1. Teacher By Sylvia Ashton Warner Pdf Printers

I studied for my elementary teaching credential at UC Berkeley from 1970-71 with the best professors and master teachers in the world. I worked every day at Wilton (don't remember the name) Elementary School with Janet Herben, my amazing master teacher who really wasn't much older than I but had clearly studied and implemented the best teaching methods on the planet.

And the professors we had emphasized our practical day-to-day experience. We studied reading and mathematics first. Reading turned out to be the most important of course. The teachers at Wilton had created their own PRIMER ON HOW TO TEACH READING (which no publisher would touch because they said it was too much work). It was fabulous and comprehensive, including every known method of teaching, including the hated one - Behavior Modification. But one of my favorites was SYLVIA ASHTON-WARNER. Ms Herben's classroom contained 29 culturally mixed children, 26 of whom were from single parent homes.

One little girl often re-enacted her mother's stabbing her father in self defense. We had the students from the 'poor' part of Berkeley because school integration had begun recently and the white parents hadn't yet figured out what to do to avoid being integrated.

Only the 'poor' were bussed at grades K - 3. When the whites had to be bussed to 4 -6, they sent them to private schools. Sylvia Ashton-Warner was a white teacher who taught all children in New Zealand but especially the Maori indigenous children. She clearly was sensitive to the needs of children and based her continuing methods on what she learned FROM THE CHILDREN.

Imagine that. She also wrote novels and children's primers. Herben also taught me how to individualize instruction so that each child was learning at his/her own rate. Her classroom was a mixed grade 1 -2 -3. So for example, we had two brothers, the older one read at first grade level (he was in 3rd grade) and the younger one read at a higher level.

But no one paid any attention to individuals' abilities. It was a beautiful and seamless room full of joy and busyness but so purposeful you didn't realize the amazing amount of work that Ms. In those days we had to develop our own materials. There weren't ready-made programs to buy wholesale from publishers.

Teacher [Sylvia Ashton-Warner] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. TEACHER was first published in 1963 to excited acclaim. Its author, Sylvia Ashton-Warner, who lived in New Zealand and spent many years teaching Maori children. Statistical Techniques Statistical Mechanics.

And how much better was the education because of this. From the New Zealand Book Council - IN BRIEF Sylvia Ashton-Warner was a novelist, autobiographer and educational pioneer who broke new ground in New Zealand literature, opening up the worlds of imagination and emotion as legitimate subjects.

She embraced the voices of Maori, women and children, whose experiences she felt had been excluded from New Zealand literature. Two of her novels were listed in Time magazine’s top ten books of the year. She won the New Zealand Book Award for Non-Fiction in 1980 and her autobiography was subsequently made into a film, Sylvia! Please read the blog about LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE APPROACH - this is how to teach young children. Take them on nature walks, constantly talk with them, ask them questions, point things out to them, tell others about the experience, draw pictures of what you did, look for books about what you did, share the work with everyone, and so much more. This was the basis of some of Ashton-Warner's amazing teaching.

I was able to take the children (about six of them) to the local market to buy food for our snack; to help each child build a house for his/her own mealworm and ask them questions, show them how to follow the worms, make observations, draw conclusions, etc. We did so much more but those were the two that stood out to me. From - 'Sylvia Constance Ashton Warner (whose pen-name was Sylvia Ashton-Warner) was born in Stratford, Taranaki, on 17 December 1908. Her father, Francis Ashton Warner, had arrived in New Zealand at the age of 16 in 1877. Although his family were poor, Francis thought of himself as a gentleman.

For work, he tried various manual and clerical occupations. Sylvia’s mother, Margaret Maxwell, was the daughter of a blacksmith. Born in Mercer, near Auckland, in 1876, she began teaching at the age of 15. Margaret and Francis married in 1898. Shortly after, Francis fell ill with a painful arthritic condition and was never able to work again. 'Sylvia was the sixth of 10 children born to the couple.

The fifth child, also named Sylvia, survived only four days. The second Sylvia described herself as named after a ghost.

Margaret supported the family by teaching in small, often sole-charge, rural schools. Her methods were rigid and punitive.

She was often in conflict with inspectors of education and the family moved frequently.' 'Sylvia attended 10 primary schools and was often taught by her mother.

After a term when she boarded with her oldest sister while attending Wellington Girls’ College, Sylvia completed her schooling at Masterton District High School.' 'Sylvia was a pupil teacher at Wellington South School (1926) and Wadestown School (1927).

