Raising Learners, Part 3: Regard

The third principle is called Regard or attention. We heard a little about attention in connection with the principle of Reflection, but there we were thinking mostly about mental attention. Here we add sensory attention: seeing, hearing, etc. It includes the best use of the body and the habits in order to control and direct one’s attention where it ought to be. But even our sensory attention is a product of the mind, which must learn to filter out irrelevant input. For younger students, we suggest this form:

Think about the new things you are learning, not other stuff.

In older students, we expect greater Responsibility and Reflection as they learn. This is evident in the suggested wording for the principle of Regard:

Focus your attention on the frontiers of your knowledge. These may be found through the teacher’s instruction (including media), your own senses, and your mind.

To avoid the unfortunate habit of relaxing one’s attentive focus when shifting from one input to another, this wording emphasizes that the principle of Regard continues to apply for learners in multiple ways. Hopefully students will extend it to their experiences outside of class, so that they may become life-long learners.