Learning and Language

The scaffolded relationship between language and learning is a homo sapiens characteristic. For example, bees communicate very successfully to indicate to other bees food sources, hives, etc. But bees do not have language, a structural form of communication that is uniquely representative of ideas used to increase learning of concepts. Chimpanzees are able to be taught forms of language symbols that the chimps can use spontaneously for basic speech acts such as making requests of actions or objects or pointing out new things in their environment for which they have not been taught a word. But chimpanzees do not show generational increases in their complexity of thinking that results in being able to modify their concepts of the world around them. Humans, on the other hand, are able to indicate not only basic needs through requests and assertions but also are able to use language to raise their own conceptualization of their world. In this way, humans are able to pretend, imagine, create, invent, innovate… Furthermore, people don’t need to experience something to be able to learn about something that has never been experienced. Astronauts went into space for the first time even though they had never been in space. Obstetricians can deliver a baby even though they may not have ever delivered their own biological baby. And, scholars of antiquity can imagine what ancient Egypt or China was like even though they didn’t live at that time. Language allows humans to displace their thinking across time, place, and social being. This thinking or conceptualization is a form of imagination.

The ability to imagine is akin to the ability to form images, visual or auditory, that represent the individual’s own brain print of their unique personal experience of the world. Such acquisition of images results in concepts (neurosemantic circuits) that in turn provide more experience in imaging for the learner. This scaffolding parallels changes in the human brain. In other words, what people put into the brains affects or alters the way that their brains function. This latter ideas suggests that our methods should allow for individual expression of ideas, refinement of thinking through language, and creative learning of our being or our “who.”