In 1928–29, she attended Auckland Teachers’ Training College, where she met her future husband, fellow student Keith Dawson Henderson. They married in Wellington on 23 August 1932. In the couple’s first years of marriage, Keith taught sole-charge schools in Taranaki and Sylvia gave birth to three children: Jasmine in 1935, Elliot in 1937 and Ashton in 1938. 'At Sylvia’s suggestion, she and Keith applied to teach in the native school system, which taught Māori pupils.

The couple took up their first position in 1938 at Horoera Native School, on the remote East Cape, 13 kilometres from Te Araroa. The isolation contributed to Sylvia suffering what was referred to at the time as a nervous breakdown. She was treated in Wellington by a neurologist, Donald Allen, who introduced her to psychoanalytic theory and encouraged her to write.' 'In 1941 the family moved to Pipiriki in the Whanganui River valley, where Sylvia and Keith taught at the local native school. Here Sylvia practised the disciplined life of a writer.

The diary she kept there would, two decades later, be published under the title Myself. It explored the competing rhythms of teaching, motherhood, married life, emotions and artistic creativity – painting, piano-playing and writing. Psychoanalytic influences on her teaching method were already evident in this diary.' Educational theory we called it Look-Say 'In Pipiriki Sylvia began to develop the teaching theory for which she became known during and after the Second World War. At the heart of the scheme was the idea that literacy was best achieved when children expressed their experiences of fear and sex, the two great Freudian drives. In her infant room, these erupted to the surface by means of what she called captions (a child’s ‘key vocabulary’).

The most powerful ‘key words’ were ‘ghost’ and ‘kiss’. According to her, ‘Any child, brown or white, on the first day, remembers these two words from One-Look.’. 'Sylvia believed that venting fear and the destructive drive through the key vocabulary and other expressive arts could prevent violence and war.

She explained: ‘I see the mind of a five-year old as a volcano with two vents; destructiveness and creativeness. And I see that to the extent that we widen the creative channel we atrophy the destructive one.’ 'Although there is a common perception that her approach was met with hostility by authorities, it was in many ways consistent with the policies, if not the universal practices, in infant rooms. In the mid-1930s to 1940s, the New Zealand Department of Education, under the directorship of Clarence Beeby, promoted progressive or new education, an international movement informed by new social theories. It drew on psychoanalytic and psychological theories of individual child development, conceptualising schooling as socially transformative through the promotion of democratic and peaceful values. Douglas Ball, senior inspector of native schools, encouraged new education in native schools and advocated making the curriculum more relevant to life in Māori communities.' 'From 1945 to 1948 the Hendersons taught at Waiōmatatini Native School on the East Coast.

Sylvia published short pieces in the periodicals Here and Now and the New Zealand Listener. TheHere and Now article was the first on her teaching method.

From 1949 to 1957 the couple taught at Fernhill School, Ōmāhu, near Hastings. Between December 1955 and October 1956, the first systematic account of Sylvia's teaching scheme appeared in eight parts in National Education, the magazine of the New Zealand Educational Institute.

Inspectors and teachers’ college lecturers sympathetic to new education theories recommended these articles to students and practising teachers. Books 'Sylvia published her articles using just her first name, but adopted 'Sylvia Ashton-Warner’ as a pen name when she began to write fiction.

Her first novel, Spinster, a fictional account of a teacher developing her teaching scheme, was published in 1958. New York publisher Robert Gottlieb produced and championed Spinster’s American edition, which reached the New York Times best-seller list. The novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the year’s best books and in 1961 was adapted into the feature film Two loves, starring Shirley MacLaine. The story of a passionate and artistic teacher of Māori children in a remote rural school, Spinster was translated into many languages.' 'When Keith Henderson was appointed headmaster of Bethlehem Māori School, near Tauranga, in 1957, Sylvia resigned from teaching to write full-time. Over the next 10 years she published five books: three novels (Incense to idols in 1960, Bell call in 1964 and Greenstone in 1966), the Pipiriki diary Myself (1967), and the influentialTeacher (1963). 'The first part of Teacher consisted of an edited version of the teaching scheme first published in National Education, and the second part took the form of a diary of classroom life.

Renowned British art critic, poet and educationalist Sir Herbert Read wrote the foreword. Blurring genres between fiction and autobiography, Spinster and Teacher (and, later, the 1985 feature film Sylvia) centred on the creative teaching scheme Ashton-Warner developed in Māori schools in the 1940s and early 1950s. 'In total Ashton-Warner published five novels, two books of short stories, two autobiographies and two non-fictional accounts of her educational theory.' 'Keith Henderson died in January 1969. That year, Ashton-Warner embarked on her first overseas travel. A period in London with her son Elliot and his wife Jacquemine inspired Ashton-Warner’s final novel, Three, in 1970. In late 1970 she took up an invitation to establish a community school in Aspen, Colorado, where she spent a year.

