach children how to think
and solve problems of any kind. To be
good at this, part of the process must show how different subjects are related,
to provide students with a broad arsenal to attack problems.
This is a very different way of teaching and learning than
the traditional way of education.
Activity over boredom.
Relevance over tradition. Problem
solving and direct experience over memorization. Experimentation over drill and kill. Synthesis and analysis over prescribed
solutions. Differentiation over one size
fits all. Trial and error over cookbook,
fill-in-the-blank activities (such as labs).
Current events and issues over same old problems in old textbooks. Application to the real world over classical,
ideal problems if there is no relevance for the modern student. Multi- and interdisciplinary lessons over isolated topics. Variety over singularity.
Education is the means to individual growth in Dewey’s progressive model, so students have developed the habits of mind, knowledge base, and
skills necessary to handle a dynamic world, rather than study the same old
things that assume the world is static.
It is my experience that there is still a good majority of
teachers who are teaching the way they were taught, which is much more the
traditional way. This is in part a
product of the No Child Left Behind law, whose very foundation is the factory
line version of cookie-cutter education.
All students must learn at the same pace, learn the same material, and
pass the same tests. It emphasizes the
very one size fits all model that da Vinci would scream at and Dewey is
dismissing. And any hope of expanding a
progressive model in education has been thoroughly thwarted by national
policy. It is the epitome of teach to
the test that we presently have, and is completely counterproductive to 21st
century skills, with creativity at the top of the list, our young people need
to be productive and successful in the fastest changing world we have had in
human history.
We simply MUST learn from the master, one Leonardo da Vinci,
and allow kids to have guided exploration of the world on their own, and give
them a chance to experience topics relevant to their world, and not the past, rather than rely on
the spoon-feeding of information, as if our children are intellectual infants
for the first 18 years of life.
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