Caleb Gattegno: A Personal View - Allen Rozelle
Caleb Gattegno, 1911 - 1988
What follows is a personal and partial memory of a man I met for the first time in 1973 and frequented until his death in 1988. It is a short attempt to say why I as a teacher and person found his company interesting and inspiring and why someone visiting this website for the first time may want to spend time investigating his pedagogical materials and writings and also the experiences of others, who have published their own articles about their learning and teaching in light of Gattegno’s advice and proposals.
Caleb Gattegno was a phenomenon as a person. This transpires in his work, its very breadth - from psychology to pedagogy in mathematics, reading and language among so many fields - indicates it. In a workshop or a classroom, he possessed the energy and precision of a gentle tornado, and you never knew where he would touch down. With youngsters, who generally gave their time willingly in exchange for the experience Gattegno proposed, the energy he expended was gentle and precise; the path he and students created together often passed by remarkable awarenesses and led to astonishing results. With adults, who sometimes came with years of accumulated agendas and habits, Gattegno was as precise, but the energy could be explosive and the immediate results unfathomable. Frequently, simply because the person had been blown away. As they say in French, the man didn’t keep his tongue in his pocket.
As I write this, I am aware that Gattegno first made me aware of the fact that words themselves have no meaning. We have meanings, which words in languages that we know may trigger if we have experienced “things” corresponding to the words. “God particle” may or may not trigger a meaning in English. If it does or those two words do, each reader will provide the meaning according to her/his life experience; thus, the meaning will in all probability be different from person to person.
The same will be true when reading Gattegno’s works. Each reader’s understanding or meanings will also evolve if or as he/she attempts to operate according to the model Gattegno proposes. They may continue to do so if the reader comes back to read Gattegno’s works another time. That is another fact of awareness: everything we do is in time.
This ongoing process is a reflection of what Caleb Gattegno emphasized about learning in his teaching: it must respect the learner’s independence, autonomy and responsibility if it is to reach her/his awareness, the only human quality educable. Good luck!
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More information about Caleb Gattegno
For other personal views of Caleb Gattegno and his work written by teachers and pedagogues, you might be interested in The Gattegno Effect - 100 Voices... which can be read online as a web book.
If you wish to know about Gattegno’s academic and professional credentials and accomplishments, you will find his autobiographical notes on this site and elsewhere on the Internet.
Dr. Arthur Powell provides a more complete biography: Caleb Gattegno: A famous mathematics educator from Africa (PDF)
Dr. Roslyn Young has written a short introduction to Caleb Gattegno's Pedagogical Approach.