Her final book about education, Spearpoint: ‘teacher’ in America, published in 1972, was her account of this experience. During 1972 and 1973 Ashton-Warner was employed at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, where she ran courses on her teaching methods. She wrote a book of short stories, O children of the world (1974) and started her autobiography, I passed this way (1979). Return home, and death 'Sylvia Ashton-Warner returned to her Tauranga home, Whenua, in 1973.

She led a secluded life and her health deteriorated. In 1978 educationist Jack Shallcrass interviewed her for a television documentary about her life and work. I passed this way won the New Zealand Book Award in 1980, and in 1982 Ashton-Warner received an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday honours list. Towards the end of her life she assisted with the screenplay for Sylvia, a feature film based on her autobiographical writing, released in 1985 shortly after her death. Ashton-Warner was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 1981 and died at home on 28 April 1984. In 1989 Lynley Hood’s biography, Sylvia!, which traces Ashton-Warner’s life and work, won first prize at the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards.'

Crossing genres 'Because of disciplinary boundaries, commentators on Ashton-Warner’s writing have studied it as either educational or literary, but not as both. Yet her work overflowed the boundaries of genre: her fiction was autobiographical and her autobiographies often fictional. Her educational theory was expressed in the form of novels (Spinster, Bell call) or as autobiography (Teacher,Spearpoint: 'teacher' in America). Her other novels, such as Greenstone, Incense to idols and Three, remain largely unknown to an educationalist audience. Literary and educational reputation 'Ashton-Warner often claimed to have been rejected and even persecuted by New Zealand’s educational and literary establishments. In an important essay on Ashton-Warner’s literary contribution, written in 1981, C. Stead compared her favourably with Katherine Mansfield and Janet Frame and puzzled over her lack of visibility in the contemporary literary canon.

In 2009 Emily Dobson published a reassessment of the New Zealand literary world’s responses to Ashton-Warner’s novels. 'The impression that Ashton-Warner’s teaching method was met with hostility was supported in the films Two loves and Sylvia, and in writings by international educationalists. Challenging this, recent scholarship in education has highlighted the largely sympathetic professional context in which she formulated her educational ideas. 'In 2008 a conference was held in the faculty of education at Auckland University to mark the centennial of Ashton-Warner’s birth, resulting in a collection of essays about her by literary experts, educationalists, former colleagues, publishers and family.

This collection reprinted the National Education version of her teaching scheme. Apart from this, all her books remain out of print. Yet Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s teaching method continues to influence practitioners in schools around the world. Her legacy in literature is less certain.' Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand - New Zealand Book Council - University of Wellington - Evaluation of TEACHER the book by Sylvia Ashton-Warner - A Blog about the Language Experience Approach - More links and websites The New Zealand Book Council’s entry on Sylvia Ashton-Warner. A substantial 2007 essay by Emily Dobson, from the journal Kōtare.

An interview with Ashton-Warner, from a 1978 television documentary. More suggestions and sources Ashton-Warner, Sylvia. I passed this way. Wellington: Reed, 1980. Ashton-Warner, Sylvia.

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New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Hood, Lynley. The biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner. Auckland: Viking, 1988.

Jones, Alison, and Sue Middleton, eds. The kiss and the ghost: Sylvia Ashton-Warner and New Zealand. Wellington: NZCER Press, 2009.

Kin of place: essays on 20 New Zealand writers. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002.

The link above takes you to one of the few interviews with Sylvia Ashton-Warner. Sylvia was a gifted but complex teacher who worked with Māori children in New Zealand from the 1940s onwards. Experts flocked to study her methods for helping children to learn to read and write. She produced excellent results, but had the reputation of being somewhat difficult. So what was the secret of her success? Philosophy and background Sylvia believed in organic reading and writing. Learning must be real.

It must start from a person’s experience and relate to their world. Children were then able to learn quickly and, in the process, develop their inner strength. Let’s explore how this worked in practice, starting with an example from her best-known book Teacher. Bringing learning to life Sylvia calls the children to attention each morning by playing the first eight notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. She asks the class to tackle their work, then invites each child to her in turn.

