Wittgenstein's Children: Some Implications for Teaching and Otherness
ABSTRACT: The later Wittgenstein uses children in his philosophical arguments against the traditional views of language. Describing how they learn language is one of his philosophical methods for setting philosophers free from their views and enabling them to see the world in a different way. The purpose of this paper is to explore what features of children he takes advantage of in his arguments, and to show how we can read Wittgenstein in terms of education. Two children in Philosophical Investigations are discussed. The feature of the first child is the qualitative difference from adults. Wittgenstein uses the feature to criticize Augustinian pictures of language which tell us that children learn language by ostensive definition alone. The referential theory of meaning is so strong that philosophers fail to see the qualitative gap and to explain language-learning. The second child appears in an arithmetical instruction. Although he was understood to master counting numbers, he suddenly shows deviant reactions. Wittgenstein argues against the mentalistic idea of understanding by calling attention to the potential otherness of the child. This could happen anytime the child has not learned counting correctly. The two features show that teaching is unlike telling, an activity toward the other who does not understand our explanations. Since we might not understand learners because of otherness, the justification of teaching is a crucial problem that is not properly answered so long as otherness is unrecognized. As long as we ignore otherness, we would not be aware that we might mistreat learners.
Ludwig Wittgenstein is a philosopher who often uses educational situations to examine philosophical puzzles. Asking how a word is taught is one of his philosophical methods. He invents imaginary situations in which children learn language, and describes how they learn there. He investigates the possibilities of concepts by considering how children could learn the concepts. The purpose of this paper is to explore what features of children he takes advantage of in his philosophical arguments, and to show whether and how we can read Wittgenstein in terms of education.
Some scholars have expected Wittgenstein to contribute to pedagogy and educational research directly. Bartley claims, for example, that Wittgenstein is involved in child psychology. (1) Hardwick looks for pedagogical conclusions in Wittgenstein's philosophy. (2) Those scholars are likely to say that Wittgenstein merely suggests what empirical studies discover about language learning.
In Ron Koertge’s “First Grade”, the author employs indirect characterization and foreshadows the affects of education by describing the speaker’s initial thoughts and beliefs and by writing in the past tense to show how education can limit students’ minds and rob them of their vitality.
Throughout the span of the past few weeks I have traversed the globe, visiting several countries and regions, only to realize that although new methods develop, language as a way of expressing ones self has remained the most effective. Despite this fact, language still has its pitfalls. Neil Postman, in his essay “Defending Against the Indefensible,'; outlines seven concepts that can be used to aid a student in better understanding the language as a means of communication. He describes how modern teaching methods leave a student vulnerable to the “prejudices of their elders';, further stating that a good teacher must always be skeptical. He urges teachers of all subjects to break free from traditional teachings as well as “linguistical tyranny';
Methods and approaches to teaching have been greatly influenced by the research of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Both have contributed to the field of education by offering explanations for children's cognitive learning styles and abilities. While Piaget and Vygotsky may differ on how they view cognitive development in children, both offer educators good suggestions on how to teach certain material in a developmentally appropriate manner.
The issues surrounding welfare and welfare reform are controversial, political, and difficult to resolve. The debate continues today as to who deserves benefits and who does not. In 1933, President Roosevelt created Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) as part of the New Deal. This early form of welfare was available to those who could demonstrate a need and the ability to maintain minimal assets of their own. It specifically targeted aid to single women with children. It was a controversial and highly debated subject. Even now, many years later, Congress continues to debate and reform welfare programs. It still brings with it the same intensity, controversy, and conflicting opinion it did years ago.
Piaget’s theory is developed from the idea that the child constructs their knowledge individually whereas Vygotsky argued that children develop tools of learning by communicating with more knowledgeable others (O. Lourenco 2012). Piaget suggested that children develop through a series of four stages in their thinking – the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages each of which causes broad changes in the child’s intelligence structure and their logic (reference). These four structures are mental operations which are applied to anything in the child’s world these mental operations are referred to as schemas which grow and change from one stage to the next (book). Vygotsky had very different idea on this subject although they both agreed that the child is the active constructor of their own knowledge
When President Clinton signed the Personal Responsible & Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in August of 1996, it ended welfare as we know it. Under this reform, wages and earnings replaced welfare, but many critics felt only problems arose from this program. Welfare to work forces poor and single parents into jobs that do not supply sufficient living wages (Albelda 1). These single parents can never work enough hours to support their families because the jobs are often inflexible which is not a match for a single parent. Chances are employers who hire low wage workers do not want workers to come in late because there was no child care or miss days because the child was sick. Welfare to work fails to realize parents probably should not put their low wage jobs before the needs of their children. The jobs provided somehow seem to have the least benefits. Things like vacations, sick days, and health care that go hand in hand with a regular job are not as available in these low wage jobs (Albelda 1).Transportation and location are other huge problems that welfare to work does not accommodate all to well. In suburban and rural areas where buses are not that accessible, the workers have to get on "work vans?to travel long distances. Either parents then have to pay more money to sitters or the kids are spending even more time without their parents. ; thus creating more problems than solutions. In the film Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore shows us where the welfare to work program goes wrong. In a rural area of Flint, Michigan a
For this paper I have decided to write about someone imaginary to associate with Piaget’s Cognitive Development. The reason that I have chosen to write about someone imaginary is because I have not seen every of the stages of cognitive development in someone I know and I do not remember all of mine, so I feel that it would be in my better interest to write about an imaginary person. I will be addressing the following concepts on Piaget’s Cognitive Development: Scheme, Assimilation, Accommodation, Tertiary circular reaction, Object Permanence, Symbolic function substage, Animistic thinking, Intuitive thought substage, Conservation, Seriation, Transitivity, and Hypothetical-deductive reasoning.
