To me, learning is not something that happens at a specific place and a specific time with a specific person. School is not the only place children learn – we cannot turn learning on and off depending on place, time or person. Learning is life itself. Living is learning, every minute. We’ve only been “civilized” for a few thousand years. Did hunter-gatherer children sit still listening to teachers and parents drone on about hunting for 8 hours a day? Gathering?
Most education systems of today are still based on colonial era ideas and post-war sensibilities – obedience and economic growth being given the most importance. Obedience was highly valued because colonial societies were based upon the idea of a few ruling over the many using conformance as a tool for the sake of order. Schools have been used as funnels for driving economic growth as well – feeders for both skilled and unskilled labor across the world.
Somewhere through all this, we’ve lost track of what we’re doing to children, and, as a result, the adults they grow into, trying to put them into molds and trying to discard the ones that don’t fit.
The idea that kids should sit still in their chairs, learn what we decide for them, do everything they are told when they are told to is a stark reminder of colonization. It does not engage the intrinsic motivation that each one of us is born with. It does quite the opposite in fact – actively suppresses that internal spark in favor of external validation. Unfortunately, this model is now so wide spread, that it is strongly internalized as the “norm”.
How often have you heard these statements made by adults for adults?
“Each of us is different, we cannot all fit into the same mold.”
“Find your passion! Do what your heart tells you!”
“We need to think about team dynamics. Not everybody is the same.”
But is this not true for children? We expect each and every one of them to hit the same levels of knowledge in math, reading, writing, physical activities, dance, music and other fields at the same time, by exactly the same specific ages? Does this not seem absurd?
Most regular schooling and skill learning classes like dance, music and sports do not account for differences in children as human beings. It mostly treats them like cogs in a wheel. Every child is expected to hit the same milestones around the same time. This is detrimental to a child’s development. If the goal of education is to maximize a child’s potential, this approach does the opposite.
Then there are children who are non-neurotypical. Young children who are not yet ready to sit still in chairs for hours on end and listen to adults drone on about topics they have no interest in. Children who learn differently. Children who think better when they are moving.
Somehow we’ve come to see fear, depression and anxiety in our children related to school activities as normal.
“Of course, this is how it was for me. My daughter has to go through this as well.”
When did we start to normalize this notion that learning MUST be only pain for children, inflicted upon by adults?
What if I picked a set of 20 adults, randomly chosen, no pre-requisites, from different fields – a farmer, a mathematician, an English teacher, a dancer, a painter and so on, and set a rigid curriculum for them myself, which is not dependent upon their current abilities or interests. Every month we do a standardized test. In other words, I impose an arbitrary timeline, within which, I expect them to master everything I teach, in exactly the way I teach it. When they pass my tests, I say “Good job!” and give them a trophy. When they fail ” I tell them things like “you’re falling behind”, “work harder”, “you’re not paying attention”, “if you don’t pass this test, you cannot learn the next thing”, “doesn’t matter if you are a fantastic farmer or musician, you need to pass this or else you’re going to fail at life”.
That is what we do to children in highly standardized schools. WE create their insecurities. This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then we vehemently argue for that to be the norm.
Our fundamental assumption is that children are born completely blank slates and that each of them starts out at the zero levels of all abilities and progresses at exactly the same pace. This is the dangerous assumption that most schools are unfortunately still built upon. That each and every child will learn at an arbitrary adult chosen timeline. That children do not know how to learn (when that is the exact opposite of the truth). Then we reward the ones who are able to keep up (very publicly, to make the other children feel worse and keep the pressure on those receiving the award).
“For many years I have been asking myself why intelligent children act unintelligently at school. The simple answer is, “Because they’re scared.” I used to suspect that children’s defeatism had something to do with their bad work in school, but I thought I could clear it away with hearty cries of “Onward! You can do it!” What I now see for the first time is the mechanism by which fear destroys intelligence, the way it affects a child’s whole way of looking at, thinking about, and dealing with life. So we have two problems, not one: to stop children from being afraid, and then to break them of the bad thinking habits into which their fears have driven them.
