Hear It and Hold It Don't Work Here Anymore

Hear It and Hold It.

The transfer of knowledge and the defining of those who know, and those who don't know. In the golden, olden days, the one who knew most stood in the front of the room. Those who didn't know as much, sat in neat rows. And the less one knew, the farther back they sat.

The physical environment, the emotional environment, and the instructional environment was set-up based on how much you knew. It wasn't just a mental environment. This set-up shaped how we behaved.

The in-the-know delivers the content, in pre-defined containers, in pre-determined chunks, in a certain order, to those who don know. What term can we use to define this framework? This methodology?

It was certainly quiet. A key competency of the learner was to listen, and you better listen to the one in-the-know, because if you don't listen, you're not going to know. Passive reception. Knowledge and information then wasn't something socially constructed. Knowledge was gained by memorization. In your seat. Quietly. Alone. Received passively.

Hear It – Hold It.  There wasn't a lot of hear it and work it out, or hear it and experiment, or hear it and collaborate, communicate, cultivate.  Hear it and Hold it. Hope you didn't miss it. A top-to-bottom, no-student-input, sequence-and-order, hold-your-questions-please method

 A lot of us were shaped by this practice. So much was measured by how much we remembered.

Seriously, even if this method was successful for the purpose of a great test score, and even if we got those great scores…if we were to look at two weeks or two months after those tests…two years later…same results? Not likely. Hear it and Hold It.

The "knowledge" wasn't lasting. And that — messed up the hierarchy. The 5th grade teachers went to the 4th grade teachers and said something like, "If you would've just…" and then the 4th grade teachers would do that to the 3rd grade teachers, adding, "…now I've got to start all over." and then…all the way down to the parents and we start that cycle all over again. 

This was not transformational teaching and learning. Conformative? Maybe. Transformative? Not even close.

Thank goodness this doesn't happen in our schools anymore, hmm? There are important questions we must ask and answer — and act on.

We worked on behaviors that worked with this methodology. We worked on the habits and attitudes necessary to make that old-school schooling work. And even though that Hear it and Hold it doesn't work anymore (so let's stop employing it), we should still work on behaviors that work today. We should still place importance on the habits and attitudes that lead to transformative teaching and learning.

How have you overcome the Hear it and Hold it method in your classroom or school? What are some of the key behaviors, habits, and attitudes (what I would call Classroom Habitudes) that shape your environment of education?