Library of Geoffrey Waldon’s Writing

A collection of papers for a teachers’ course in 1976 which cover the theoretical
basis of each of the learning-how-to-learn tools, and how to facilitate their development in practice

Session One

Introduction - Excerpt

This brief course is intended to introduce the practising teacher to a philosophy and practical approach to education, in particular to the education of unusual children, which will probably be unfamiliar…

Session Two

Introduction to 'Sorting' - Excerpt

Clearly there is much scope for clarification and development of the idea of sorting itself. As with matching, visual sorting has been used in these papers as the exemplar, very little attention being given to haptic, acoustic or olfactory sorting…

Session Three

The Practical Teaching of 'Sorting' - Excerpt

… we attempt to ensure that the child is … free both from social over-demand on his understanding and any reinforcement of his defensive behaviours …

Session Four

The 'Asocial' Lesson - Excerpt

Our primary concern in education should be the extension of a child’s capacity for learning to learn. Only secondarily are we concerned …

Session Five

Praxic Understanding and 'Brick-Building' - Excerpt

… ‘praxic’ perception … an increasing understanding of space and of the movements of objects within that space … built up of accumulations of simple perceptions occurring one after the other …

Session Six

The Evolution of Constructive Praxis and the Practical Teaching of 'Brick Building' - Excerpt

The ability to understand the positional, spatial and orientational relationships existing between objects has, like all other human understanding, its main origins in the early bodily movements.

Session Seven

'Matching' - Excerpt

Whereas … ‘sorting’ is guided by the recognition of features held in common … ‘matching’ is concerned with the differences between patterns.

Session Eight

Graphic Praxis (Drawing and the Use of Tools) - Excerpt

In ‘drawing’ we have continuous traces … which … are, at first, incidental to the movements producing them.

Session Nine

Development of the Experience-Gathering Equipment - Excerpt

‘Fundamental Understanding’ is … that capacity … whose function … is … to ensure the survival of the organism.
The greater the variety of habitats and … circumstances … the more unspecialised and pluripotential [the] structure and adaptive abilities …

Session Ten

Introduction to Sequencing and Seriation - Excerpt

… a sequence may be primarily rhythmic, springing from the temporal spacing of the events or primarily ordered, arising from the temporal order of the events …

Session Thirteen

Understanding of Speech - Excerpt

This paper is … about … two separate mental processes … two different kinds of verbal understanding, namely, understanding the speech of others and understanding one’s own speech.

Symposium paper (1984) -What is Waldon?

What is Waldon? Symposium paper

Diagram: the nature of observation

Proposed book

Geoffrey Waldon spent his final years working on his book. Although largely unfinished,
these draft sections represent the most fully worked out form of his ideas.