– John Holt
Learning and practice must be mostly enjoyable for it to be effective for anyone – adult or child. If there is pain in learning, it must be chosen by the learner themselves – from a sense of the pain being worth the joy of learning it. You cannot “make” any child learn, unlike popular opinion, unless they really are invested in it. They might grudgingly go along with the motions when issued ultimatums. But until they find their own intrinsic motivation, that lesson isn’t going to go deep or stick. Until then, you will find yourself yelling at them to “do their homework” or “study for the test” or worse, being driven to”success” by the fear of “falling behind” and the resulting shame.
Intrinsic motivation and the natural joy in learning are powerful forces – ones we don’t allow to flourish in schools.
We see this in babies all the time, in everything they *choose* to do. When they repeatedly go back to trying something that frustrates them, because they want to master it. When they make something happen for the first time, we see the spark and real joy on their faces, in their eyes, in their whole being. When they start trying to grab a toy, figuring out how to hold it, rolling over, crawling, walking, climbing. We don’t need to teach them any of this (unless there are real developmental issues). They push through their “pain” in order to master it. We are born with immense capability to learn and seek out teachers when we need questions answered or moral support. But we adults, when called for guidance, often, let our discomfort take over. So, instead of being a guide and allowing them their rightful struggle through the learning process, we start to take over. It makes us feel uncomfortable to watch them struggle. If we’re being honest with ourselves, our responses aren’t about them, are they? It is about us. We make ourselves feel better when we teach the way we think they should learn and take their natural struggle away.
A true teacher is one who doesn’t think of themselves as a teacher, but a guide to support a child in their journey of self-discovery and true potential, who builds a relationship of trust with the child, one who recognizes that mistakes and failures are only steps to learning, and sees the potential in a child to surpass even their own abilities and experiences genuine joy when that happens. I’ve had a couple of such teachers – and they are life changers.
Pass on what you have learned. Strength. Mastery. But weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters..
– Yoda
When you think of learning only as a direct copying activity, as in someone teaches you an idea or concept, you commit that to your memory, rinse and repeat, then yes, you cannot learn anything without someone teaching you. To me, that’s a very small part of learning and is most effective when there is trust in the relationship. If we only subscribe to this idea of learning though, we’re imparting a subconscious, dangerous lesson to our children from the start – that they are only capable of learning when they are taught by an adult. In other words, we slowly chip away at their self-esteem and independent thinking abilities.
If you think of learning as a natural process of evolution in our growth through exploration, experimentation, trial and error, seeking out people who may have more knowledge than you in a particular area you’ve identified as your interest, then you’ll realize that each of us is capable of learning anything on our own. If we sit back and watch a baby or young child in their most natural state, without interruption from us, they often – grab something, observe it, turn it around, bang it on the ground, shake it, sometimes you see them smile to themselves or laugh out loud, or scream in frustration, talk, call out to us when they want to do something with it that they are not able to (yes, they are capable of seeking a teacher when they need one) – then you realize this fact – that each of us is BORN hard-wired to learn, we are born scientists and explorers, philosophers and thinkers.
All we need to do then, is create the right learning environment, where the most important thing we impart to children is to preserve that love for learning we’re all born with.
Sir Ken Robinson often said that we need a revolution in education. And we need it now. I couldn’t agree more. Working backwards to make an education model using economics only makes us focus on the wrong factors. In the long run, it causes a reduction in human potential, not growth. The culture of testing, questioning, lack of trust in schools today are all detrimental to children’s potential. We only see success through our colored lenses – which leaves behind a whole host of others.
While some schools are trying new ideas, more and more parents are choosing to homeschool / unschool their children for these reasons.
I, for one, am happy that these issues are even being brought up more often. We need to be able to discuss such issues openly as educators without taking it personally or getting hung up on traditional methods and old ways. Too many children suffer silently under the tyranny of arbitrary agendas and pay for the resulting damages in one form or another later in life. On that note, I will leave you with one last quote:
“To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves…and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.”
– John Holt