Gay is the first child to come to her desk. Sylvia asks: “What word do you want today?” Gay replies: “House.” Sylvia writes the word on a piece of cardboard. She then asks Gay to trace the word with her finger and say it out loud. Gay ‘owns’ the word, it comes from her guts. Sylvia makes sure that Gay says the word, sees the word and feels it in her body. She gives Gay the cardboard and asks her to keep her ‘word’ for the day. Sylvia repeats the process with each child.

When the class finishes, she collects all the words on the separate pieces of cardboard. The next morning Sylvia starts the class by tipping the cardboard words onto the floor. She tells the children: “Find your word.” Gay leaps from the chair and rummages in the pile. “House,” she shouts, “I have found my word.” Children have two visions, an inner vision and an outer vision, says Sylvia, and it is the inner vision which burns brightest.

Gay grasps the word which she spoke from her inner vision. Sylvia asks each child to choose a partner, speak their words and hear their partner’s words. While the children teach each other, she repeats the process of inviting each child to choose their word for today. They build up what Sylvia calls their Key Vocabulary. What happens if Gay fails to find her word? Sylvia rips-up the piece of cardboard. The word has failed the ‘one look’ test and cannot have any great meaning for Gay.

Classrooms often display Jack and Jill illustrations for introducing the reading vocabulary to five-year-olds, says Sylvia, but it is a vocabulary chosen by educationalists in Auckland or London. Gay owns only those words that come from deep within herself.

She is more likely to love these words and want to write them on paper. Shouldn’t these Māori children be learning Oxbridge English? Once they know the joy of creating their own words, says Sylvia, they reach out longingly to learn about other cultures. She believes that: Reaching out for a book must become an organic action. Sylvia’s methods were controversial at the time – as was some of her behaviour. But her work enabled many people to develop their inner strength and believe in their own experience. Nowadays we see it as vital that people keep alive their traditions through language – as well as go out to discover other cultures.

Sylvia pioneered a trail that was admired by many in education, but she generated criticism. She displayed what some considered unprofessional behaviour – such as long absences from school, cancelling appointments and heavy drinking. She also published several novels, one of which was made into a Hollywood film. Like her teaching, however, her novels received a mixed reception. Sylvia was a troubled soul, but she made a key contribution to education. She often fought the New Zealand Educational Authorities and, in some cases, the antipathy was mutual.

Many years later, however, the University of Auckland dedicated one of its libraries to her name. Sylvia led a tempestuous life, so let’s explore it in more detail. The following pages draw heavily on an overview of her life written by Emily Dobson. You can find her complete text at: Lynley Hood has written a much acclaimed book called: Sylvia! The Biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner. You can find more details on Lynley’s home page at: Growing up Sylvia Constance Ashton-Warner was born in 1908 in Stratford, Taranaki, located on the Western side of New Zealand’s North Island. She was the fifth of eight children.

Emily Dobson describes how the family had another child named Sylvia, who was born 3 years earlier, but unfortunately she only lived for 4 days. Sylvia Constance may have felt she was a replacement for the first Sylvia. Francis Ashton-Warner, her father, was 16 when he arrived in New Zealand from England in 1877. His family had a history of links to nobility, but he had no money. He worked as a labourer across the islands, eventually taking a book-keeping job in Auckland.

He then met his future wife, Margaret Maxwell, a teacher whose family originated from Scotland. Francis suffered from deteriorating health and, by 1904, Margaret was left to provide for the family. She was a tough woman and a strict teacher, reports Emily Dobson, which often resulted in conflict with the educational authorities. Combined with accumulated debts, this meant the family kept moving from place to place. Margaret was ambitious for Sylvia, however, and drove her to succeed.

Emily describes how this sometimes produced odd results. “When (Sylvia) was learning to write, under her mother’s instruction, she was forced to use her right hand against her natural left-handedness. The practice was common at the time, but left Ashton-Warner with an ambidexterity that dazzled witnesses later in life.

She could, for example, simultaneously write a sentence from both ends and join it neatly in the middle.” Sylvia preferred her own company and had difficulty in building relationships. She was a talented artist, however, and loved playing the piano – enjoying the opportunity to give a ‘performance’.

When leaving school she chose to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a student teacher. Her studies would be held in Wellington. Tragedy struck before she departed when her father died in January 1926. Teacher Training and Marriage Settling into Wellington, Sylvia began to express herself. She completed the course to qualify for the actual teacher training, which would be held in Auckland, but she still wanted to pursue a career in the arts.

