It began with an experience when I was possibly ten years old. A relief teacher (I cannot remember his name, let's call him Karl) took over our class for one day. During the art period he taught us one fundamental principle in such a way that it stands out, even now, as one of the most memorable learning experiences of my entire school career.

He asked us to draw a cardboard box. We did. All our lines were parallel and at right angles.

"That's wrong", teacher Karl announced. "Come closer and look again..." With the help of a ruler he coaxed us until WE DISCOVERED that the lines towards the edges in the back of the box tend to converge. After this, an enthusiastic class of children drew doors, cupboards, windows, everything within sight, IN PERSPECTIVE. To this day the excitement of discovery is clearly in my memory. To this day I have not forgotten the principle of drawing spatially.

What made this experience so unforgettable?

Out of a number of models of cognitive development, surely the best known is that of Swiss psychologist Piaget. He suggested that the child's ability to grasp certain facts varies with age. He classified four main periods. The first two deal with the infant and the three to seven year old. He called them the Sensory Motor and the Pre-operational periods respectively.

To illustrate: One of Piaget's most widely publicised experiments was pouring a given amount of water from a drinking glass into a narrow cylinder. As the level of the water higher, the pre-operational child interprets the cylinder as now having "more water in it". Such 'logic' makes no sense to the adult, yet this is the way the young child perceives such an event.

Before children enter the forth and final stage, (Formal Operations, that is the adult's way of abstract thinking and imagining that begins at age around twelve) they pass through the years from the mid to upper primary years. Piaget called this time in the life of the child "Concrete Operational". He said:

CONCRETE OPERATIONAL CHILDREN OPERATE ON OBJECTS, BUT NOT ON VERBALLY EXPRESSED HYPOTHESES.

If we accept this to be true we may conclude that, what we explain to them in words, needs to be supplemented and reinforced by material objects that the children can handle, examine or even act out.

In physics, for example, we may talk at length about two wheels of a different diameter. Driven by friction or a chain we explain how the diameters relate to the turns of the wheels. Can we assume that the children really comprehend the process? To make it more difficult for the teacher, many children, especially those who are verbally competent or maybe have a photographic memory, are able to paraphrase the words beautifully. They give the impression of knowing, while in reality it is mere rote learning, possibly forgotten once the tests are over.

Then there is the case that was brought to my notice some years ago. An outstandingly intelligent and musically gifted boy just couldn't wait until his greatest dream was fulfilled: with enthusiasm and expectations he went for his first piano lesson. But then he had to sit in a certain manner. He had to hold his hands in exactly "this way". After "You still can't do it properly," came a lecture how much effort it takes to play the piano 'properly', about hours and hours of painfully practising scales. All this gave the child a false impression. His enthusiasm eroded, I remember his frustrated outburst: "I'm giving my best, but nothing I can do is good enough for her".

Significant in this case, however, is that another - sympathetic - teacher now was unable to teach the child. As soon as the fingers touched the keys they froze. The boy's piano career had come to an abrupt end.

The emotions evoked by the first impression were irreversible. Moreover, the human mind works by association. Once a 'neural cluster' (the wish to learn music, the urge to learn about archeology or mathematics or whatever that may be) is connected with a bad feeling, subsequently working with the given subject will always tend to reawaken the bad feeling.

So, the thin edge of science suggests, first of all, to make sure the child feels good when s/he is introduced to a new activity. The teacher in the case above may have asked questions to find how she could have built on the child's enthusiasm. She may have shown him how the touch from the keys transferred to the hammers, striking the strings. She could have made him listen to the beauty of some interesting chords and perhaps not until the second lesson started on the correct positioning of hands while allowing his coordination to develop step by step.

Let us return now to examples in technology. There is the parabolic reflector, the dish principle. Assume we have such a mirror, maybe from the headlight of an old car, and a small torch bulb connected with flexible wires to a battery. Ask the children to hold the bulb inside the mirror in order to focus the light on a wall or on the ceiling.

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Let them explore how a slight repositioning of the bulb inside the focus range will increase the light intensity and make the spot smaller.

Then let them brainstorm how this principle can be used in other ways. In one school I got most of the following from the children:

Signalling, astronomy, car headlights, spot lights, catching the heat from the sun to boil eggs, space communication (e.g. commands to space craft, receiving data), defence (radar, reconnaissance), sound (long-range microphones such as in recording bird songs), television programs, satellites telephones, weather.

