If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn. ~Ignacio Estrada
Someone found a school prospectus that reads: “If the pupil does not learn the way we teach, then we will teach the way the pupil will learn.”
In a recent workshop I answered a question about Aspergers and visual learning as follows ” Have you thought of teaching all the children as if they have Aspergers and see if the others can catch up!”
And I found this fascinating paragraph “help them to want to learn, inspire them and they will learn, not by bullying or intimidation but by nurturing and natural abilities and instincts of their learning skills. Work with them and at their speed, don’t push them beyond their learning pace and they’ll get there in the end. Be patient. Work with, not against them. Be kind, considerate, inspiring and encouraging. Don’t bribe but do reward.” From Why does your dog do that..because he is a dog. The chapter on communication. There is much we can learn from animal too.
All of these match the Empowering Learning style. Do learn how to do this for yourself.
Olivehickmott 
This is brilliant. The trouble I’ve run into, trying to teach my methods, is that people assume they know how we learn, based solely on what they were taught about education. Nobody questions (even their own memory) about how they picked up the knowledge they have about a subject but prefer to be told by an ‘expert’ the way it is assumed they learned (Subjective opinion, not objective reality).
Thanks Tony, I think you may like this short video about how we learn and how it goes wrong.
The only way I find I can succeed is to get people to experience it for themselves.
Does Ignacio Estrada speak English? I’ve found a Cuban site but it’s all in Spanish.
The trouble is that adults censor the world because of being conscious and consciousness is a defence against the new. Children are full of unformed energy, like lava in a volcano and so have no critical faculties because they have no sense of right or wrong and therefore don’t attack other on this basis. In other words they are open to learning, not closed as know-it-all adults are. They don’t have the arrogance of knowing what was true but are aware of the possibility of what could be. Like the cone of the volcano that is composed of layers of history and fractured into individuality, the old are separated from the energy, the spirit, that unites the young in vibrancy, instead split up into cooling levels of reality.
Sorry if this is a little romantic in essence but it is the best way I can think of, of describing the process as I see it, myself.
Below is sample pages from my first book. I’d appreciate feed back from children themselves, especially pre-secondary as it is theirs that counts. As my material goes through adult censorship, it is rarely seen by children if ever.
tony sandy paigetheoracle@sky.com
Did you get my last comment or was it lost in the electronic post?
tony sandy paigetheoracle@sky.com