http://www.ehow.com/about_5557505_tardes-social-learning-theory.html
ehow.com
By M. Johnson
Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) was a sociologist and social theorist known for holding this central thesis: the human person, living in society, has a complex form of existence that derives from every conceivable kind of direct and indirect experience he can encounter. Hence, any idea of the “social whole” or even of the “individual” is in reality an abbreviation of these experiences and how they have been interpreted and internalized by the person. Therefore, societies and people are infinitely complex (practically speaking) and the process of learning, therefore, has by far more to do with experience, proximity to peer groups and other structures that to the classroom curriculum.
Social Life
# There is no collective life that can be understood through language. The undefinable life of the collective is in reality the constant interplay between symbols, interpretation, individuals and proximity to all of these. Knowledge, exists in the indefinable interplay of all these factors, most of which are ignored or not even considered in normal consciousness. People become who they are through experience, not through discursive language.
How Societies Form
# Most social theories approach the small from the large. They are constructed on the basis that the collective life of the social derives from huge forces such as class, race, climate, warfare, government structure and even genetics. For Tarde, the opposite is true: the large comes from the small. Even the human person is little more than an aggregate of these experiences. Social wholes derive from tiny changes among and within individuals.
Action and Reaction
# There is more logic in ritual than the meaning of the ritual; there is more logic in the symbol than in what the symbol stands for. This is of central importance in understanding Tarde’s sociology of education. What a human being will become, therefore, is a constant mutual action and reaction not with logical discourse expressed in sentences, but in the social rituals and symbols that have become a close part of the person’s life.
How We Learn
# All of these impact on education in the following manner. If the individual is himself an aggregate of experiences that, collectively, make him who he is, then three things are true: first, that we are most influenced by those people and ideas that are closest to us. Secondly, as we grow, we come to imitate and identify with those symbols, ideas and people. Finally, these become, so to speak, models for later development. We understand them only in the aggregate, and aggregates are only abbreviations of these complex sets of growth experiences.
On Education
# If the above is true, then human beings learn not through rote memorization, or even through language as expressed in sentences, paragraphs or lectures, but through the aggregate of experience. “Language” for Tarde is a huge and complex concept that ideally includes all experiences that eventually create a person. What might be learned in school is not the typical curriculum but conformist behavior, the functioning of cliques and the relations among the sexes. These are at least equal to the content of the curriculum itself, but likely are much greater in creating the personality.