Resonance is a principle that takes many different forms. Start with a slow one: a child on a swing. A slight push every now and then will keep the child in motion. BUT, get some of the others to try moving the child either slower or faster than the 'natural resonance frequency' (sometimes it helps to use the proper scientific terminology) and they'll get a surprise: much more power is needed. That is the concrete operation. After the swing demonstration, we may progress by examining the pendulum of a clock and learn that resonance promotes accuracy and amplification. Sing a note into the open piano with the sustain pedal down. Only the corresponding string will echo our note back to us. Sing a different note and a different string will resonate. Now it is a small step for the technically minded to understand how we can receive and select one station out of 'so many in the air'. Using much higher frequencies, radio reception is yet another variation on the theme called resonance. The fundamental principle in all these cases is the same.

Reading music can be an awesome task for the beginner. The thin edge takes the child from the known to the new. A handful of coins on largely drawn staves will do. Bah bah black sheep, for example, has 40 c in each bar. The first bar has four notes and every of the four ten cent pieces has one beat per note. In the second bar ,HAVE-YOU-A-NY, two five cent pieces correspond to two notes per beat and so on.

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When the child has comprehended the fundamental principle, let him or her 'write' other known tunes with the coins for practice. Not only is it fun. We have built a foundation of trust and confidence. We have opened the door to learning proper musical notation without fear.

Electro-magnetism has been one of the most influential discoveries of all times. Discovered by Michael Faraday in 1832, I classify this event ranging in importance with the invention of the wheel. How can we teach this principle?

Children like stories. So we may begin by telling the story of Michael Faraday, how he experimented and found his way into a field that was completely new in those days. There were no text books, no teachers who would have been able to help him. What did he do? Get the children to wind 50 turns or so of some enamelled wire on a bolt, a thick nail or other soft iron piece. Connected to a single cell battery, it will lift up paper clips and drop them as soon as the battery is disconnected. Every child will be keen to test if their electromagnet works.

To add to the fun, let them compete: The EM that picks up the most paper clips wins. Now brainstorm the difference between a permanent magnet and an electromagnet. They may find out for themselves that a magnet is always a magnet. By contrast, an electromagnet can be switched on and switched off. Now brainstorm how and where this principle is applied in our daily lives. This task could be extended over a whole term and fill an exercise book.

Children enjoy role playing. How can we explain the effects of magnetism, extending the teaching process even into the lower elementary classes? Half the children wear large signs with an 'N' for North pole on their chest, the other half an 'S' for South pole. Let them walk around the room at random and mingle. "I am a magnetic South pole, you are North. You attract me". "I am magnetic North and so are you. Sorry, let us part quickly".

In mechanics, one child walks around a circle while another walks around a second circle twice the diameter. Both walk at the same speed. How often does one child have to go around the circle compared to another around the larger circle? Introduce and/or follow this up with proper wheels or circular pieces of cardboard. Better still: some play grounds have a 'round-about'. Could an adult hold a bicycle wheel or similar against the bottom of the slowly moving round-about? While the relative number of turns becomes obvious even to the younger child, relating the turns ratio to the diameter of both objects becomes an interesting mathematical exercise for the upper primary student.

In teaching about electricity the children may form an 'electric circuit' with one child playing the battery, another a switch, then perhaps a diode ('one-way traffic' for electrons) etc. What happens when the children act out how the different components manipulate the electron flow or reverse polarity?

On occasions we had great fun building a steam engine with children. One child became the boiler, another the piston, another the crankshaft, then the flywheel. I can still hear the noise. In chemistry, electrons from nucleus to nucleus may be exchanged... the possibilities acting out roles seem endless.

All these experiences fulfil the demands of Piaget's concrete operations. Principles that we conduct in an atmosphere of happy participation, explore various applications, and with the use of objects whenever possible, will be remembered. Moreover, as the activities are fun, we connect good feelings with the task at hand and create enthusiasm at the same time.

After the practical experience we may talk about the subject again and the children will be able to follow our explanations. They comprehend. They learn. Teacher Karl from yesteryear (quoted above) gave us a lession in how to learn. He taught us to do, to explore, to find out for ourselves. Sometimes I wonder, what if he had simply drawn a box on the blackboard - in perspective - and asked us to copy it? That's what our regular teacher would have done. Would I have remembered the event? I don't think so.

Come to think of it, one sentence expressed by Maria Montessori puts all the above in a nutshell. Speaking from the viewpoint of the child, she put it this way: "Help me to do it myself".

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Copyright © 1997 - 2003 Peter Schmedding,
CHILD DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS,
O'Connor, ACT 2602 Australia .