Emily Dobson writes: “Her classmates there remember her as daring and unconventional: she wore make-up, smoked, and wore exotic outfits to social events. “They were charmed by Ashton-Warner’s magnetic personality, and impressed by her artistic and musical talents.” During her time at the Auckland teacher training college she met Keith Henderson, a fellow student. They became romantically involved and he proposed to Sylvia just before he left to take a permanent teaching role in Taranaki. She accepted but, as she still had to complete her training, it meant her staying and them having a long-distance relationship. They eventually married in 1932. Keith got another teaching role in Taranaki, but economic times were hard – it was the midst of the Depression – and there were few other teaching posts available.

Sylvia spent her days at home, but preferred artistic activities to home making, so Keith also did much of the housework. Jasmine, their daughter, was born in 1935, followed by Elliot, their son, in 1937. Sylvia now wanted to continue her teaching career and, Emily Dobson suggests, it was probably she who urged Keith to find work in a remote Māori school. They eventually began working together at a school on the East Coast of the North Island.

She learned to speak Māori, but did not find the teaching easy or fulfilling. Emily writes: “She began to suffer from insomnia and in 1939 had a nervous breakdown. She saw Doctor Donald Allen in Wellington, who introduced her to the notion of there being two opposite forces at work in the world: survival of the individual and survival of the species “Ashton-Warner re-labelled these forces Fear and Sex, and the concept became crucial in the development of her ideas about teaching. Allen also encouraged Ashton-Warner to write as a form of therapy.” Sanctuaries and The Development of Her Teaching “She called it ‘Selah’, a Hebrew word from the Old Testament Psalms which meant, for Ashton-Warner, a pause or rest. Having such a space for herself was important for Ashton-Warner’s internal well-being. Wherever she happened to be, seeking out and claiming a Selah became a tradition she maintained for the rest of her life.” Sylvia was also beginning to find a sanctuary in the classroom.

She began encouraging the Māori children to express their own stories in words, music and dance. She also began to write her own ‘text books’ for the Māori pupils. These related to the children’s experiences, rather than the conventional Westernised books. She submitted these for publication, but her demands and inconsistent behaviour caused problems for publishers. Her educational ideas were evolving, but she still suffered emotional difficulties, frequently staying away from school.

She also increasingly sought solace in alcohol. She and Keith moved to Fernhill, Hastings, on the North Island’s East Coast in 1949. This is where her ideas, both as a teacher and as a novelist, began to bear fruit. She would later collate her educational ideas, particularly those regarding the Key Vocabulary, in her book Teacher. Before then, however, she would become known as a novelist. Spinster Spinster depicted the life of Anna Vorontosov, a teacher working in a small school in New Zealand. The book was initially considered too financially risky to publish in her own country, but it was eventually published across the world. Reviewing the book for The New Yorker in 1959, John Wain wrote: “Everything about her (Anna) is credible, and yet one never catches oneself thinking: ‘How well the author has imagined this character!’ One simply responds immediately, as if it were all happening in the room where one sits reading.

“Analyzed, Mrs. Ashton-Warner’s technique seems quite simple; everything goes into the present tense, the voices of the children continually chime through Miss Vorontosov’s unbroken solipsism, and nothing is allowed into the picture that might suggest an author, a sensibility outside Miss Vorontosov’s.” Sylvia went on to write many other novels in her life, but none matched the success of Spinster. Some say this was due to her increasingly critical observations about life in New Zealand; others say it was due to the decreasing quality of her fiction. Her books did have their admirers, however, and in 1980 she won the New Zealand Book Award for her autobiography I Passed This Way. Sylvia was also awarded the MBE in the Queens Honours list. This was in recognition for her services to both education and literature. Teacher In 1957 Keith and Sylvia moved to the largest Māori school in the country at Bethlehem, Tauranga, near the top of the North Island.

By this time her methods had gained recognition. The magazine National Education having already published her work on The Māori Infant Room – Organic Reading and the Key Vocabulary. Paradoxically, while her fame grew as an educationalist, her interest in actual teaching diminished. Employing her writing skills, however, she compiled her notes and wrote her most famous book Teacher. This was published in 1963. Teacher explained how she helped children to write by inviting them to draw pictures and add their own captions. They built up their words into sentences and create books about their experiences. Children wrote one word, then two sentences, then three, until six-year-olds were writing half a page a day and seven-year-olds a page or more a day.

Sylvia explained the impact of this method. Teacher was well-received internationally, but got a lukewarm reception in her native country.

