Before the printing press, there might have been one text book in each subject taught for the entire school. The way the students 'got' the text book was to recite it, line by line, after the instructor. The instructor would repeat the important parts to be sure they were memorized. If a student really wanted a copy for himself, he could make one.
A photocopier was twenty people in a room writing down what one person was reading. Each of those copiers were trained to form their letters exactly the same shape and size as everyone else in the room, and when the reader was done reading, there would be twenty nearly identical copies of the text.
By the way, an error checking method was to stop at the end of a line, count how many characters were in the line, and be sure that everyone in the room had the same number of characters. That would help prevent misspellings or misuse of sound-alike words, like 'rain' and 'reign'. It's an error checking scheme that electronic devices use today to speak with each other.
"I just sent you a packet of 256 characters? Did you get it?"
"No, I only got 248. Send the packet again."
At any rate, when the copying was done, it was easy to tell a 'published' version of a text from one that someone had made for himself or herself. It was just as easy as it would be today, comparing someone's handwriting with a published book. This is what is meant by 'reliable manuscripts'. 'Manu' means 'manually', and 'script' means 'writing', and before the printing press everything was a manuscript, written by hand. But 'published' versions were clean and uniform in appearance, like today's books.
Anyway, the process of recitation was really important. Students wouldn't be writing a lot of papers because paper was a precious, expensive commodity. Teachers would know what a student knew by questioning them and listening to the answers. Students would be preparing speeches much more often than they would be writing papers.
When books were opened, they were read aloud. With the rarity of a book, one could never know who might be interested in hearing what someone else had taken the trouble to publish, and so reading was always aloud. I can see folks in a neighborhood gathering for the reading of a chapter of a book at the end of a day. If you had the funds to buy a book, then sharing it aloud would be a neighborly thing to do. Even after the advent of the printing press, families would gather around the fire at night and have someone reading aloud while everyone performed the small manual tasks necessary to life and survival.
This method of education greatly favors the auditory learner.
There are many definitions of 'auditory learner', but the one I'm going to use is the student who finds that s/he must recite or reiterate the material to be learned before it's solidified in his/her brain. They don't just learn by hearing, but the sound has to come out of their own mouth into their own ear before learning has taken place. They have to find the words to speak what they've heard before they 'know' it.
Somebody told me a story about St. Augustine, possibly sitting in the library with an array of books around him. He was reading silently to himself, and everyone thought he must be really smart because he could read silently. I don't know if the story is true or not, but it IS an illustration of how far we've moved away from the auditory learning system of the past.
Today, our educational system greatly favors the visual learner. We have kids reading silently for 20-minute stretches. We think that everything can be learned from a book. You must be quiet in our libraries so as not to disturb others.
We do almost nothing for the kinesthetic learner, the student who has to find a way to get the material into their hands before it clicks into place in their brain.
Some auditory learners get enough auditory stimulation through the discussion that goes on in class. If small group work is encouraged, then there is more opportunity for everyone to participate and talk about ideas.
As a math instructor, however, I'm acutely aware that teaching math is almost exclusively a visual exercise. It's true that lots of math is easier done than said. It amuses me that there are symbols in math books that the book itself does not explain how to say aloud. But we tend to work a few examples on the board, turn around to our students, say "There it is. Follow the example." Mathematicians tend to be a visual lot, having been sifted out from among the auditory learners to be mathematicians. Having learned math that way, we tend to teach math that way. We almost NEVER give our students the opportunity to discuss what they're learning. I've found that that means encouraging them to work in pairs and threes in the room, and talk through how they got an answer, or why the problem should be worked this way and not that way.
Let me offer a few more illustrations and observations.
A few years ago, bad weather toward the end of a term knocked out both meetings in a week, of an evening math class I taught. I came to class with a test in my hand. We hadn't had a chance to cover the last lesson of the chapter or do the chapter review. "I need this test score," I told them, and passed out the test. I told them to get with one or two other people in the room, and work the test. It would be open book, as well. I would walk around and teach when I found folks stuck. I would collect it at the end of the hour.
I heard some amazing learning going on that night, people arguing vehemently about how quadratics worked. They taught each other the material, checked each others work, and turned in their tests. I was amazed to find that I had a nice range of scores, and that no one was far off from their average on previous tests. Their learning that night was solid, and showed well on the final exam. The students appreciated the experience.
Although a tiny sample, a young woman I worked with in algebra a few years back was being caught up in both English and math skills. Both subjects poked at her brain in different ways. It was our observation that when we saw her verbal skills improve that her math skills did as well. The math made her think in symbols, a visual skill, and when she learned the skills to explain the symbols, her math skills improved. The work with symbols taught her another way to think about the words, and then her verbal and writing skills improved.
What you need to know is that today's educational methods favor the visual learner almost exclusively. Large lecture halls give students very little opportunity to interact with an instructor. TV is visual. Computer games are mostly visual, with some very narrow kinesthetic skills required. Reading silently is a visual skill. We almost never require a student to recite after the instructor, and talking out in class is bad. I've heard of K-3 instructors who insist that they should have to tell students only once what to do, and that should be enough.
The auditory learner HAS to talk about it!
If you recognize yourself or your child in the 'auditory' category, what can you do? Here are some suggestions.
1. Form a small study group, so that each person has more opportunity to tell what they know, or try to verbalize what they're learning.
2. Record lectures. Stop and start the recording and recite what you heard, verbatim. See if you can learn how to gather longer and longer chunks into memory before you can't repeat what you heard. ITunes has the iTunes University, and there are some fabulous lectures there. TED (www.ted.com) has some amazing lectures that you can watch online and download to your iPod. Google 'lectures online' and find everything. Learn to stop your iPod, repeat what was said, and start it again. Become an auditory learner.
3. Talk with your kids about their lessons. Even visual learners need to learn to communicate what they know.
4. Read aloud. Sit with the child next to you as you read. When they are learning to read they'll be following along beside you, learning vocabulary.
5. Have the child read aloud. If a child has a lot of trouble doing this, find a recording of a book so they can follow while playing the recording. Go back and read aloud sections already played to see if the child can pick up the art of reading aloud. Don't stop this before age 12, and don't stop then if you both enjoy it.
One of the reasons our modern educational system favors visual learners is money. Large lecture halls or even classrooms of 30 deliver learning to large groups of people at the price of a single instructor. This might seem cost effective, but it isn't necessarily educational. Small groups of students enable an instructor to check the knowledge of each student on a daily basis. I find personally that a class of ten on the grade 6 - 12 level is too many. A class of 20 on the adult level is my maximum. I regularly see classes of 35 at the community college. The smaller my classes are, the higher the rating I get as a professor from my students. Hmm. Could be that I actually get a chance to talk to them all. That's an auditory experience.
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