Virginia wrote yesterday,
<< One thing I regularly remind myself of, is that I'm still learning (one
of the reasons I come onto Lactnet, attend conferences, read the journals,
and do research). If I even find I've stopped learning and think I know it
all, that will be the day I realise I've lost the plot and should quit! >>
I forget whether I may have already mentioned this book before on the list,
but (in a different life-context) I recently read Eleanor Duckworth's "The
Having of Wonderful Ideas and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning," and was
reminded of my experience thinking about bf over these past years. She
talks in one essay about a group of seasonsed science teachers in a CE class
whom she asked to write down, every night an observation of the moon. At
first they were annoyed -- "we already know about the moon's rotation, this
is a waste of our time" -- but very soon all were engaged in the hand's on
relearning of what exactly the moon is going to do tonight, and why isn't it
conforming to what I thought the theory was going to say? In the end, not
only did they get more and more interested through the semester of the class,
but a group of them continued to meet for semiannual retreats for YEARS to
continue trying to learn about and really understand the motion of the moon.
And if this kind of intensive, experiential learning can go on so long and
fulfillingly in the case of the motion of the moon, a case in which
ultimately there really ARE yes-or-no answers, how much more so in the case
of a wonderful, complicated, mixed biocultural activity like bf?
A great book, by the way, if you are interested in learning processes -- I
kept waking up my husband to say, "Let me read you something interesting!"
Elisheva Urbas
NYC
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