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And What Do YOU Mean
by Learning?
Seymour B. Sarason
Heinemann
Portsmouth, NH
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
1
12/03/2003, 1:32 PM
Heinemann
A division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
361 Hanover Street
Portsmouth, NH 03801–3912
www.heinemann.com
Offices and agents throughout the world
© 2004 by Seymour B. Sarason
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a
reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sarason, Seymour Bernard, 1919–
And what do you mean by learning? / Seymour B. Sarason
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-325-00639-3 (alk. paper)
1. Learning. 2. Educational change—United States. I. Title.
LB1060.S27 2004
370.15’23—dc22
2003021258
Editor: Lois Bridges
Production editor: Sonja S. Chapman
Cover design: Night & Day Design
Author photo: Zach Fried
Typesetter: Valerie Levy/Drawing Board Studios
Manufacturing: Steve Bernier
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
08 07 06 05 04 VP
1 2 3 4 5
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2
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To Nathaniel Feuerstein
with his grandfather’s love.
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3
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4
12/03/2003, 1:32 PM
Contents
Preface
ix
One
The Major Themes
1
Two
Words and Things
11
Three
Infant and Parental Learning
27
Four
Parents as Teachers
39
Five
Home and School Contexts of Learning
55
Six
What Do We Mean by Critical Thinking?
69
Seven
Practical versus Impractical
87
Eight
Creativity and Classrooms
107
v
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5
12/03/2003, 1:32 PM
vi
Contents
Nine
The Disconnect Between Administrators and
Classroom Learning
125
Ten
What Do Administrators Know About
Contexts of Learning?
141
Eleven
What Is Missing in a Voucher Policy?
169
Twelve
What Can People Become?
187
Postscript
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
197
Bibliography
201
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
6
12/03/2003, 1:32 PM
Preface
This book is centered around two assertions. The first is that the word
or concept of learning is not only lacking in substance but also has the
characteristics of an inkblot; in addition, the relationship of those
characteristics to actions is illogical, confusing, and self-defeating. The
second assertion is that unless and until research provides a credible
basis for distinguishing between contexts of productive and unproductive learning in the classroom, educational reform will be fruitless. I
know that together the two assertions will elicit surprise in some
people, disbelief in others, if only because people unreflectively assume that what they mean by learning is obviously clear, right, natural, and proper, and not in need of scrutiny. I do not claim to have
done justice to either assertion but I do claim that there is evidence
that both assertions cannot and must not be dismissed out of hand.
Learning is not a thing. Learning is a process that occurs in an interpersonal and group context, and it is always composed of an interaction
of factors to which we append labels such as motivation, cognition, emotion
or affect, and attitude. Neither singly nor in their interactions is the
strength of these factors ever zero. Direct observation of the learner can
give us a limited, albeit important, picture of the factors always part of
the learning process. How we intuit or deduce the role of the factors depends on the psychological-conceptual sophistication of the teacher. For
example, parents of preschoolers are always trying to make sense of the
relation between what they directly see and what may be in the minds
of their youngsters. That is why in the pages of this book I contrast the
parent-as-teacher with the classroom teacher. For example, when a
nine-month-old child unexpectedly begins to display marked anxiety
when strangers come near, parents may become puzzled, especially
when the child has never displayed such behavior. The parent may ask,
Why this “new” behavior, what does it mean, what does it portend,
what should or can I do, what is going on in that little head? In a classroom of twenty to twenty-five children the teacher is almost daily asking and trying to answer similar questions she has about students.
Teacher and parent feel compelled to do something, but at the same
time neither feels secure about what is going on in the child’s mind.
vii
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
7
12/03/2003, 1:32 PM
viii
Preface
Teachers, like parents, get concerned when a child cannot do something
children of that age should be able to do. Both seek answers because
both have to act. If you peruse any of the widely used books by parents
on infant and child care, containing as they do instances of puzzling or
difficult behavior a parent seeks to repair or prevent, you will see that
the advice given in the book is based on the author’s implicit or explicit
conception of learning. And over the decades different authors have differed widely (even wildly) in their conceptions, as Hurlbert’s (2003) recent book has so clearly demonstrated.
