Joyce Lee on thu 9 nov 00
Ivor said:
> nteresting educational psychology at work here. Consult Jean Piaget.
>
> It has to do with the mental conservation of Volume.
I loved reading this. Today must be my day for treks down memory lane
(to coin a cliche). First, Christo and now Piaget. I spent several
years learning to test, and then testing, students for the various
"conservations" posed by Jean Piaget. Generally, our school district's
special education students performed rather well on these volume,
spatial etc tests. It was I... their teacher, tester and evaluator ...
who performed more poorly than I thought I should have! Most of the
students were dyslexic, and had the expected difficulties with basics of
reading, writing and arithmetic.... so we tested for what Piaget thought
might be missing, hoping that we could then fill in the blanks and
bingo! they'd be able to read! Turned out that they generally
understood, or conserved, concepts of our physical environment well. Not
I, however! Not at all well..... They also were, with exceptions, far
more artistic than I. I know of no studies that support these personal
observations as meaningful, but they are to me. The majority of the
dyslexic folks that I have known ARE unusually artistic. Part of their
genes? Survival skills? Compensation from nature? Sand on the brain?
(I did make such a study myself, as part of a thesis, but reluctantly
concluded that my sample was too small and too geographically limited.)
I know that most of my students knew seemingly instinctively where east,
west, north and the other one are at any given point ... even from
inside a building .... with no windows! Not I.... still don't. Not
without landmarks .... especially mountains.... biiiggg mountains.... in
the west, in my case........... thank God for biiiiiggg geological
formations!! Probably explains much of my sense of confusion in a
massive outdoor art event such as Christo's umbrellas.
Joyce
In the Mojave
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