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- Title
Breaking with Everyday Experience.
- Authors
Floden, Robert E.; Buchmann, Margret; Schwille, John R.
- Abstract
The article focuses on the use of the concept of everyday life in order to help students in their learning. Elementary school teachers are told to stress the everyday usefulness of mathematics and spelling. Many educators assume that without such links to everyday life students will not be motivated and will have difficulty learning. Emphasizing continuity with everyday life, however, can confuse regard for students and their interests with accepting all personal beliefs and stressing the practical relevance of school knowledge. For, unless students can break with their everyday experience in thought, they cannot see the extraordinary range of options for living and thinking; and unless students give up many commonsense beliefs, they may find it impossible to learn disciplinary concepts that describe the world in reliable, often surprising ways. Everyday experience is unlikely to further these goals, and often leads away from them: to inequality of opportunities and the deceptions of everyday life. School learning means losing the sense that life is seamless and whole, and the comforting assumption that things, once learned, are safe from change and challenge. Yet whatever its merits, everyday knowledge is parochial and idiosyncratic; ironically, it conflicts with democratic ideals.
- Subjects
LEARNING; EDUCATION; STUDENTS; TEACHERS; ELEMENTARY schools; EDUCATORS
- Publication
Teachers College Record, 1987, Vol 88, Issue 4, p485
- ISSN
0161-4681
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/016146818708800401