REFLECTIONS ON BRUNER'S SPIRAL

The Positive Spiral
I want to express that my impression of the educational psycologists and theorists that we have studied in relation to constructivist learning, is that they are wonderful men with deep insights into human nature. My concern is that their ideas reveal certain truths of the child's process of learning, which when applied from "theory into practice"- can have negative effects on the child's overall development - more on this later.
Taking the positive aspect of spiral learning. It is obvious that learning builds on previous learning. The metaphor of a plant growing in healthy soil with lots of sunshine and clean water springs to mind. The child "grows" into reading, for example, from the first recognition of the letters as living beings of sound through to the later comprehension of complex texts

The Negative Spiral
The problem I see, is that theories are only theories. When behavourlists and materialists develop an education system based on those theories, we end up with three year olds being taught computers because "we can".

We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to a child at any stage of development.

Bruner

Take a look at the above quote. These thoughts are used to justify the belief that it is of advantage to teach for example reading to children as early as possible. No one seems to realise that we need to test these logical- sounding statements on the touchstone of reality and ask: Is this true??? Should we start in pre-school teaching children the very beginnings of reading by introducing scripted words? And take tools of knowledge as another example. Who asks today in secular education when the right time has arrived to put a pencil in a child's hand to start the process of writing?
I will argue that there is a right time for everything, to bring to the child the discovery of the world and itself in all kinds of manner. It is not about technology. It is about pedagogy.

"There is a time for sowing, there is a time for reaping"

The child's well-being depends on how we educators undestand WHAT can be taught WHEN and HOW and WHERE and WHY.

It beggars belief that Waldorf education, which employs creatively the best of all the theories, we have studied, is not generally recognised.