Commentary: Remembrance of Theories Past

ciplines, the school should focus on its own autonomous culture and that of society. The acculturation of students into an academic environment, without destroying their zest for learning, without impairing their respect for an understanding of their own cultural traditions in an increasingly multi­ ethnic society, and without imposing values beyond those for which a societal consensus exists, is a tall enough order for our schools. But then, the idea of cognitive ap­ prenticeship is intriguing. Unfor­ tunately, the article does not always argue effectively in favor of it. For ex­ ample, the article cites with approval the example of some poor soul at Weight Watchers confronted with the challenge of measuring three-fourths of two-thirds of a cup of cottage cheese. The dieter mounded a pile of cottage cheese, separating first three-quarters of a cup and then taking two-thirds of that to arrive at the required half-cup of cottage cheese. The authors regard the dieter's ineptitude with fractions as giving rise to an "inventive resolution" (p. 35) to a problem arising in a par­ ticular context. Instead, it was an act of desperation, born of ignorance. Al­ though the authors laud this activity, I question whether it was learning at all. Where does this so-called solution lead? Nothing has been learned that could be generalized. Nonetheless, the example is not in­ apposite to ideas of situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship. I suspect the underlying problem here is that, due to the decontextualized teaching of fractions, the Weight Watcher never in­ ternalized procedures for simple mathe­ matical computations that could be used to solve a practical problem. Had the educational experience been tied to real world experience, that knowledge of fractions would have become useable and the individual could have over­ come math phobia. In support of their notion of authen­ tic activities, the authors offer a table contrasting the activities of "just plain folks" (JPF), practitioners, and students. The table ostensibly demon­ strates that the activities of JPFs are more like practitioners than are those of students. For example, the results that JPFs and practitioners produce are shown as identical: "negotiable mean­ ing and socially constructed understanding" (p. 35). The great similarity seen by the authors between JPFs and practitioners may be an illu­ sion. The case is rather like that of the student of Zen who, prior to study, believed that mountains were only mountains and rivers were only rivers. When the Zen student finally came to enlightenment after years of concen­ trated study, he understood that moun­ tains, in fact, are only mountains and rivers are only rivers. What JPFs and practitioners do may have a superficial similarity, but the processes differ significantly. And, if the processes were the same, that would argue directly against the article's thesis with respect to enculturation. If a long-established practitioner does things pretty much the way a novice JPF would do it, why should we be concerned about initiating students into that practitioner's culture? The difference between practitioners and JPFs or students is that practi­ tioners approach problems with a store­ house of useable knowledge. Practi­ tioners meet and solve problems be­ cause they have the experience and ac­ cessible knowledge to deal with the problems. JPFs and students have no such tools. Until some evidence is of­ fered that JPFs learn faster or better than students in academic settings, it is premature to establish a cognitive ap­ prenticeship on a JPF model. Rather, the value of cognitive appren­ ticeship lies in a different direction. The article points out that "where problems do not come in text books, a depen­ dency on such school-based questions makes the learning extremely fragile" (p. 36). Unfortunately, the article does not buttress this important point effec­ tively. As an example, the article criti-