Your conception of the learning process not only has enormous
implications for classroom learning contexts but also goes a long way
to explaining why I have long predicted that educational reforms,
resting as they do on a superficial conception of learning, will continue to be disappointing. This book was written not only for educators, but also for a general public puzzled by how little the reform
movement has to show despite the fact that since World War II several
billions of dollars have been poured into the reform movement by federal, state, and local governments, as well as foundations. In fact, the
failures of the educational reform movement should have alerted us a
long time ago to the possibility that our conception of learning and its
contexts is part of the problem. For example, it is now the conventional wisdom to proclaim mantra-like that schooling will not improve
unless there is a partnership between teachers and parents, that they
need each other and the child needs both of them if he or she is to
benefit from the partnership. But what do we ordinarily mean by and
about partnerships? If we know anything about partnerships, marital
or business, it is that they are not interpersonal beds of roses. That has
long been the case in the relationship between teachers and parents.
That should not be surprising for many reasons, but let me mention a
few here which would explain why this book contains what it does.
First, both before and after a child starts school, parents know and experience their child in ways teachers do not and cannot. Similarly,
teachers know that child in ways that parents do not and cannot.
What teachers and parents know may vary from being similar to
being widely discrepant. Second, partnership requires—it certainly
implies—that each partner knows what the other one is thinking, doing, and why. Each should feel safe expressing their point of view because they have the same goal: maximizing the quantity and quality
of what the child learns. When, as is so often the case, issues of turf,
temperament, and power enter the picture, the exchange of knowledge about and experience with the child plummets and the goal of
the partnerships is negatively affected. Partnership becomes a label,
not a reality; the partners do not learn with or from each other. Third,
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
8
12/03/2003, 1:32 PM
Preface
ix
aside from the fact that teachers receive no training whatsoever in
how they should talk and relate to parents, the culture of schools in
no way makes up for that mission in training. What are schools for?
The universal answer is that they are places where children learn. No
one, educators or otherwise, has ever said that schools are places
where teachers learn. I have long regarded it as a glimpse of the obvious that teachers cannot be expected to create and sustain a context of
productive learning for children if such a context does not exist for
teachers. And such a context hardly exists for teachers. In many
schools it exists not at all; the poor quality of parent-teacher relationships is but one instance of it. Fourth, parents, indeed people generally, are ignorant of how a teacher is embedded in a school system in
which he or she is at the bottom of an organization chart with layers
of administrators above her in power and responsibility but who provide little or no direct help with the learning of teachers and students,
let alone of parents.
So we have at least three school learning contexts: teacher and
students, teacher and administrators, teacher and parents. None of
these contexts is independent of each other and all of them are under increasing critical scrutiny because of puzzled dissatisfaction with
the level of quality of student learning. It is not surprising that public
frustration leads to blame assignment and scapegoating, a reaction
that is understandable but in my opinion will continue to be without
positive consequences. It is quite understandable to me that a parent
with a child in school is most concerned with who is her child’s
teacher this year, who may be the child’s teacher next year, etc. And
I say “concern” advisedly because parents know that their year will
be a good or bad year depending on who their child’s teacher is. It is
the rare parent who has not had bad years. It is, I suppose, too much
to expect of parents that they understand that teachers are victims of
training programs that ill equipped them for the awesome, demanding, sensitive role of teacher, and that school systems do little or
nothing to help. In my experience there is one group of teachers
who will agree with what I have said: these are teachers whose children are in school and who for one or another reason have reservations about how their children are being taught or treated, meet with
the teacher, and end up resentful because they have been made to
feel unjustly critical, subjective, or demanding. Someone should do a
study of such encounters between teachers. I predict that the results
will be similar to what is described in books written by physicians
who became hospital patients.
Learning is not a thing, it is a process. This book is an elaboration
of that assertion. There is learning and there is learning. I try on
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
9
12/03/2003, 1:32 PM
x
Preface
these pages to distinguish between contexts of productive and unproductive learning. And by productive I mean that the learning process is one which engenders and reinforces wanting to learn more.
Absent wanting to learn, the learning context is unproductive or
counterproductive. Is it not noteworthy that the word or concept of learning probably has the highest of all word counts in the diverse literatures in
education and yet when people are asked what they mean by learning they
are taken aback, stammer or stutter, and come up with a sentence or two
which they admit is vague and unsatisfactory?