Partly due to her stated anger towards the educational authorities; partly because of her criticism of life in New Zealand. Some people who knew Sylvia were disillusioned with her behaviour which was, in their opinion, far from the heroic picture she painted. She was also in the habit of cancelling interviews and meetings at the last minute. Emily Dobson underlines, however, that there were many admiring visitors from abroad. Keith, Sylvia’s husband, died in 1966. Some saw him as the real driving force behind the school in Bethlehem and, by now, Sylvia was ready to escape New Zealand. During the rest of her life she travelled to many countries.

Teacher By Sylvia Ashton Warner Pdf Printers

Sometimes this was to be with her son Elliot – first in Mauritius, then in London. Sometimes it was to work on educational projects – such as in Israel, America and Canada.

Invited to work on a pioneering approach in Aspen, Colorado, Sylvia wrote a book about her experiences, called Spearpoint. Emily Dobson points out that Sylvia was less than fair in her reporting of the work done by teachers in Aspen.

The school at the centre of the project proved quite successful. But she devoted much of her book to commenting on the ‘de-sensitisation’ of American children, which she attributed to watching too much television. Sylvia planned to return to New Zealand, but remained indecisive. Emily writes: “Although she continued to book journeys home, Ashton-Warner returned to Aspen, where she worked in a more agreeable role as a ‘Teacher of Teacher-Trainers’. “She set up her living room as a model infant room and took groups of trainees in a ‘Key Vocabulary’ lesson “As she had done in her Māori infant classrooms, Ashton-Warner encouraged her students to find the words that held the most significance for them. “Those who took part greatly enjoyed the sessions, and Ashton-Warner soon had a social network of adoring fans.” In 1971 she was offered a position in Vancouver at the Simon Fraser University.

Emily reports: “The twice-weekly sessions (that Sylvia ran) were immensely popular; participants found them both unusual and invigorating. “The theories were implemented in ‘The Vancouver Project’, which introduced the method into several Vancouver primary schools.” Sylvia again became unhappy, however, and finally returned to New Zealand. The Return Home Soon to be overtaken by poor health, Sylvia relied on alcohol to get her through the day. She eventually began working on some projects, however, such as co-operating on a television documentary about her work. She also embarked upon writing her autobiography, I Passed This Way, which took three years to complete.

Published in 1979, it was well-received, winning several prizes. Sylvia received her MBE in 1982 and, in 1983, chose Lynley Hood to be her biographer. Suffering from the effects of various operations, however, she grew weaker. Elliot, her son, travelled over from London, spending a year helping to care for her. Jasmine and he were by her side when Sylvia died in April 1984. Principles Sylvia had a tumultuous life, making friends and enemies along the way.

Despite her idiosyncratic behaviour – or maybe because of it – she made several key contributions to education. Perhaps the greatest was enabling students to develop by drawing on their own experience.

She applied the beliefs that learning must be real, relevant and rewarding. Learning must be real.

Learning must be real: it must relate to a person’s experiences. The key rule is: “Start where the person is at.” Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, a scholarly yet practical treatise on the learning organisation, wrote: The learner learns what the learner wants to learn. Sylvia believed people developed best when giving voice to their own experiences. This theme was pursued in later years by many people who wanted to empower individuals and communities.

Such an approach enables is more likely to help them to develop their own literacy and shape their future lives. The Talimi Haq School in Howrah-Calcutta, India, for example, uses Sylvia’s approach for helping 3 year-olds to learn Urdu. This organic approach develops what is already within; rather than imposing from outside. One of the school’s blog pages quotes her as saying: “By organic, I mean that way of growth where the strongest thing pushes up ahead of the less strong. I think of trees growing in a clump. “The strongest get to the light. In speaking of a child’s mind I mean the strongest impulses push up, irrespective of whether or not they should, at any given time ” You can find out more about their educational approach at: Sylvia’s recognition that each person has a ‘key vocabulary’, a set of words with a special meaning relating to their emotional life, enabled her to develop a reading scheme for children who were otherwise failing at school.

Though she despaired of being recognised in New Zealand for her contribution to education, she enjoyed a warm response overseas. Learning must be relevant.

Learning must be relevant: it must be able to be used today and tomorrow. Nowadays this sounds obvious, but in the 1940s the traditional approach saw children as ‘empty vessels that must be filled’. The pupils were then judged on their ability to memorise and repeat this information.

Sylvia believed it was vital for children to learn from the wisdom of others. But the best way to stoke a child’s hunger to read and write was to focus on the events that made up their daily lives. She wrote: “Back to these first words; to these first books.

They must be made out of the stuff of the child itself.