How refreshing to hear about the great Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. His idea that a teacher’s core role is to enable a child’s “spontaneous concepts”, learned through life experience, to become abstract “scientific concepts” rings true, as does the importance of giving children time to use speech to unpack and share their thoughts with one another.
Instead of being fed the usual diet of Bloom’s Taxonomy (which sounds too much like taxidermy) and De Bono’s colourful hats, teachers should be exposed to more radical thinkers such as Vygotsky. After all, his book Thought and Language was banned by the Soviets, so it must have been good.
Stan Labovitch, Windsor, Berkshire.