I’ve been itching to write about a somewhat contradictory concept for a long time now: the experience of feeling sorry for someone and then frightened for them. No, this blog post isn’t about a hurricane or a bombing, it’s more local than that. It’s the almost daily battle that occurs in nearly every home, the one between a mother and her child working on a math problem together (or any kind of homework, for that matter). Can you relate to this struggle? Have you witnessed it yourself? My heart breaks for both the parent and the child in this situation, but I tend to focus especially on the child, on the barriers that traditional educational systems put in front of children who do want to learn. I feel particularly sorry for the kids who get discouraged so early, and it scares me how this frustration can have such a huge impact on their future life. Is traditional schooling the only answer? Is unschooling an option?
Before we explore this concept in greater detail, let’s get back to the chase, the elaborate hide-and-seek ritual that parents and kids engage in almost nightly when tackling the dreaded Evil Homework Monster. Who should pursue whom in this educational chase?
“What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child.”– George Bernard Shaw
It’s very satisfying for parents to see their children in pursuit of knowledge, but is it the knowledge that a child wants to chase, or is it the knowledge that they’re told to chase? Are some kids naturally born school-haters (or knowledge-haters)?
“I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.” – Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller’s mentor, and friend
I recently posted a question on Facebook to delve deeper into this: “For all the moms out there who are witnessing their children struggle with school studies, who want to help but feel frustrated or ineffective, or whose children have survived this stage with minimal damage, what do you think school is? And what do you think school is for?”
A.N. responded, “School is out to get us, parents, it is nerve-wracking for us, too, it sucks our life energy and robs us of the concentration we need to accomplish anything.” Mother S.A. agreed with A.N., adding that “school has become a blood pressure-raising issue.”
A.G. said, “My child is in first grade and already hates school. I feel pity for her when she goes to sleep saying that she had no time to play today…she is still a child for God’s sake. Too much homework, too many quizzes.”
“Large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system.” – Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams
Between a mother who’s falling apart because of her child’s grades and study habits, and a child who hates school and doesn’t learn as much as he could through technology, who wins? No one.
“In the connected world, reputation is worth more than test scores.” – Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams
And what about the teachers? What is their role in this scenario, and how do they perceive it?
R.T. said, “I believe having well-qualified teachers is the most important factor needed to provide a good education.” She lamented, “Sometimes a school offers a great curriculum, the books are remarkable and wonderful, but it is all in vain if you can’t find that truly qualified teacher who can perform his/her job well and effectively convey the message! A bad teacher is a curse.”
N.E. asserted that a teaching method that depends on memorization would most likely fail because it pressures kids, pressures parents, and causes kids to hate studying.
“If I can find the answer in three seconds online, the skill of memorizing a fact for twelve hours (and then forgetting it) is not only useless; it is insane!” – Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams
M.H., a teacher, had another opinion. She felt that it’s not up to the schools because they can’t control what curricula they teach; it is the educational system itself that needs to change. She said, “We are teachers, and we are suffering as well. The material is too much for kids. There isn’t enough time for activities or creativity. It’s all about catching up and finishing the syllabus on time.”
This statement coincides with Earl Stevens, who says in What Is Schooling, “In most schools, a teacher is hired to deliver a ready-made, standardized, year-long curriculum to 25 or more age-segregated children who are confined in a building all day. The teacher must use a standard curriculum – not because it is the best approach for encouraging an individual child to learn the things that need to be known – but because it is a convenient way to handle and track large numbers of children.”
So, what is school truly for?
“The school serves a real function when it activates a passion for lifelong learning, not when it establishes permanent boundaries for an elite class.” – Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams
Tony Wagner, a Harvard lecturer, performed research that suggests more and more students are dropping out of school, not because they can’t perform well, but because they’re bored.
Krishnamurti pushes us in Think on These Things to consider that education is “not just about passing examinations, taking a degree, getting married and settling down,” but that it should also be about diving in and discovering the extraordinary beauty of life. Education is everything but the high-stakes testing that saturates the Common Core Curriculum.
Do parents agree with these assertions?
S.H. said, “School should be about being interesting and creative, offering out-of-the-box curriculums.”
D.A. said, “School should teach kids in a way that children understand, in a way that helps kids love school. A student should endeavor to finish his homework in school, so when he comes home, he is free to enjoy the rest of the day and looks forward to the following school day because he’s missing his friends and wants to learn new things.”
N.E. felt that if schools began by teaching kindergartners letter sounds and pencil control, avoided testing, and worked on enhancing listening skills; this would create an excellent foundation for early learners in school.
D.H. said we need to return to ancient times and create an educational system from scratch, one in which teachers are successful people who also love to teach. They choose the grades they want to teach and the subjects. Maybe an engineer, a pharmacist, or an inventor could teach a class or two per week, offering first-hand knowledge about career choices.
“Learning is not done to you. Learning is something you choose to do.” – Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams
But, alas, that isn’t the case today. As John Gatto said in his acceptance speech for the New York City Teacher of the Year award (1990), “Schools were designed by Horace Mann … and others to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population.”
Ultimately, this is a lose/lose situation. Parents push their children to achieve higher grades in an environment that their kids don’t enjoy, one in which they’re forced to memorize and study subjects that don’t usually benefit them later in life. Meanwhile, kids agonize over memorizing a work that they typically can’t retain in their long-term memories, so what they’ve just “learned” evaporates the minute they move their focus to anything other than what they had been learning.
So, what’s the solution? Is it fixing schools, dropping out of school, homeschooling, unschooling?
Fixing schools should be a priority, but until that happens, some parents have resorted to homeschooling or a form of natural learning called unschooling.
Unschooling is a different approach to homeschooling because a significant component of unschooling is grounded in doing real things. Children do real things all day long, and in a trusting and supportive home environment, “doing real things” invariably fosters a healthy mental development and valuable knowledge. It’s natural for children to read, write, play with numbers, learn about society, find out about the past, think, wonder, and do all the things that society so unsuccessfully attempts to force upon them in the context of traditional education systems.
Unschooling provides a unique opportunity for each family to do what makes sense to foster the growth and development of their children. If a family sees a valid reason for using a specific curriculum and traditional school materials, they’re free to use them as they see fit. Unschooling provides a unique opportunity to step away from antiquated systems and methods and to develop independent ideas born from actual experiences, where the child is genuinely in pursuit of knowledge, not the other way around.
As Seth Godin said in Stop Stealing Dreams, “An ideal learning environment helps children connect the dots, not collect the dots.”
I consider this article a general discussion post, later on, I’ll be writing about school-detailed topics depending on your thoughts about this. Please share your opinions below.
Educationally yours,
You can find this article on LinkedIn, here.
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