Personal relationships and education

Joe Davison

10/30/2000

Jim,

I'd like to talk briefly about other aspects of your post, which
touched me more directly, the one on one work with grade school
students. A few years ago a local Church of the Brethren started a
"Tutoring Learning Center" to help students in grades 1-3 who were
having difficulties in school. They came to our meeting looking for
volunteers and a number of us joined the effort. It turned out that
it was more important to develop a relationship with the child and
have fun than to accomplish any teaching; I suppose one should not
be surprised that children learn a lot simply be interacting with an
interested adult -- so having fun often helps get the homework done,
too.

I got involved because I taught Computer Science at a historically
black college (Jackson State University in Jackson, MS) for two years
as a Visiting Professor, as part of my job (I'm with what is now
Lucent Technologies). The motivation for the company sending
visiting professors is that we want to help increase the number of
technically educated "minorities" looking for the kinds of jobs we
have. As you might have expected of the Mississippi school system in
the early 80's, excellence in Science and Mathematics was NOT a
major feature of the public schools in many of the communities that
sent students to Jackson State. It became quite clear to me that by
the time students were entering college it was almost too late to
affect the situation we were trying to influence. We might be able
to help with teaching and facilities at the college level, but
students who have never had algebra or geometry before coming to
college are unlikely to become outstanding graduates in science and
engineering in only 4 years of college. At that time, at least,
there was (and probably still is) almost no financial support for
remedial education. (Think of the politics of funding education --
but that's another topic).
It doesn't take even me much thinking about the problem to recognize
that if one wants to increase the number of engineers and scientists
one has to start in early grade school by showing children how much
fun one can have going in that direction. (I usually had the kids
playing Mastermind before too long).

I don't suppose we need to answer this question, but I do wonder how
we came to "forget" that learning and play are closely coupled and
intertwined with all aspects of our lives. -- The ecology of
learning certainly has many aspects; not surprisingly, thinking about
quaker education and Scattergood can lead to almost any facet of life
and society.

joe