Teachers, like parents and everyone else, have far from complete
control over the context in which they carry out their assigned roles.
The mother and father may not see eye to eye on how to rear their
child, the father may not be around much and the mother feels overburdened and alone, if there is more than one child the mother and/
or the father may feel they are not giving each the quality and quantity of the attention the parents think each child needs, financial resources constrict what parents would like to have for their children,
etc. It is no different in the case of teachers, a fact parents tend not to
recognize and appreciate. I have written about educational reform in
previous books and in this book I had no intention to go over or even
summarize what I have written. The one exception has to do with the
nature of the relationship between the classroom teacher and those in
the administrative hierarchy whose responsibility it is to insure or
monitor the degree to which contexts of classroom learning are appropriate and effective. If the relationship between the teacher and administrators is superficial and infrequent, as is now the case, changes
and improvement in student learning cannot occur. In this book I devote only one chapter to this issue because it will give readers, especially if they are not educators, some understanding of why in the
school culture the concept of learning is not discussed, challenged, or
changed. “And what do you mean by learning?” Is it not strange that
that question is hardly discussed in schools? Would you not find it
strange if in churches and synagogues there was hardly any discussion
of the essential feature of religion: faith?
It took the better part of the twentieth century for mental health
professionals to begin to recognize that troubled children and parents
can be helped beyond a small degree by treating any or all of the family not in a one-on-one way but rather literally as a family. Every family is a system of relationships in which each member affects all other
members in small or large ways. The task of understanding and altering the family’s system is never easy. We blithely acknowledge that
classrooms and schools are part of a school “system,” and then proceed to deal with the major problems by riveting on part X, then on
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
10
12/03/2003, 1:32 PM
Preface
xi
part Y, and so on, as if each part in no way bears the imprimatur of a
larger system. In theory and practice, it is a confirmation of Mencken’s
caveat that for every major problem there is a simple answer that is
wrong. It is like the way we use the concept of learning where we are
not aware we are missing the trees for the forest. In my experience,
parents have a working understanding about their family as a system,
although it tends not to prevent them from reacting only to its parts.
That is far less the case with school personnel for whom the concept of
system is as murky and superficial as their concept of learning.
What were the features of the learning contexts that were productive for you? If readers ponder that question, they will have no difficulty following my argument, and, I predict, they will agree with me,
especially those who are parents.
I can assure the reader that I do not mean I believe that I have
said the last word on learning. I shall be more than content if this
book stirs discussion on what is meant by learning. And my cup of
content will overflow if it persuades readers that noncosmetic educational reform will be impossible unless it rests on a conception of
learning radically different from the contentless one about which it
can be securely said that it has been neither practical nor helpful.
As always, it is with the deepest gratitude that I acknowledge
my thanks to Lisa Pagliaro for the many practical ways she is helpful to me.
—Seymour B. Sarason
Stratford, Connecticut
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
11
12/03/2003, 1:32 PM
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
12
12/03/2003, 1:32 PM
Preface
This book is centered around two assertions. The first is that the word
or concept of learning is not only lacking in substance but also has the
characteristics of an inkblot; in addition, the relationship of those
characteristics to actions is illogical, confusing, and self-defeating. The
second assertion is that unless and until research provides a credible
basis for distinguishing between contexts of productive and unproductive learning in the classroom, educational reform will be fruitless. I
know that together the two assertions will elicit surprise in some
people, disbelief in others, if only because people unreflectively assume that what they mean by learning is obviously clear, right, natural, and proper, and not in need of scrutiny. I do not claim to have
done justice to either assertion but I do claim that there is evidence
that both assertions cannot and must not be dismissed out of hand.
Learning is not a thing. Learning is a process that occurs in an interpersonal and group context, and it is always composed of an interaction
of factors to which we append labels such as motivation, cognition, emotion
or affect, and attitude. Neither singly nor in their interactions is the
strength of these factors ever zero. Direct observation of the learner can
give us a limited, albeit important, picture of the factors always part of
the learning process. How we intuit or deduce the role of the factors depends on the psychological-conceptual sophistication of the teacher. For
example, parents of preschoolers are always trying to make sense of the
relation between what they directly see and what may be in the minds
of their youngsters. That is why in the pages of this book I contrast the
parent-as-teacher with the classroom teacher. For example, when a
nine-month-old child unexpectedly begins to display marked anxiety
when strangers come near, parents may become puzzled, especially
when the child has never displayed such behavior. The parent may ask,
Why this “new” behavior, what does it mean, what does it portend,
what should or can I do, what is going on in that little head? In a classroom of twenty to twenty-five children the teacher is almost daily asking and trying to answer similar questions she has about students.
