Bird Droppings June 5, 2026
Why is experience the greatest teacher? Could it be synchronistic?

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

What a way to start with a line from a fiction book about space travelers. However, over the past ten minutes this morning, as I finished a paper on differentiation and read emails and posts on various blogs, the idea of learning through experience was prevalent. One fellow mentioned he learned from his friends. Another learned through the doing of something. Still another got into experiential education. We are the total of our experiences, and great educators along the way have seen this and written about it for many years.

“Any experience, however, trivial in its first appearance, is capable of assuming an indefinite richness of significance by extending its range of perceived connections.” John Dewey, Democracy and Education

Dewey believed that it was through utilizing a child’s previous experiences that we build their education. As I read more on Dewey’s thinking and subsequent thinkers who have built on Dewey, I have found in the research that when learning has context and relevance, it is retained far more than when it is simply a mass of content. It saddens me to see our children learning what they need for a test, not what they need to walk out of school at the end of 12 years.

“Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life.” John Dewey, Democracy and Education

Each day, as I reflect on and wander in my reflections and wanderings, I always seem to come back to the interconnections that bind us together. It is through the interconnections of the pieces that we learn, and through which our lived experiences become actual learning and knowledge.

“To ‘learn from experience’ is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction–discovery of the connection of things.” John Dewey, Democracy and Education

In looking at behavior, we use the terms antecedent, behavior, and consequence to show how a behavior is elicited and continued or stopped. The antecedent precedes the behavior, which is followed by the consequence, which is considered how it is to work according to behaviorism. This is very easily applied and followed in animal research, and in many school settings, is a standard we call behavior modification. However, I do think Dewey was seeing this sequence differently. To learn from experience, we need to be able to rearrange and redirect the antecedent, behavior, and consequence so that, as we go, those interconnections are fluid and flow back and forth rather than being this or that.

“Thinking, in other words, is the intentional endeavor to discover specific connections between something which we do and the consequences which result, so that the two become continuous. Their isolation, and consequently their purely arbitrary going together, is canceled; a unified developing situation takes place. The occurrence is now understood; it is explained; it is reasonable, as we say that the thing should happen as it does. Thinking is thus equivalent to an explicit rendering of the intelligent element in our experience. It makes it possible to act with an end in view. It is the condition of our having aims.” John Dewey, Democracy and Education

Perhaps, as I see it, behavior modification can work where thinking is not allowed. When we take away critical thinking and imagination, then the standard of antecedent behavior and consequence is firmly in charge. As I reflect today, this could be why some teachers like maintaining the hierarchy between teachers and students and have a difficult time with Dewey’s ideas about a democratic classroom. This could be why Texas wants to eliminate critical thinking in education. When we mass students and lose their individuality, it is far easier to maintain the status quo. Education is notorious for tracking and grouping kids into ability groups or classes. Might have something to do with control again, or it could be that research shows children learn best when they are with their kind. Fifty years ago, this was the premise for segregated schools.

“How one person’s abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none of the teacher’s business. It is irrelevant to his work. What is required is that every individual shall have opportunities to employ their powers in activities that have meaning. Mind, individual method, originality (these are convertible terms) signify the quality of purposive or directed action.” John Dewey, Democracy and Education

Trying to provide the right tools and understanding so that children can learn in a setting that offers opportunities to use what they know and build on it can be difficult and tedious at times. Many teachers give up on this type of learning because it involves more work. One thing I have found is that it is about kids wanting to be in a classroom. If they want to be there, amazing things and learning can happen.

“The educator’s part in the enterprise of education is to furnish the environment which stimulates responses and directs the learner’s course. In the last analysis, all that the educator can do is modify stimuli so that response will as surely as is possible result in the formation of desirable intellectual and emotional dispositions”. John Dewey, Democracy and Education

With only three weeks left in my summer, I am sitting here in my room, writing and pondering a new year and its ideas. Hopefully, my students will learn and take away something they can carry with them throughout their lives. Each day, I end my droppings with the same line and do so again. Please keep all in harm’s way on your minds and in your hearts, and always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

docbird

PS – Synchronicity for me and where it all started. My journey into Jung took many side roads and started in behaviorism. I was a psychology major at Mercer in the early 1970s. I ran Skinner boxes with rats and took an extremely Skinner-oriented experimental psychology class. (That class in and of itself is a whole story). I spent almost a year on an internship doing counseling at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville in a female psychotic, adolescent ward. With all the Skinner, my advisor was a humanist. He was a practicing Buddhist and had a different take on psychology than most of the other professors. I entered the publishing/printing industry right out of college and spent 20 years, eventually owning the company. My largest customer, which accounted for about 80% of my business, switched from hard copy to CDs within a few months, and I was forced to close. On a whim, I saw an ad for free business accounting consulting. I called, and a fellow spent two days telling me to declare bankruptcy and shut down. I eventually did both. Before he left, he suggested a book. The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield. A book of fiction, nonetheless. I took his note with the title stuck in my wallet. Several months later, while at a bookstore, a book fell off the shelf and hit me on the head. The name seemed familiar, and I recalled my note; sure enough, it was The Celestine Prophecy, which I bought and read that day, literally. I was immersed in Jung and proceeded to read Thomas Moore, James Hillman, and more Jung.

. I became acutely aware of synchronicity, and how, literally, synchronistic events occur in my daily life. I go out every morning to take sunrise pictures. Today I had a good morning, a beautiful sunrise, and six deer along the way. As I was heading home, I felt the need to take a different route, as I often do, and proceeded that way. I was going to a hill to take photos of the moon. We live along a dirt road, and I have taken many photos from it, but farther down the road there is a road that leads to a higher elevation and offers a clear view of the sky, so I could take a few photos of the moon. As I turned onto the dirt road, I noticed a large bird gliding towards me. It was Sonic, our local red-tailed hawk. I had not seen him for several days. I have a spiritual connection with hawks and deer, another story. It made my morning; if I had gone on a slightly different route, there would have been no hawk this morning.