The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
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There have been a number of demonstrations in the education world in which school children have been enlisted to help in the teaching of another child. For example, a youngster in Grade 10 is asked to help a child needing more fluency in a section of the Grade 9 mathematics syllabus. These ventures had mixed results – usually for obvious educational reasons.
But there was one very common and interesting outcome: while the child being taught may or may not have shown significant improvement, the child doing the teaching made great strides in knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. In helping another to get over obstacles to understanding, the "teacher" was clearly having to explore the subject more deeply and from different angles – trying to understand why the younger "pupil" wasn’t "getting it", having repeatedly to put things into different words, constructing new mental models to show "how", and so on.
In our work with disadvantaged children and families, their grasp of ideas and concepts has often been only rudimentary and tenuous. We often try to "teach" alternative perceptions, interpretations and behaviours in the complex arena of human and societal relationships. And the kids may be "getting it" – but from very fragmentary and limited examples and experiences. Their internalisation of what they are learning, their construction of the meaning of new and different ideas, and the reliability of their generalisation across different life situations are initially very fragile and accident-prone.
We are often tempted to consider a "problem solved" at the first signs of "compliance". Wrong on both counts: remember that we are not aiming at compliance but on a youth’s ownership of his or her own more prosocial accommodation with others and with society; and these things don’t come easily. Redl taught that kids will generally not let go of their old ways of doing things until they have thoroughly tested the stability and safety of an alternative. And we are used to the idea of giving youngsters opportunity to "practise" new ways of seeing and new behaviours they are learning.
In our practice today we look for opportunities through which our "pupils" can round out and realise their changing perceptions and responses. We comment and we invite comment; we talk, discuss and argue; we give opportunities for trial and error; and we complexify by giving youth both credit and responsibility for their new growth, acknowledging them as having something worth sharing with others, something to teach.
