Summary Of Block's The Classroom

Both Goele Cornelissen and Alan A. Block list many substantial points with teaching and how to handle what and how students will or can learn. These writers’ pieces revolve around nearly the same aspect. In Cornelissen’s article, all throughout the 2nd section of the article, it told how Jacotot gave his students a copy of the Télémaque and urges them to pay attention to it by reading it and rereading it. So much so that they would be able to convey to him their thoughts on what they just read in French, a language that they were blind to. He had them read the text, and reread it until they could comprehend it and recite what they were reading. His students had to rely on themselves, their translators, and one another through discussion
in order to comprehend what they were reading. It taught them to pay attention. Block mentioned in one of his classes how to pay attention one needed to put in effort, to put in effort one must attend, and in order to attend, a person must ask questions. Chapter 3 in Block’s The Classroom Encounter and Engagement is even labelled “On the Asking of Questions.” It portrays Block to be frustrated at having been met by nothing but a painful silence when asking his students questions on their final reading The Centaur(for better clarification on this, seek page 51 in Block’s The Classroom.) As the chapter continues it speaks of Sisyphus; the man who, because of his pride, had landed himself to roll a large boulder up the same hill every day.
But at the end of each day, that boulder would slip from his grass and roll right back down that hill. His efforts were futile, Sisyphus needed to start his progress over on an unending cycle. Block expresses on page 52 in The Classroom, that he too understands Sisyphus’ despair. The discouraging silence that he was met with led him to think that somewhere he had failed his students. As it states in page 62(Block’s The Classroom, 2014); mea culpa, which in Latin translates to, “Through my fault.” Block feels he has been asking his students the wrong questions (Further expressed on page 61 of Block’s The Classroom.) But, as the chapter progress, Block comes to the realization that it was not all his fault (page 64, The Classroom.) In page 66 of Block’s book, it further expresses that he just needed to be asking honest questions. Questions that allow a student not to think “What is the point of this?” but rather, “What do I imagine?” (Talked about on pages _ and _ in Block’s The
Classroom.) Unlike Socratic maïeutics where the master explicator, s/he who has all the knowledge to relate back to his/her classroom, is leading their student to the answer by a series of questions (as specified in Cornelissen’s The Public Role of Teaching on page 328.) Cornelissen in his article also depicts there to be a stultifying master, the master explicator, the facilitator, and the ignorant schoolmaster.
Socrates who leads Meno’s slave through a series of questions on geometry eventually helps this slave to arrive at the answer proving that he does know geometry even if he has never before been taught, hence Socratic maïeutics. The master explicator as identified in Cornelissen’s article on page 526 is s/he who “Knows the things by reason and proceeds by method.” The master explicator knows the answer they are looking for, they have all the knowledge. The stultifying master is the pedagogue whom in turn makes his/her students feel of a lesser intelligent than him/herself with the questions they ask looking for a specific answer (Cornelissen, 2010(hinted to in pages 526 and 527.)) The facilitator, the meaning of facilitate is the action or process of making something easier, is s/he who can help students to find the answer and therefore know the answers themselves. Which is similar to Jacotot’s process of getting his students to learn French by studying French literature that in the beginning they can’t even comprehend. As quoted directly in Cornelissen’s The Public Role of
Teaching on page 531: “...There is no hierarchy in the intellectual capacity of men.” The ignorant schoolmaster, indicating Jacotot, is s/he who decides to act as if all intelligences are equal; Just as Jacotot did. Jacotot cannot communicate effectively with his class so he leaves them with the Télémaque and their own devices such as the translator and each other (just as the essay states prior to this.) Block talks of something similar in his book when he comes to the revelation that his questions demand the wrong answers. That he needs to find a way to get his students to look deeper than just what the point of something is. And so he differences between these two writers after having been compared, is that they both hint to paying attention and asking questions. As depicted earlier in this essay; to pay attention one must put in effort, in order to make this effort, one must attend, and to attend a person must ask questions. Block’s Chapter three in The Classroom Encounter and Engagement is even titled On the Asking of Questions. A clear and direct push towards paying attention and asking questions. Whereas in Cornelissen’s The Public Role of Teaching: To keep the door closed, it is clearly stated on page 526 it clearly states that Jacotot urges his students to pay attention to the Télémaque. The focus on all of this is that Cornelissen and Block are almost one in the same. Both understand the pedagogical practices and the many ways to do it; an example of these being, the stultifying master, the master explicator, the facilitator, and the ignorant schoolmaster.