WHAT WE LEARN FROM CHILDREN

Marie Rasey, who wrote earlier about her own evolution as a teacher in It Takes Time. here attempts to define some of the perhaps more indefinable concepts of teaching she has formulated through the years, based on her experience at Rayswift- a small school she established for disturbed children. Believing that we must ""rethink our terminology"" and revise our assumptions of growth and learning, she feels that each child must be approached and appraised as a totality- and that learning is most valuable in the midst of living. The processes by which these beliefs were reached are demonstrated through case histories in her work at Rayswift and there is no question of her dedication and her insight. Some of it is obscured however by a fondness for certain types of abstractions so that the nebulae of ""ongoingness"" and ""purposiveness"" remain well out of reach. In any case, this is primarily a philosophy of teaching which demands a certain psychological orientation and offers a broad-based perspective for inspiration perhaps more than easy application.