To Simulate: to mock-up, fake, replicate, or imitate…
Preface
People who work with children who have receptive language disabilities are familiar with “the smile. “The smile” is a strategy these children employ and are apt to paste on their faces is an attempt to dissuade anyone from noticing that they don’t have a clue (at least “in the moment”) as to what is being said to them. These children are not able to comprehend (extract meaningfulness) from what is being said to them or what they are reading, so they “simulate” comprehension in order to get by.
One would more realistically expect a frown, a look of confusion, bewilderment or puzzlement. These facial expressions would more accurately reflect their inability to process language in real time and extract from that language the intended meaning rather than the artificial smile. However children learn to adapt quickly, and what they learn “in situ” is similar to what magicians employ when they are appearing before audiences; to distract the audience and shift focus away from what they are actually doing and make their magic appear “as if…” “As if” they are making some “thing” occur magically. In the cases of these learning disabled children, what they want to make “occur” or magically appear is comprehension!
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After all, we all want to survive; it is a primordial urge, to live through whatever we are experiencing in the moment, to inherit our rightful place in the matrix which is our lives. We especially desire to appear competent within whatever system(s) we make our homes. And everyone knows that school is the work of children. We want and need to appear competent, whether at work, at school, when with our friends, and especially when we find ourselves in new situations in which we are being judged or fear being judged in a negative light.
So, language impaired individuals smile and conjure up the illusion of competence rather than face embarrassment or appear incompetent. As a more normative example of this learned behavior, most children in school learn to “search their desks” in a “charade of preoccupation” in order to avoid being called upon. And should we become more sophisticated students in later years regarding our attempts at dissimulation in order to feign competency, we often learn to cannily judge the probability of being called upon (when we don’t have the necessary or correct answer) by either raising or not raising our hands. Which strategy we select depends upon our assessment of the teacher’s observed inclination to either call or not call upon those with their hands down (or up)! In a similar vein, adults either learn to smile “knowingly” or nod their heads to silently signal their understanding when placed in situations in which having to simulate understanding, awareness or familiarity is felt to be of utmost importance, to appear competent, save face or avoid possible ridicule…
How do these behaviors develop? They are shaped in our formative years in order to avoid embarrassment as we begin the process of mastering the many tasks which development imposes upon children. We do so in order to “appear” competent to others. We do so to best manage and salvage our fragile self-esteem, to participate, if even from the periphery, in situations in which we apparently do not have the skills, ability, information, insight, etc., to truly participate successfully. After all is said and done, we do desire to be competent participants, and if not, at least appear to be competent, well intentioned individuals!
So we simulate and try to appear... as if
Anyone who has ever been in this uncomfortable position knows how anxiety provoking it is, because one’s awareness of being discovered kicks in, and we know that at any time we can be exposed as a fraud, a poseur… someone who behaves in a certain way in order to impress others. One can only imagine the stress this imposes which further influences the cognitive ability to recall information let alone acquire new information regarding what is being taught. Indeed, recent research on the stress hormone Cortisol appears to point to the influence this hormone has on the acquisition and retention of what is learned. What do we really understand about the additional influence that stress imposes in a classroom environment that magnifies whatever learning limitations the student brings to that situation?
But again, other than our ego, what stops us from admitting our ignorance? What stops schools from valuing ignorant inquiry? Where does the slogan, “There are no stupid questions” really apply? Well sometimes we just feel that we “should know” the answer; sometimes we haven’t done our homework; sometimes we feel inferior to those who appear to answer more completely, eloquently or more quickly. But in the scheme of things, in support of real learning, what is actually so wrong with exposing our ignorance and opening up the opportunity to learn and acquire what we apparently do not know? Again, it is partially our ego, our hubris, and our desire to be an esteemed player which leads us to deny what we do not know. We all want to successfully and meaningfully participate in the world around us. It really doesn’t matter whether our ignorance is in regard to something factual or conceptual, as basic and imperative as comprehension versus a more superficial need or desire to appear knowledgeable and competent in the eyes of our peers and those in authority!