Patterson, James. Brown v. Board of Education, A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Recently Roosevelt’s Social Welfare Program has become a topic of heated debate. Welfare has come a long way since Roosevelt, it was once a system that help those in need until they could get back on their feet, now welfare has turned into a system that feeds money to a group of people that have become to lazy to find work. Talk of replacing the old system with a welfare program that will emphasize putting welfare recipients to work has become very frequent. More and more stated are now beginning to adopt a “welfare-to-work” program, leaving other states to simply ponder about the idea of “taking people off the system.” Those in favor of welfare reform argue that a welfare-to-work program will cut the amount of people on welfare causing a surplus of funds. These people base their idea on the overwhelming success of those states who have already adopted such a program. Nationwide, welfare caseloads have declined significantly since the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. In the few months since the bill went into effect the amount of welfare caseloads are down by approximately 2 million. Figures also show that Alabama reduced its welfare enrollment by 48%, and Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee reduced theirs by 49%. In Wisconsin welfare was reduced by 58% and Wyoming’s cases dropped an amazing 73% (Source: Dept.
...things together. Therefore, arithmetic and books that teaches logic are introduced to a child at this stage. For example, a child is taught basic addition and subtraction, that is one plus one, two, three and so forth. In so doing, a child develops skills to make simple decisions and judgment. Their skill of reasoning is also enhanced. Thereafter, a child grows to the normal school ongoing age. Here, such children have to be taught to internalize with the environment in a more effective way. They mental capacity is much greater to accommodate more aspects of reasoning and logic. Teachers use books such as story books, advanced mathematics integrated with social interaction so that they discover things by their own. The main objective is to get them effectively interact with the environment. This enhances their development towards normal functioning human beings.
Jean Piaget was a theorist which “who” focused on people’s “children’s” mental processes (Rathus, S., & Longmuir, S., 2011, p.10). Piaget developed (words missing) how children differentiate and mentally show(tense) the world and how there , thinking , logic , and problem solving ability is developed (Rathus, S., & Longmuir, S., 2011 , p.10). Piaget analyzed that children’s cognitive processes develop in an orderly sequence or series (Rathus, S., & Longmuir, S., 2011 , p.11) . But each stage show how children understand the world around them. – sentence fragment; should be joined to the previous sentence. Every child goes through the same development”al” steps but some are more advance(d) than others . Piaget described four stages of child
Jean Piaget was a swiss expert whose theories on the nature of children’s thinking and learning have been extremely influential since the 1960s. In his theory, there are five key stages in relation to children of a young age. The first key stage was the ‘Stages of development’. Piaget argued that there was a natural path in which the development of thought, of a child, would follow. This was known as ‘genetic epistemology’. A child would have to be at certain stages of the development to learn new ideas and information. Therefore, Piaget identified four stages within this process. These stages of development were split into four sections; the Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete operational, and Formal operations stages. The Sensorimotor stage was all about a child’s first two years of life. This is where a child would a toddler’s knowledge mainly came from physical action, from their senses. The toddler would become aware of object permanence. The Preoperational stage included children from the ages two to seven. In this stage, the child would learn to manipulate the environment around them and begin to identify different objects were words. The Concrete operational stage includes children from the ages of seven to eleven, this is whereby logical thoughts start to develop. They’re able to
The first experience (appendix 1) the practitioner was working with a group of children, the activity was reading a story from a book to which a discussion is formed. The aim of this activity was to promote the children’s thinking development. This type of thinking is from Matthew Lipman (1993) who uses a philosophical approach, it is known ‘stories of thinking,’ this can help to a...
Jean Piaget is a Switzerland psychologist and biologist who understand children’s intellectual development. Piaget is the first to study cognitive development. He developed the four stages of cognitive development: the sensori-motor stage, preoperational stage, the concrete operational and the formal operational stage. Piaget curiosity was how children cogitate and developed. As they get mature and have the experience, children’s will get knowledgeable. He suggested that children develop schemas so they can present the world. Children’s extend their schemas through the operation of accommodation and assimilation.
Still today, it is the commonly held belief that children acquire their mother tongue through imitation of the parents, caregivers or the people in their environment. Linguists too had the same conviction until 1957, when a then relatively unknown man, A. Noam Chomsky, propounded his theory that the capacity to acquire language is in fact innate. This revolutionized the study of language acquisition, and after a brief period of controversy upon the publication of his book, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, in 1964, his theories are now generally accepted as largely true. As a consequence, he was responsible for the emergence of a new field during the 1960s, Developmental Psycholinguistics, which deals with children’s first language acquisition. He was not the first to question our hitherto mute acceptance of a debatable concept – long before, Plato wondered how children could possibly acquire so complex a skill as language with so little experience of life. Experiments have clearly identified an ability to discern syntactical nuances in very young infants, although they are still at the pre-linguistic stage. Children of three, however, are able to manipulate very complicated syntactical sentences, although they are unable to tie their own shoelaces, for example. Indeed, language is not a skill such as many others, like learning to drive or perform mathematical operations – it cannot be taught as such in these early stages. Rather, it is the acquisition of language which fascinates linguists today, and how it is possible. Noam Chomsky turned the world’s eyes to this enigmatic question at a time when it was assumed to have a deceptively simple explanation.