Teacher and parent feel compelled to do something, but at the same
time neither feels secure about what is going on in the child’s mind.
vii
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
7
01/06/2004, 12:17 PM
viii
Preface
Teachers, like parents, get concerned when a child cannot do something
children of that age should be able to do. Both seek answers because
both have to act. If you peruse any of the widely used books by parents
on infant and child care, containing as they do instances of puzzling or
difficult behavior a parent seeks to repair or prevent, you will see that
the advice given in the book is based on the author’s implicit or explicit
conception of learning. And over the decades different authors have differed widely (even wildly) in their conceptions, as Hurlbert’s (2003) recent book has so clearly demonstrated.
Your conception of the learning process not only has enormous
implications for classroom learning contexts but also goes a long way
to explaining why I have long predicted that educational reforms,
resting as they do on a superficial conception of learning, will continue to be disappointing. This book was written not only for educators, but also for a general public puzzled by how little the reform
movement has to show despite the fact that since World War II several
billions of dollars have been poured into the reform movement by federal, state, and local governments, as well as foundations. In fact, the
failures of the educational reform movement should have alerted us a
long time ago to the possibility that our conception of learning and its
contexts is part of the problem. For example, it is now the conventional wisdom to proclaim mantra-like that schooling will not improve
unless there is a partnership between teachers and parents, that they
need each other and the child needs both of them if he or she is to
benefit from the partnership. But what do we ordinarily mean by and
about partnerships? If we know anything about partnerships, marital
or business, it is that they are not interpersonal beds of roses. That has
long been the case in the relationship between teachers and parents.
That should not be surprising for many reasons, but let me mention a
few here which would explain why this book contains what it does.
First, both before and after a child starts school, parents know and experience their child in ways teachers do not and cannot. Similarly,
teachers know that child in ways that parents do not and cannot.
What teachers and parents know may vary from being similar to
being widely discrepant. Second, partnership requires—it certainly
implies—that each partner knows what the other one is thinking, doing, and why. Each should feel safe expressing their point of view because they have the same goal: maximizing the quantity and quality
of what the child learns. When, as is so often the case, issues of turf,
temperament, and power enter the picture, the exchange of knowledge about and experience with the child plummets and the goal of
the partnerships is negatively affected. Partnership becomes a label,
not a reality; the partners do not learn with or from each other. Third,
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
8
01/06/2004, 12:17 PM
Preface
ix
aside from the fact that teachers receive no training whatsoever in
how they should talk and relate to parents, the culture of schools in
no way makes up for that mission in training. What are schools for?
The universal answer is that they are places where children learn. No
one, educators or otherwise, has ever said that schools are places
where teachers learn. I have long regarded it as a glimpse of the obvious that teachers cannot be expected to create and sustain a context of
productive learning for children if such a context does not exist for
teachers. And such a context hardly exists for teachers. In many
schools it exists not at all; the poor quality of parent-teacher relationships is but one instance of it. Fourth, parents, indeed people generally, are ignorant of how a teacher is embedded in a school system in
which he or she is at the bottom of an organization chart with layers
of administrators above her in power and responsibility but who provide little or no direct help with the learning of teachers and students,
let alone of parents.
