Creative Learning & Living

About the Book

The fact that computers can do so much for students -- even write their papers -- creates a new incentive to ask questions about the diminishing human element in the teaching-learning process. When thirty-two commerce students submitted identical papers taken from the internet, there was a flurry of excitement about plagiarism in the local press, but not much interest in the teaching strategy that could have allowed this to happen.

The human exchange between teacher and student -- once thought essential to the teaching-learning process -- has disappeared from the very structure of educational systems beyond the primary level. Where is the human element to be found in education today?

In his signature book, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, the Canadian philosopher-theologian, Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) claims that human learning flourishes best when students experience their own minds at work asking questions and finding answers for themselves. As a long time student of Lonergan's work, I have mined his thought on human understanding to uncover a model of teaching and learning that suggests a new educational ideal for our times.

This book is written out of my own desire to make accessible to readers the freedom and capacity of their own minds to learn what is real or true or valuable. It is my own attempt to contribute the human element to the educational system of our time by engaging students in their own learning process. It has become the story of students yielding to my desire to engage them in their own learning and suggesting that I write it down!  

About the Author

Moira Carley was a catechist and religious educator in Louisiana and Arizona before joining the Faculty of Education, McGill University, Montreal. When she retired from the faculty in 1989, she continued to teach as a sessional lecturer at St. Michael's College, Toronto, St. Paul's University, Ottawa and Concordia University, Montreal. In addition to writing and presenting papers at Lonergan Conferences, she also leads reading-discussion courses at the Thomas More Institute for Adult Education in Montreal. She received a Doctorate in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1989 with a dissertation Bernard Lonergan: On Teaching.