Children learn not only what they are taught but how they are taught: process is structure and external structure superimposes certain expectations (and limitations). Why don’t schools acknowledge that fact by taking responsibility for the arbitrary structure and de facto standard of intelligence they promote? Isn’t that why “brainstorming” is employed in business? Brainstorming is a process characterized by a non-reflective, top of the head processing, and is meant to more spontaneously generate creative ideas. It is an intentionally uncritical process meant to bypass most peoples’ natural tendency to posture, edit and censor. It allows those participating in the session to not have to take personal responsibility for everything that comes out of their mouths!
Adults as well as children learn and behave by attending to what is modeled by the adults and children around them: they absorb the “demand characteristics” for each and every task and process. We are all shaped in the classroom environment by the expectations that the teacher (and peers) superimpose on us, whether or not we are aware of it.
The process by which comparisons are made to others in the same learning environment can be silent and insidious or made public and meant to embarrass and demean. This comparative process occurs both from a didactic, methodological sense as well as from a contextual, fact based display of competency, and both signal a sense of safety and self-affirmation (or their opposites).
Studies of children in the first grade indicate that upon reaching first grade, they had already internalized awareness of the criteria that only correct answers were reason enough to raise one’s hand in response to a question. How did this behavior develop? Is it in the best interest of children to so early in their acquisition of information and skills learn that not being correct is unacceptable or reason for them to not participate?
What other inadvertent (or intentional) messages do we send children who lack the correct answer or more seriously, the correct learning apparatus to succeed in school? What are the long term ramifications on an individual’s self-esteem, vocational choice and long term academic interests if one’s participation is marginalized so early within the mandatory system in which they are forced to participate?
Yet we send these “dis-abling” messages every day to children who are told that concessions are being made for them because they are less able (which translates as less intelligent) and in need of “accommodations” in order to learn and compete. This approach epitomizes the work of Julian B. Rotter (1966) who popularized the concept of Locus of Control, which is the "Perceived control [of an individual] as defined as a generalized expectancy for internal as opposed to external control of reinforcements" (Lefcourt 1976, p27…In Wikipedia). In other words, we are reinforcing in these children the belief that their competency exists outside of their personal control and that access to their competency is available only if beneficent others provide them with accommodations. That “mainstreaming” them in regular classrooms is somehow doing them a service rather than a disservice. That how others learn is normal, how they learn is extraordinary? That the funds needed to educate them are somehow robbing other children of their inalienable rights? Why teach children that their success is dependent upon “the kindness of strangers?”
Do we denigrate or demean those who need Braille to “see,” interpreters to “hear,” wheelchairs and such to be “mobile” by labeling these aids as accommodations? Of course not! Then why do we do so with those who learn differently?
What is it about those who have a different learning style or learning needs which is so threatening to those who appear to believe that there is only one acceptable path to learning, one acceptable definition of intelligence? What is it about a continuum of learning which is inaccessible to the mainstream educational establishment?
Why hasn’t the public school system adopted the well researched, extensive teaching and learning methods that have been developed in order to extend an accessible learning foundation to ALL students?
Should you wholeheartedly feel that public schools have succeeded in meeting the learning needs of those who learn outside of the primary teaching style, please open your thoughtful re-evaluation to the issues presented herein. Please consider that curricular decisions regarding how and what information is presented are made need to be made with the best interest of all students in mind.
If you are not open to these considerations, then I can’t help but think that you probably have never yourself faced the need for information to be presented in a more accessible manner or do not have someone for whom you care who has encountered the roadblock many of us call education. If you are open to the changes needed and presented herein in order to provide equal rights to all learners, then you can be a valued instrument of change!
Let’s dedicate ourselves to changing a system in which every child is reminded daily about their incompetence. Let’s confront a system which reinforces the simulation of learning at the expense of real learning. Let’s re-define those children who have differing degrees of alternative learning needs as magicians of a different sort, as ones with exceptional abilities, who have extraordinary skill, power and ability!
And so the simulation continues!
