Chapter 4: Learning by Doing

I found Palol Freire's point on "true generosity" and "false charity" interesting.  False charity encourages the oppressed to extend their hands in supplication and true generosity encourages those hands to work to transform the world.  Freire believes in humanization and says learning takes place through practice in transforming the world.  Both Dewey and Mao agree that "knowledge consists of experience and can only be acquired through active human inquiry in experience" (137).  According to Mao, "Experience serves a check-up for true leaning and leads to further experiments, learning and growth" (138).  I find this theory true in my own life; the more experiences I have with students, the more I learn how to optimize each individual situation while teaching.  Another key part of learning by doing Dewey discusses is reflection.  He says, "Experience in itself might not lead to knowledge nor be part of a larger moral vision of social transformation.  Experience could only have educational value when there when there were connections drawn between the experience and the other experiences" (138).  Teachers should take this into consideration when teaching students to read and write a second language because if students are able to reflect on previous experiences that took place in their first language, they can make connections that apply to learning the second language.