Own Teaching System Watched

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32035, 9 July 1969, Page 18

Own Teaching System Watched

An American who 20 years ago devised a teaching system which has been used to teach an estimated 35 million students in 47 countries, including New Zealand, watched as a teacher in a Christchurch school yesterday used the system.

He is Dr D. H. Parker, director of the Institute of Multilevel Learning International, of California. He said he observed at the Elmwood Normal School a teacher using the multilevel teacher learning system with •great intelligence. The students knew what they were doing and took responsibility for their own learning.

Dr Parker explained that the philosophy of the system was the desirability of providing a school situation in which each learner, regardi less of age, was able to move ahead as fast and as far as his learning rate and capa--1 bilities would let him. Teachers in New Zealand | would better know the system. . used mainly in the area of reading instruction, as the SJLA. (the publishers, Science Research Association) ’ reading laboratory method. Dr Parker said he was visit- • ing New Zealand to see his method in action and also as , part of a 29,000-mile, two- • month lecture tour on the 1 theme, “schooling for what?” I He had taperecorded interl views with 1000 people rep- _ resentative of a wide cross- ' section in the United States ! on this point r Students were now asking why they should work and

study so hard. They were asking the Establishment about the condition of other peoples in the nation—the Negroes and the underprivileged of the Appalachians. They were asking why, when they had all the wealth and material goods necessary, it was necessary to work for the sort of education they were asked to gain. They saw their parents caught up in the great American rat-race, and asked why. This sort of education might be necessary for New Zealand—he would not presume to say what was most desirable for this country. Dr Parker said his method of teaching was aimed at spending more time on setting up a learning situation in which more responsibility for learning could be taken by the learner. For various sizes of feet, there were various sizes of

shoes; but sometimes it seemed people could not concede different sizes, as it were, in learning, but wanted to lock-step pupils together like a lot of sheep. But, he said, taking all pupils of high ability out of schools for special teaching would be inimical to any country except one which deliberately tried to set up a class society. The latest development by Dr Parker’s institute, which he described as a private, nonprofitmaking group mainly working in countries other than the United States, is a project which he describes as “M 3 x Synchroteach.” Using a small, casette-type tape-recorder it was possible to give a class detailed instruction, thus raising the level of the teacher to a learning consultant and free the children to take more responsibility for their learning.