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Benjamin Franklin a Wonder-Based Approach to Life and Learning

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Benjamin Franklin a Wonder-Based Approach to Life and Learning Benjamin Franklin A Wonder-Based Approach to Life and Learning James J. Dillon uring his long life, Benjamin Franklin enjoyed Benjamin Franklin’s Dsomething close to rock star status in Europe and some quarters of the United States. In 1778, educational insights and before the Revolutionary War was even over, admir- investigative spirit deserve ers in France commissioned the famous artist Jean- Antoine Houdon — sculptor of such public icons as renewed attention. King Louis XVI, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Napo- leon Bonaparte — to cast a bust of Franklin to be dis- played in the public halls of Versailles. The French statesman Turgot wrote the epigram in Latin below the bust, “He snatched the lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants” (Van Doren 1956, 606). In many minds, Franklin was like a god. After his death and the publication of his Autobiography (Franklin 2001/1791), his notoriety grew even stron- ger. When Davy Crockett died at the Alamo in 1836, almost 50 years after Franklin’s death, the book he had in his pocket was not the Bible, but a copy of Franklin’s Autobiography (Isaacson 2003, 479). Why was Benjamin Franklin so popular? Factors surely include his many accomplishments and his in- telligence, wit, and skills in business, politics, and di- plomacy. But another and often overlooked reason is the infectious sense of wonder and curiosity that Benjamin Franklin brought to nearly everything he did. Ever since the 18th century, parents and teachers the world over have recognized something of high value in Benjamin Franklin’s approach to life and learning and have held him up as a model for their JAMES J. DILLON is a psychologist who children. In 2007, over one million visitors — 248,000 teaches at the University of West Georgia. He has written on child development, of them school children — flocked to the Franklin In- education, parenting, adult development, stitute in Philadelphia to learn about Franklin’s life autobiography, and the search for meaning and value in life. He lives in Atlanta with his and see his many works, inventions, and discoveries wife Katherine and their children, Benjamin (Franklin Institute Board of Trustees 2007). Benjamin and Zoe. Franklin continues to excite and inspire. 2 ENCOUNTER: Education for Meaning and Social Justice From his earliest childhood until the very last days Franklin observed this plant each subsequent day of his life at 80, Franklin saw the world as wide open, and carefully recorded his observations to see if he full of fascinating questions to answer and discover- might figure out the manner of generation of this ies to unearth. He had a real belief that his own inves- strange and fascinating creature. tigations could advance the course of scientific and Franklin is exhibiting the same kind of curiosity philosophical knowledge. This approach enabled and investigative spirit we try to instill in our chil- Franklin to make fascinating discoveries and inven- dren in school. The difference is that Franklin is a tions. For example, he discovered some the major grown man. No one is telling him to do this exercise properties of electricity, which led to the first light- for a grade in a class; he is doing it all on his own. For ning rod and the first battery for the storage of en- all he knew, there may have been a book published ergy. He invented bifocals, the first American cathe- somewhere on the nature of this little crab, but ter, the glass harmonica, the open stove (or “Franklin Franklin resolved to conduct the investigation him- Stove”), and many more fascinating and still-useful self rather than wait to “look it up” in a book when objects. he returned home. Franklin once wrote that “a house When one reads through Franklin’s scientific jour- is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the nals (e.g., Cohen 1941; Franklin 1818) and his many mind as well as the body” (Faal 2006, 451). To be letters (Franklin 1821), one is struck by the childlike happy and healthy, Franklin believed that one energy and curiosity that consistently runs from the needed each day to offer the mind that which would earliest years of his teens to his experiments with bi- both nourish and inspire. focals just before he died at 80. Many who live in our more advanced scientific Consider one example from Franklin’s journal age have the sense that whatever isn’t already from 1726, when he was just twenty. He was return- known will be discovered by “experts.” They feel ing from a trip to England where he was in search of that their role in any process of discovery is to pas- funding for a business venture. While other men sively read about it in magazines and books. played cards or drank their nights away, Franklin This modern mentality is conveyed to children by walked about the ship each day with his notebook, adults and can gradually exert a corrosive effect on pen, and viewing glasses, making careful observa- their attitude toward learning, teachers, and school. tions about the sun, moon, stars, the tides, and ma- For example, child researchers in Great Britain and rine life. Here is an entry from a morning when he the United States have pointed to a loss of interest in observed a strange crab upon a branch which really school beginning as early as the middle of 1st grade sparked his curiosity, and culminating in 5th grade (Stone 1981, 407). Many Observing the weed more narrowly, I spied a parents have heard the familiar refrain, “I don’t want very small crab crawling among it, about as big to go to school” or “I hate school!” My own son be- as the head of a ten-penny nail, and of a yellow- gan to express this attitude toward school shortly af- ish colour, like the weed itself. This gave me ter beginning kindergarten, when he was just five some reason to think that he was a native of the years old. A substantial number of elementary branch, that he had not long since been in the school children demonstrate shyness, embarrass- same condition with the rest of those little ment, and feelings of inferiority about anything even embrios that appeared in the shells, this being associated with school (Hay & Nye 1998; Matthews the method of their generation; and that conse- 1994). quently all the rest of this odd kind of fruit These negative attitudes contrast with the curios- might be crabs in due time. To strengthen my ity, wonder, and mystery that characterize the tod- conjecture, I have resolved to keep the weed in dler and early childhood years. Something vital salt water, renewing it every day till we come on about us has been lost or taken away by about the 5th shore, by this experiment to see whether any grade, if not earlier. Franklin in contrast managed to more crabs will be produced or not in this man- keep a childlike spirit of curiosity and investigation ner (Franklin 1818, xv). alive well into his adulthood. In the pages that fol- Volume 22, Number 4 (Winter 2009) 3 low, I will attempt to show just how he managed to By comparing my work afterwards with the accomplish this and how parents and teachers of to- original, I discovered many faults and corrected day might make use of this approach in their own them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fan- work with children. cying that in certain particulars of small import I had been lucky enough to improve the method Franklin’s Self-Education or language [of the original], and this encour- aged me to think that I might possibly in time Franklin had just two years of formal schooling come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I and was mostly self-educated. His parents hoped he was extremely ambitious (Franklin 2001, 29). would train for the ministry, but it quickly became clear to them and his teachers that the young Frank- Franklin would even submit his pieces of writing lin had no interest in or talent for the pulpit. He asked on various important topics of the day to his too many questions, needed too much evidence, and brother’s newspaper under pseudonyms, since his had too much interest in practical matters to succeed brother refused to publish the work of a lowly child as a member of the clergy. So his father pulled him apprentice. Many were published on the front page out of school entirely and put him on a course to be- of the paper and made quite a splash. Through these come a manual laborer like himself. Franklin could and many other attempts to improve his reading, have proceeded to live a very practical life of work writing, and thinking, Franklin notes that he inad- from this point, but he did not. For him, the mind vertently came to meet with the “Trivium” or the needs both food and fire. He balanced his many prac- three classic liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and tical interests and pursuits with intellectual and spir- logic. He was determined to make the liberal arts the itual ones. How did he do it? center of his self-educational endeavors and to mas- ter each one by imitation and internalization. Later Mastery of Writing in his life, Franklin (2001, 27) notes that this early The young Franklin decided early in his life that self-training in the liberal arts was “the principal one of the basic keys to happiness comes though means of my advancement” in life.
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