Caution: What follows is a long response to Jinan's article and comments on it. Its written from personal experience and is not referenced in any way.
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Dear Jinan, Klaus, Jude, Paul and all,
Many of my own explorations have been in areas that Jinan's article refers.
Rather than go through Jinan's article and the comments about it and agreeing with many points and disagreeing with others, I'd like to describe a different framing.
As an adult, exploring myself and interaction with the world outside and inside , I've found many things are not well represented by theories of cognition and learning and have tried to unpack this a little using an example below.
Before looking at the issues with children, I find it helpful to see the issues Jinan addresses about children by first looking at adults, because, as adults, we can test any theories, comments and ideas in ourselves. It is difficult to go back to childhood to test them.
My experiences in exploring these issues align with many of Jinan's claims. I've found many mainstream theories about cognition and learning are insufficiently sophisticated, insufficient in scope, and in many cases simply wrong when tested against experience. In part these theory issues seems to be due to theories being based on axioms that are too limiting in scope; or them having hidden assumptions that are so encultured that they are overlooked ; or being based on practices that are so engrained that it is hard to see beyond them. An example of the latter is language.
As an example of the lack of sophistication of theories, it might be useful to look at object perception.
When I look at (say) a rose, I can view it in several ontologically and epistemologically different ways or manners, and, I can do each of those from several ontologically and epistemologically different ways of being. Theories of cognition and perception might be expected to address them as distinct.
1. I can view a rose and immediately identify it and label it as 'a rose' conceptually and linguistically and doing that brings into mind what I know about roses. This kind of perception and connection with a rose could be seen as being fundamentally based on thoughts, concepts and language.
2. I can view the rose directly; and not through identifying and labelling it as a rose. In this case, my perception of the rose is more visceral and connected with feelings, empathy, beauty, aesthetics and sense perceptions. In this case, the perception and connection are less based on thought and language. Developing skills in such direct visceral perception can be achieved naturally (good old genetics) or through meditation or aesthetic training of the sort taught, e.g. in design and art. In this kind of direct perception, however, thinking happens because the rose is identified as an object in itself, and the feeling perceptions about the rose are brought into thought to be processed by reflection, planning, designing, judging, decision-making and the like.
3. I can view with perception and awareness the scene in which the rose is a part, but without conscious thinking of any sort other than identifying myself as different from the scene of which the rose is a part. I've found that practice in the methods of watching what is outside myself and my thoughts, feelings and actions enables this.
4. I can perceive the scene in which the rose is a part without conscious thinking of any sort and without sense of self and without even the awareness of the myself watching. This is unmanageable, but fortunately habits (or some other reason) flips things back from this space into at least the minimal amounts of thinking needed for normal planning of life.
The above describe different possibilities in perception. These activities of perceiving the rose, however, can be done in differing states:
a) By an individual who is predominately acting via conditioning, i.e. like a robot with very little sense of self and self-agency, and what understanding and perception there is of this limited sense of self is conditioned, for example through religion, culture, education, mass media, concept and languages structures or other form of indoctrination.
b) By a conditioned individual who has an established sense of self that is distinct, at least, from some of their conditioning. This provides a basis for the individuals to to start to query aspects of conditioning and indoctrination. It also provides the basis for starting to perceive the self as different from thoughts, feelings and words; and the ability to start to see external and internal things as different from their representations in language, concepts and beliefs.
c) By an individual with a strong sense of self and an internal representation of the world that starts to give privilege to their own experiences rather than conditioned representations of others of experiences. This also provides a basis to move away from belief and beliefs.
d) By an individual with sense of self and their thinking predominately based on experiences rather than conditioning, acculturation, indoctrination, beliefs or mental constructs.
e) by an individual whose perceptions and actions are based predominately on experience rather than though or other conceptual representations of it and operating without a sense of self and self agency or planning of actions.
Theories of perception and cognition that can incorporate all the combinations of the above and more, would enable a more nuanced discussion of the issues that Jinan has raised. I suspect they might also enable resolution between the differing positions.
Personally, my experience is there also is a need for a time-based developmental; aspect to the above theories of perception and cognition. There seems to be the need in human development for a loop in which as children we initially perceive and act without much conditioning; then very quickly we become conditioned though actions of ourselves and others (this seems to be a built in aspect of our being and in Jinan's picture it is autodidactic learning without much conceptualisation); and then as we mature we learn to gain a sense of self and perceive a separation from the conditioning. And later we have the possibility to find inside ourselves something different to sense of self.
This suggests there are challenges for parents and teachers to provide good conditioning (which may be self learned without concepts) and a nurturing of children's sense of self with escape hatches and developmental tools for individuals to recognise and separate their sense of self from conditioning.
For design educators at tertiary level aiming to support individuals to develop into first-class designers, it presents a whole raft of very different challenges.
Best wishes,
Terence
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Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, PMACM, MISI
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
[log in to unmask]
www.loveservices.com.au
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jinan K B
Sent: Saturday, 7 May 2016 10:20 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Children learn the world, the way they experience it
Friends
I have uploaded a paper at academia.edu on the topic of what and how children learn naturally as a discussion paper. Hope some of you will find this meaningful.
Children learn the world, the way they experience it
ABSTRACT
What the child learns, left to itself is the way the world is. The world awakens the child to the workings of the world in the child.
Each species does this by engaging with the world autonomously.
The process of being in the world is already in the new born in general terms and the particular space awakens the particular qualities, quite like the way child learns particular language. We are born with knowledge of life as well as knowledge of the species. The context awakens the particular qualities to root ourselves in that space.
So children are learning the way the world looks, the quality or the property of its materiality and the functions, processes and the various phenomenon that happens around them. This is the most scientific way of understanding the world around as well as sharpening the tools to understand the world and developing the qualities to be in the world. The integrity of the world is retained by this integral way of relating to the world. The wholistic nature of the world awakens the wholistic nature in the child.
'Knowing by being' is the process by which children imbibe and there is no compartmentalization of subjects- language, art, science etc.
Child by nature is integrated and whole and so is the world and fragmentation of modern human beings is due the way they are made to see fragmented and compartmentalized world right from childhood.
Cognitive conditions of modernity forces children out of this biologically rooted way of being and knowing and schooling totally reinforces rationality as their cognitive process.
SEE THE full paper at the LINK https://www.academia.edu/s/4b82c2e3c7
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Jinan,
'DIGITAL MEDIUM IS A TOOL.DIGITALLY MEDIATED KNOWLEDGE DESTROYS THE BEING'
http://sadhanavillageschool.org/
https://www.youtube.com/user/sadhanavillagepune
https://www.youtube.com/user/jinansvideos
www.re-cognition.org
www.kumbham.org
reimaginingschools.wordpress.com
http://designeducationasia.blogspot.com/
http://awakeningaestheticawareness.wordpress.com/
http://awakeningaestheticawareness.blogspot.in/
09447121544
0487 2386723
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