The One Doing the Learning
Why is it that those who are regarded as having the most compassion in education say stupid, insensitive things like "the one doing the talking is the one doing the learning"?
Those who are regarded as having the most compassion in education say—in large numbers!—stupid, insensitive things like "the one doing the talking is the one doing the learning." Yet, those in the camp regarded as pedagogically cold and patronizing, more often than not, say things like this:
Some students are quiet. Indeed, a lot of students could benefit from being a bit quieter. But often these quiet students produce incredible work when given the chance. They also exhibit many of the behaviours we would like to see in all our students: calm, focused, productive, and studious. This should be the focus of our evaluation of them.
Moreover, it should be our responsibility to create conditions to allow these students to flourish . . . We praise students for their verbal contributions because they are the most immediate and clear signal of their engagement and learning. We smile warmly at the student bursting to tell us the answer to our question. But what about our quieter students? What will allow them to flourish? . . .
One thing that will not allow our quieter students to flourish is constantly drawing their attention to a characteristic of theirs that they probably cannot change, and almost certainly do not need to change.
