Caleb Gattegno
| Caleb Gattegno | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
November 11, 1911 Alexandria, Egypt |
| Died | July 28, 1988 (aged 76) Paris, France |
| Education | University of Basel, University of London, University of Lille |
| Occupation | Scientist, Mathematician, Educator, Inventor, Author |
| Known for | Inventor of The Silent Way, Words in Color, and Visible & Tangible Math teaching approaches |
Caleb Gattegno (1911–1988) was one of the most influential and prolific mathematics educators of the twentieth century. He is best known for his innovative approaches to teaching and learning mathematics (Visible & Tangible Math), foreign languages (The Silent Way) and reading (Words in Color). He is also the inventor of pedagogical materials for each of these approaches, and the author of more than 120 books and hundreds of articles largely on the topics of education and human development.
Caleb Gattegno’s pedagogical approach is characterised by propositions based on the observation of human learning in many and varied situations. This is a description of three of these propositions.
Gattegno noticed that there is an “energy budget” for learning. Human beings have a highly developed sense of the economics of their own energy and are very sensitive to the cost involved in using it. It is therefore essential to teach in ways that are efficient in terms of the amount of energy spent by learners. To be able to mathematically determine whether one method was more efficient than another, he created a unit of measurement for the effort used to learn. He called that unit an ogden, and one can only say an ogden has been spent if the learning was done outside of ordinary functionings, and was retained. For example, learning one word in a foreign language costs one ogden, but if the word cannot be recalled, the ogden has not truly been spent. Gattegno's teaching materials and techniques were designed to be economical with ogdens, so that the most information can be recalled with the least sense of effort.
Certain kinds of learning are very expensive in terms of energy, i.e., ogdens, while others are practically free. Memorization is a very expensive way to learn. The energy cost can be especially high when the content is of no particular interest to the learner. Memorizing dates in history or major exports of foreign countries is like that, for most people. School is not the only place where that kind of learning is found. Learning somebody's name or telephone number is equally arbitrary. We have to use our own energy to make such arbitrary items stick in our memories. The “mental glue” necessary is expensive, since that type of learning uses up a lot of energy.
Not only is that type of learning expensive, it tends also to be fragile. It is typically difficult to remember those kinds of items. Even when we make a great effort, we do not always succeed. We often recognise a face without being able to remember the name of the person... not to mention all that almost all of us have forgotten much of what we "learned" at school. It is not unusual for us to forget much of what we memorize.
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