50 Learning Theorists in 50 Days


Donald Clark is blogging about 50 learning theorists in 50 days. It’s a rollicking good read.

Of the thirteen he’s covered thus far, Donald has pointed out that:

For Rousseau, “It’s hard to see a man who handed all five of his children up to an orphanage at birth, as an expert on the development and education of children. Prickly and paranoid, he managed to fall out with almost everyone, including those who tried to help him.”

Socrates “loved to pick intellectual fights and the method was not so much a gentle teasing out of ideas, more the brutal exposure of falsehoods. He was described by one of his victims as a ‘predator which numbs its victims with an electric charge before darting in for the kill’, even describing himself as a ‘gadfly, stinging the sluggish horse of Athens to life’.”

William James, elder brother of Henry James the novelist, asked his younger brother to stay close for six weeks after he died, as he wanted to try to contact him from the next world. No messages were ever received but it showed how seriously he took real inquiry and experimentation.

Despite the sad end to his life – he strangled his wife and spent his last years in an asylum, Althuser, born in Algiers, attempted to reconcile Marxism with structuralism.

In about a month, it will be my turn. I’m sandwiched between Csikszentmihalyi and Zuckerburg. I’m honored to rate a place on Donald’s list.

I’m also wondering what dark aspect of my past Donald will dig up to introduce his take on my theories.

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