The shortest distance between our most pressing problems and their solutions is learning. Improving a child's learning is the best way to improve his or her test scores. Improving an adult's learning is the best way to improve his or her life opportunities. Improving our society's learning is the best way to improve the world we live in and how we live in the world. Let's work together to 'turn up' the learning.
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"The best thing he did for us had nothing to do with artistic matters - it was about learning, which he used to say is the only thing that the mind never exhausts, never fears and never regrets - learning - it's the only thing that will never fail us." - Cesare da Sesto on Leonardo da Vinci
"Love of goodness without love of learning degenerates into simple-mindedness. Love of knowledge without love of learning degenerates into utter lack of principle. Love of faithfulness without love of learning degenerates into injurious disregard of consequences. Love of uprightness without love of learning degenerates into harshness. Love of courage without love of learning degenerates into insubordination. Love of strong character without love of learning degenerates into mere recklessness". - Confucius
What is healthy learning?When it comes to the physical health of our children we have a wealth of scientific and common sense measures to guide us. However, when it comes to the health of our children's learning, the central dynamic informing and shaping how well they learn to grow and develop into adults, we are, comparatively, oblivious.This site contains a collection of exhibits from a 30+ year exploration of learning and how we might become better stewards of the health of our children's learning. Our more recent work can be found at:
Learning Stewards
Children of the Code
The Magic Ladder Project"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." - Thomas Jefferson
"Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy
- Children of the Code Interviews & Dialogues **
- Self-Esteem and Learning ** (download PDF)
- Business, Society, and the Ethics of Mutual Learning ** (download PDF)
- Politics, Democracy, Technology and Learning ** (download PDF)
- Learning Communities (w/ Bill Ellis, Coalition for Self-Learning)
- With and About Deanna (8 year old)
Essays, Presentation Papers and Articles:
"Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind." - Plato"Keep me away from the greatness which does not bow before children" - Kahlil Gibran
Why Learning? An Introduction to the 'case' for Stewarding Learning? (w/video) ***
The Insidious Curriculum (essay) **
The Obstacles to Learning: Our Relationship with Information
A Vision Learning To Happen (article)
Learning To Learn (article) **
The Most Important Subject (article)
The Role of Feedback in Learning Oriented Systems (w/video) **
Miraculous Intersections (w/video)**
The Spirit of Learning (essay)
The Stairway Project (essay)
Book and Journal Excerpts & Comments from Others:
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival". – W. Edwards Deming
Poisoned Apple: The Bell Curve Crisis and How Our Schools Create Mediocrity and Failure
Working Wisdom: Timeless Skills and Vanguard Strategies for Learning Organizations
The Interactive Corporation: Enhancing Profits, Performance and Productivity in Your Business
"It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man’s blessings. Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors... in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind". – Albert Einstein
Electronic Publishing for Learning (including the Learner Interface)
Feedback and Distributed Dialogue "visualization side" Patent
The Magic Ladder represents a new way to think about the challenge of learning to read and the process of stewarding learners up the stairway to proficient reading. See for yourself, play with it, use it, and share it:
The Literacy Launch Ramp: (PreK to 3rd Grade)
The Literacy Safety Net: (3rd Grade to Adult)
"It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development.... But we are coming to realize... that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy." - John Kenneth Galbraith
How well children learn to read profoundly influences their cognitive and emotional development and the overall health of their learning. Approximately 100 million children and adults (U.S. alone), are to various but significant degrees, learning disabled by reading improficiency. The collateral effects of struggling to learn to read can be seriously life diminishing because learning to read is about so much more than reading. The Children of the Code Project is a social education and documentary project whose mission is to catalyze and resource a society wide transformation in our understanding of the 'code' and the 'challenges of learning to read it." It now includes over 110 interviews with world leading scientists and scholars.
"What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing". – Aristotle
Abstract: Our children's cognitive and emotional development, self-esteem, academic, and later social and economic success, all depend on how well they learn - on the health of their learning. Whether we are involved in parenting, teaching, cognitive science, psychology, pedagogy, curriculum design, instructional design, direct instruction, constructivism, assessment, multiple intelligences, learning styles, learning differences, learning disabilities, learning theory, learning communities, organizational learning, preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school, home school, unschooling, college, university... we all share the responsibility of stewarding the health of our children's learning.
Red '**' indicate the pieces we most recommend.
for all children© 1996 - 2019 COPYRIGHT All Rights Reserved, Except:
Permission to use, copy, and distribute these materials for not-for-profit educational purposes, without fee and without a signed licensing agreement, is hereby granted, provided that "Implicity" - www.implicity.org" (with a functioning hyperlink when online) be cited as the source and appear in all excerpts, copies, and distributions. Thank you.