So we have at least three school learning contexts: teacher and
students, teacher and administrators, teacher and parents. None of
these contexts is independent of each other and all of them are under increasing critical scrutiny because of puzzled dissatisfaction with
the level of quality of student learning. It is not surprising that public
frustration leads to blame assignment and scapegoating, a reaction
that is understandable but in my opinion will continue to be without
positive consequences. It is quite understandable to me that a parent
with a child in school is most concerned with who is her child’s
teacher this year, who may be the child’s teacher next year, etc. And
I say “concern” advisedly because parents know that their year will
be a good or bad year depending on who their child’s teacher is. It is
the rare parent who has not had bad years. It is, I suppose, too much
to expect of parents that they understand that teachers are victims of
training programs that ill equipped them for the awesome, demanding, sensitive role of teacher, and that school systems do little or
nothing to help. In my experience there is one group of teachers
who will agree with what I have said: these are teachers whose children are in school and who for one or another reason have reservations about how their children are being taught or treated, meet with
the teacher, and end up resentful because they have been made to
feel unjustly critical, subjective, or demanding. Someone should do a
study of such encounters between teachers. I predict that the results
will be similar to what is described in books written by physicians
who became hospital patients.
Learning is not a thing, it is a process. This book is an elaboration
of that assertion. There is learning and there is learning. I try on
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
9
01/06/2004, 12:17 PM
x
Preface
these pages to distinguish between contexts of productive and unproductive learning. And by productive I mean that the learning process is one which engenders and reinforces wanting to learn more.
Absent wanting to learn, the learning context is unproductive or
counterproductive. Is it not noteworthy that the word or concept of learning probably has the highest of all word counts in the diverse literatures in
education and yet when people are asked what they mean by learning they
are taken aback, stammer or stutter, and come up with a sentence or two
which they admit is vague and unsatisfactory?
Teachers, like parents and everyone else, have far from complete
control over the context in which they carry out their assigned roles.
The mother and father may not see eye to eye on how to rear their
child, the father may not be around much and the mother feels overburdened and alone, if there is more than one child the mother and/
or the father may feel they are not giving each the quality and quantity of the attention the parents think each child needs, financial resources constrict what parents would like to have for their children,
etc. It is no different in the case of teachers, a fact parents tend not to
recognize and appreciate. I have written about educational reform in
previous books and in this book I had no intention to go over or even
summarize what I have written. The one exception has to do with the
nature of the relationship between the classroom teacher and those in
the administrative hierarchy whose responsibility it is to insure or
monitor the degree to which contexts of classroom learning are appropriate and effective. If the relationship between the teacher and administrators is superficial and infrequent, as is now the case, changes
and improvement in student learning cannot occur. In this book I devote only one chapter to this issue because it will give readers, especially if they are not educators, some understanding of why in the
school culture the concept of learning is not discussed, challenged, or
changed. “And what do you mean by learning?” Is it not strange that
that question is hardly discussed in schools? Would you not find it
strange if in churches and synagogues there was hardly any discussion
of the essential feature of religion: faith?
It took the better part of the twentieth century for mental health
professionals to begin to recognize that troubled children and parents
can be helped beyond a small degree by treating any or all of the family not in a one-on-one way but rather literally as a family. Every family is a system of relationships in which each member affects all other
members in small or large ways. The task of understanding and altering the family’s system is never easy. We blithely acknowledge that
classrooms and schools are part of a school “system,” and then proceed to deal with the major problems by riveting on part X, then on
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
10
01/06/2004, 12:17 PM
Preface
xi
part Y, and so on, as if each part in no way bears the imprimatur of a
larger system. In theory and practice, it is a confirmation of Mencken’s
caveat that for every major problem there is a simple answer that is
wrong. It is like the way we use the concept of learning where we are
not aware we are missing the trees for the forest. In my experience,
parents have a working understanding about their family as a system,
although it tends not to prevent them from reacting only to its parts.
That is far less the case with school personnel for whom the concept of
system is as murky and superficial as their concept of learning.
What were the features of the learning contexts that were productive for you? If readers ponder that question, they will have no difficulty following my argument, and, I predict, they will agree with me,
especially those who are parents.
I can assure the reader that I do not mean I believe that I have
said the last word on learning. I shall be more than content if this
book stirs discussion on what is meant by learning. And my cup of
content will overflow if it persuades readers that noncosmetic educational reform will be impossible unless it rests on a conception of
learning radically different from the contentless one about which it
can be securely said that it has been neither practical nor helpful.
As always, it is with the deepest gratitude that I acknowledge
my thanks to Lisa Pagliaro for the many practical ways she is helpful to me.
—Seymour B. Sarason
Stratford, Connecticut
Heinemann--Sarason [fm].p65
11
01/06/2004, 12:17 PM