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I’m not sure I’d agree with animals being educated. As far as I’m concerned, education entails study, and I haven’t seen any animal
doing something I’d call ‘studying’. All of the examples thus far around animal learning (which I do fully agree happens) are around concrete rewards or goals, and done
willingly. Cat wants mouse? Innovate a new route and apply contextual locational knowledge to path to that room. Cat conditioned to use its own behavioural conditioning (with nails on glass) in order to wake their human up? Very smart sure, but hardly
something I’d term “study”.
We spend (and encourage students to spend) a great deal of energy wrestling with abstract concepts and theoretical frameworks with
(usually) little practical application. The very idea of a degree being the end result/goal of study has no equivalent in the animal kingdom, just as we distinguish birdsong as a necessity for birds, while learning the piano/guitar is either a leisure or
professional activity, and not a necessity.
Perhaps I have a more human-centric view, or my not having owned a pet giving me a more sceptical view, or perhaps those with pets
are just more inclined to view their pets as more human than others (for e.g., I can’t really wrap my head around Ian and Jayne’s comments on animals displaying emotion).
I have plenty more floating thoughts on this subject but I fear adding any more will result in a dangerous lack of coherence and cohesion
J
Despite my “bah humbug” reading of all of this, it has made me think about where we draw the lines between learning/conditioning/educating/teaching
in a novel and interesting way
Barry
From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Jayne Richards
Sent: 17 July 2018 11:30
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Hoping folk think these questions of relevance/interest - can dogs be educated? can dogs be educators?
So true: love and anger etc., are concepts. As humans we reformulate our understandings of emotions to encompass intellectual grounding. Animal are clearly capable of all manner of emotions but
do not misappropriate or add 'spin' by divorcing feeling through conventional signifiers.
Jayne
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Rose Bruford College |
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From: learning development in higher education network <[log in to unmask]>
on behalf of Ian Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2018 11:13 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Hoping folk think these questions of relevance/interest - can dogs be educated? can dogs be educators?
What struck me as I was pondering these questions is that while (as some earlier contributors have noted), dogs and indeed other animals seem to 'learn' initially
through behaviourist principles ('if I behave like this, I get this reward' etc), the results of those learnings turn into something very different. Rather than just displaying desirable behaviours, dogs learn to enact these in combinations, which in turn
closely resemble human emotions, like 'anger' or 'love'. These emotions from dogs can look and feel very much like their human equivalents. And in terms of whether the dog can become a teacher ... humans (children and adults alike) can observe a dog displaying
love/affection and learn to replicate the pattern. It's definitely an argument that many humans might acquire the ability to replicate an emotion better by observing it from a dog (who displays it flawlessly and largely unconditionally) than a human (who might
display it subject to caveats). I guess this explains the growing popularity of canine and equine therapy too. So yes, I believe dogs can be learners and teachers and that it goes deeper than behaviourism. Fantastic thread, and I would love to know what motivated
this question, Gordon!
Best,
Ian Johnson
Learning Development Tutor
University of Portsmouth
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