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Active Learning

Do not be too timid or squeamish about your actions. All of life is an experiment. (Emerson)

The sensational curiosity of childhood is appealed to more particularly by certain determinate kind of objects. Material things, things that move, living things, human actions and accounts of human action, will win the attention better than anything that is more abstract. Here again comes in the advantage of the object-teaching and manual training methods. The pupil's attention is spontaneously held by any problem that involves the presentation of a new material object or of an activity on any one's part. (William James, Talks to Teachers)

Without an equipment of native reactions on the child's part, the teacher would have no hold whatever upon the child's attention or conduct. You may take a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink; and so you may take a child to the schoolroom, but you cannot make him learn the new things you wish to impart, except by soliciting him in the first instance by something which natively makes him react. He must take the first step himself. He must do something before you can get your purchase on him. That something may be something good or something bad. A bad reaction is better than no reaction at all; for, if bad, you can couple it with consequences which awake him to its badness. But imagine a child so lifeless as to react in no way to the teacher's first appeals, and how can you possibly take the first step in his education? (William James, Talks to Teachers)

How do you get active learning with a large group of students? Start by hiring a good architect.

• How do you do?

• That's easy. You do by learning.

• Great. And how do you learn?

• You learn by doing.

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