Very nice manners but thick as a brick

Do you know what yours is? Did you know that such a thing, ‘a learning style,’ existed? You probably do. You probably do because you’re an American, or alternatively, someone from the ‘younger generation,’ which would probably be around ‘under middle aged.’

For anyone else, a learning style[s] is something that you should know a little bit about if you have autistic children. Also handy if you have the ordinary kind of a child too, because there are a variety of different styles available. If you manage to engineer a good match. Then your child’s experience at school could be considerably more positive than it might be at the moment.

When I was youngster myself, born to a man with Edwardian parents, my father would help me learn my times tables. I would march up and down the kitchen to the irritation of my mother, chanting out the lines until I was word perfect. He would test me with spot questions. I’d snap that answer out like a bullet as I exploded in a jumping jack. I was star shaped and I would be the star of the class!
It was a dead cert.

The following day, I would skip along to school, the tables mantra was so easy. The test was administered in silence in those dark days of yore. Pupils [translation = students] sat at individual desks. When I say ‘sat,’ I really mean ‘sat.’ No wriggling please! Britain way back when. ‘Sat’ meant static too, although small movements of the writing hand, wrist and fingers was permissible.

I would sit and stare at my ‘vocab’ book, a dinky little affair the size of an envelope, with my lead pencil sharpened and at the ready, but could I write anything? My toes would tap the wooden floor, my fingers would twiddle rhythmically on the underside of the desk, but no, nothing.

“McEwen! Stop that right now!” What a choice? Remain and fail, or depart to be disciplined by the Reverend Mother?
I would probably manage a few figures,
but not the answers to the questions being barked
at us at 30 second intervals.

I would trudge home at the end of the day, with my vocab book hidden at the bottom of my satchel, [translation = school bag] written evidence of my ‘thicky, thicky, dumb, dumb’ status. My father would always manage to ferret it out and gasp as the illegible scribblings in red ink all over the page. The exasperation he experienced was close to my own.

“But you were perfect last night!” he would gasp. I could only respond as a goldfish does, mouthing words that I couldn’t formulate as an adequate explanation.
“What are all these ‘submission notes’? Were you being naughty? Again?”
[Ref 1] But I digress. Where were we? Ah yes, learning styles.

Visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic for starters. Does that help? Not particularly?
I’ll give you an example. Junior learned about the life cycle of insects [translation = bugs] a few years back. They started with Bees on Monday, moved onto Butterflies on Tuesday and finished up with Mosquitoes on Wednesday. I 'knew' that he had no interest in this topic. On the first two days, he was encouraged to sit during ‘circle time’ for these lessons. He spent each of those 20 minute periods rolling around on the floor,
bumping into his pals and laughing hysterically,
much to the annoyance of everyone. One teacher sat with him,
not so much restraining him as trying to contain him, calm him,
quieten him down. Boredom was one thing, disruption was quiet another.

When he returned home on each day, he had learned nothing about these tiny little friendly creatures. On the third day, the poor teachers had run out of energy and chose to ignore him as he danced around the walls of the room, touching items rhythmically and giggling. He paid no heed to the lesson and appeared for all intents and purposes to be in his own little world. They didn't know what else to do, so they concentrated on the rest of the class and let him go his own sweet but oblivious way. Since that was just prior to his permanent departure from that school, one can only sympathise with the poor people attempting to teach a class of 20 little ones.


That evening, after the free fall dancing episode, he lectured me in great detail, voluntarily without prompting. I knew more about Mosquitoes than is healthy for a person of my advanced years.

{Ref 1} ‘Submission notes,’sent home to the parents advised them of omissions and commissions by the child during the school day.
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/learning/styles.html
This may not be the 'best' site, but the material is well presented, clear, with useful tips that aren't all about flashcards.