From Part To Whole

Every once in a while, I stumble upon a children's book that I am surprised I have not discovered before. Tonight I read Seven Blind Mice to my younger children, and the moral of the story can apply directly to learning! While this book won a Caldecott Award, I wasn't as struck by the art work, as I was by the concept of the story.

Seven blind mice start out one day and find a "strange something." Each day of the week a different mouse goes to see if he can figure out what the "something" is. It is actually an elephant, but since the mice are blind, they can only tell what the mystery object is by touching. Each mouse only feels one part of the elephant, and by only touching part, makes a judgement about what it is. The first mouse, who touches the elephant's leg, claims the something is a pillar. The second mouse, feeling only the elephant's trunk, claims it is a snake. Eventually, all the mice but one are arguing over what it is, each mouse making his judgement from his limited experience. Finally, on Saturday, the last mouse goes out (the only female mouse) and runs across the elephant from end to end. She discovers, as she views the elephant in its entirety, that the mysterious something is an elephant! The story ends with a "mouse moral" : "Knowing in part may make a fine tale, but wisdom comes from seeing the whole."

My children enjoyed the story and the unique artwork, and I was left thinking about how the "mouse moral" applies to learning. Institutionalized education takes learning and breaks it into parts. Chemistry is separate from History, Math is separate from Geography. This isn't real life. Elements in chemistry become real when we know the amazing history of their discovery! Try making a map or reading a map scale without doing math! The fact is that learning is an integrated process. Maybe kids can get "good grades" and achieve mastery in certain areas by studying parts, but in most cases learning does not come alive until we move towards the whole.

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Little Things:

Today Sam, our eight year old, was sitting at the dining room table eating lunch. Out of the blue he asked, "Mom, what does 'times' mean?" I said, "Times means when you have more than one of something...like two times three would mean you have two threes. Five times four would mean you have five fours. You can add the fours to get an answer." He was quiet for a while and then said, "So three times twenty would be sixty?" "Exactly!", I said...happy that it doesn't take hours of boring workbooks to learn math.

Oliver, our ten year old, said to me today, "I think my worst expression of all times is 'children should be seen and and not heard.' It's like adults are better just because they're older or something, and kids have nothing good to say." I meant to ask him where he heard the expression....

Will, our seventeen year old, said to me after devouring a plate of biscuits and sausage gravy, "I don't understand why anyone would pay to eat out when you can have food this good at home!" He learned how to make the biscuits today so that he can make them for himself some time.