The Environment v/s Heredity Debate

I understand that most of us are pretty fed-up of the environment v/s heredity (or genetic or biological) or nature v/s nurture debate that has been going on in our sessions.  But I want to add a few notes to it after today’s session on the process of language acquisition among children.

It must be noted that the debate cannot be pushed away as irrelevant because it is very much relevant if we are going to work in the field of education especially in the area of pedagogy and curriculum design. And we need to make a stand on the issues if we want to make curriculum for children.  Our stand on this issue will decide what we expect of a child to learn, and what don’t expect of a child to learn.

Lam has written about this debate in his blog (click here to read) and nicely presented both sides of the argument and I’m not going to add anything to it.  He had rightly pointed out the Practitioner’s point of view when he said that:

“as a practitioner who strives to bring changes in the educational environment of children, the rationality is more on the environmental aspect. After all, we cannot influence the heredity of a child, but we can influence the environment”.

To add one last point here after today’s session that there is no denying that both genetics and environment play important role especially if you happened to subscribe to today’s session that there is an innate ability in children to learn the complexities of languages without the involvement of the environment.  The only question is –to what extend genetics or environment play a role in our learning?

To find the role of genes in learning

1. Research by King's College, London (published by BBC)
2. "Nurture" Is More Influential Than "Nature"

To find more information on Children’s innate ability to learn language, I recommend the following: 

1. University of Chicago Chronicles and
2. The Speech Therapy and Information Resources

To find the difference and relation between heredity and genetics:

1. Watch this youtube movie
2. Read this Studyworld's Article

The Three Types of Knowledge

According to Burnard* (1996), there are three different types of knowledge, they are not independent, but supportive of each other:

1. Acquaintance knowledge (Eg. I know Oxford well).  This knowledge can be further divided into two types based on its ‘directness’.  The first is (a) Knowledge about, e.g. I know about Mozart’s music, (b) Knowledge of, e.g. I know of music by Mozart.  Acquaintiance knowledge also called experiential knowledge are personal, subjective and affective; gained through direct encounter, which are the seeds of experiential knowledge; tacit, loaded with personal (often experiential) meanings; idosyncratic i.e. peculiar to an individual.
   
2. Ability knowledge or Practical knowledge:  These types of knowledge are based on our abilities and skills. (Eg. I know how to ride a bike).  Practical knowledge are demonstrable in psychomotor or interpersonal skills; the acquisition of skills; ‘knowing how’, the substance of smooth performance.
   
3. Propositional knowledge (Eg. I know that eagles are birds).  It is contained in theories/models; propositional –made up of statements & propositions; ‘text book’ or written down; knowing that something is the case; a bank of facts, theories and ideas.  Knowing this knowledge makes it a little easier (a) to be clear in knowledge statements and (b) to understand the different levels of knowledge statements.

The first two types of knowledge are very interesting, but it is the third one which the philosophers are interested in, because they are the knowledge upon, to put it in a generalized manner, our education system, our curriculum, i.e. the knowledge that is being imparted to our students in our various educational systems are based.

While googling through the topics, I came across someone who talk about Edmund Gettier (‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’) who famously presented cases in which we want to say that someone has justified, true belief but not knowledge. I put a link to these ‘Gettier cases’ if you want to read it further.  The article also has more discussion on Propositional knowledge and Justified True Belief which you may be interested in reading further. (to read the article, click here)

* Burnard, P. 1996. Acquiring interpersonal skills - a handbook of experiential learning for health professionals. 2nd edition. London: Chapman & Hall.

Current Indian Education System

I don't know who made the film, or from where it came, but it's just 3.36 minutes, so do take your time to watch it!!!

Recycled Learning, Indian Style!!!

From the BBC Network, Sanjeev visits some impressive young students taking time out of their school day to help teach street children the same syllabus. That's recycled learning, Indian style, and it makes a big impression on the presenter in this BBC Worldwide video clip.