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Summary of location of Thelen documents on "Education and the Human Quest."

dc.contributor.authorArlinghaus, Sandra Lach
dc.date.accessioned2008-06-15T12:42:54Z
dc.date.available2008-06-15T12:42:54Z
dc.date.issued2008-06-15
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/58765
dc.descriptionIn "Education and the Human Quest" Thelen describes classroom settings that took place at the University of Chicago Laboratory School in the "Sophomore Project" in 1957-1958 (in Blaine 400, remodeled specifically for this purpose). Thelen and his group of followers used to sit in a glass enclosed gallery, on high, and study us as subjects going about our learning in subgroups in this open-area classroom. There were microphones attached to long poles that were lowered into the subgroups of desks with hinged wings, so that the professor and his students might listen to what we were saying. Later in the year, a small group of us were freed from the normal pressures of the group and permitted to study what we wished. I chose to continue a study of symbolic (mathematical) logic and picked up on the content I had learned in the previous year from Michael Houghton Millar, in his experimental mathematics classroom (based to some extent on the "Moore" method). The mathematics leader of this small group of selected students was John Paul Moulton, our mathematics teacher in the Sophomore Project. In Thelen's book about the Project, I am "Jane." The work I did with Millar and Moulton was one of the best educational experiences I have had (and I have had a great many fine ones, through the level of Ph.D.--married name "Arlinghaus"). Quotation from page 93 of Thelen, Herbert A. Education and the Human Quest, Four Designs for Education, 1960 and 1972, University of Chicago Press: "Jane, Roger, and John, the other three in the seminar, are probably the kinds of students that teachers retrospectively would call "gifted"--if we forget that by all the screens so far used to identify "gifted" children, Penny, Paul, and Mimi are equally "gifted." Jane, Roger and John simply blossomed in the seminar. They were eager, enthusiastic, happy. They worked hard and loved every minute of it. Penny, Paul, and Mimi show us some of the kinds of problems we will encounter with this notion of personal inquiry; Jane, Roger and John show us that the game is very much worth the candle. Jane started, as already noted, by cleaning up a month of math over one weekend. The topic she chose to work on was not posed as a specific question; she wanted to find out all about symbolic logic. This had been mentioned by her math teacher last year and she had been curious about it ever since. Her present math teacher, somewhat startled, suggested some references, and she was off. She reported twice to the seminar, and the social studies teacher felt no shame in admitting that she lost him halfway through the first talk. The paper she wrote is cherished by the math teacher. Having had her fill of constructing "truth tables," Jane next turned to the rewriting and expansion of her 120-page manuscript on the history of the English language. She read a variety of books and rounded out and polished her discussion. What was she going to do with this manuscript? Nothing--she just wanted to write it."en_US
dc.format.extent445260 bytes
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.subjectEducation and the Human Questen_US
dc.subject"Jane's" Identityen_US
dc.titleSummary of location of Thelen documents on "Education and the Human Quest."en_US
dc.typeOtheren_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelGeography and Maps
dc.subject.hlbtoplevelSocial Sciences
dc.contributor.affiliationumcampusAnn Arboren_US
dc.description.bitstreamurlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58765/1/Thelen.pdf
dc.owningcollnameMathematical Geography, Institute of (IMaGe)


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