Another No-Duh Headline About How Kids Learn

"Pediatricians say kids need recess during school"

Whoa! No way! Stop the presses! This is big news!

Pfft.

Seriously, this is common sense and shouldn't need to be said out loud.

Children need time for free play. 

Lots of it. And adults would be surprised how much of that time would be spent in educational pursuits, given the freedom and resources.

If kids don't learn that learning is living, that it's exciting to follow their own curiosity, we are going to have more depressed children and bullies.

If I could say something to the administrators in charge of our current education system, it would be this: 

Schedule LESS. 

Test LESS. 

Spend your money on toys for the classrooms through high school. Then let the kids loose to share and collaborate with a little guidance here and there from the adult in the room. 

That's it. 

We'd have more learning, more invention, and less wasted time trying to control the uncontrollable.

Quote from the article:

"The cognitive literature indicates that children are exactly as we are as adults. Whenever they're performing a complicated or complex task, they need time to process the information," said Murray, a professor at Ohio State University in Columbus.

"Kids have to have that time scheduled. They're not given the opportunity to just get up and walk around for a few minutes," he added.

They're not given the opportunity to just get up and walk around... so kids have to have that time scheduled. 

Think about that.

One more reason to homeschool.

The Responsibility of All Parents

Homeschooling vs. Schooling

The duty of parents

From HomeschoolUnderSeige.com:

"As a teacher, I would say that ALL parents have the responsibility to home school their children. Parents should be home schooling their children in the art of reading, basic number skills, colors, rules of polite society, the habits needed to study and learn something new on your own, problem solving skills, their native language (if they have one), skills like carpentry or art (if the parents have such skills), to name just a few. These are things that I, as a teacher, have limited ability to support in my classroom. Many are things that should happen before the child enters the school system, and continue afterward, so that the students have foundations on which to build their further learning. Learning that should continue, I hope, their whole life."

I agree with this teacher on this point: all parents have a responsibility to home school their children in the basics. 

Teachers cannot and should not be expected to teach children to read. That should be happening at home all the time. One of the things we don't talk about as much pertaining to the failure of the public schools is how parental attitudes have contributed to that failure.

I'll liken it to a doctor who tells parents not to try home remedies to resolve illnesses, to bring a child in immediately if there is a fever above 100 degrees. So they do. Then the same doctor complains that the parents are bringing in a child with just a fever and not taking care of it at home.

Likewise, certain educators have made a point of telling parents they can't resolve reading problems at home, can't possibly teach their own children to read. So they don't even try. Some parents have been told they could do damage to their children by trying to teach them to read before school age.

???

And then you get common-sense teachers like this one in the article who want you to teach your child to read before school.

So the wrong parental attitude of 'Let the school do it' is not only the fault of parents, but of educators who want to monopolize education regardless of the practical realities that make this impossible. 

Thankfully, the solution is already a nationwide movement. More people are homeschooling or "afterschooling" or "beforeschooling." More parents understand that the public schools will fail their children if they are not equal partners with their children's teachers. That's a wonderful thing!

In the next generation, we can look forward to more intelligent teens who know how to research, ask questions, and collaborate for greater innovation -- not teens who were taught to pass tests and expect spoon-fed knowledge.

Homeschooled teens become informed voters. Schooled teens become low-information voters, SNL-watchers who actually believe it's the "news."

So this trend toward homeschooling could save our nation, too.

Do you homeschool? Afterschool? Beforeschool? Or do you trust the schools to do it all?

Purpose and Priorities in Education

I just read this teen's open letter about standardized testing. He's making a documentary about education and how standardized testing has affected the education of many young people. 

I think this is important. 

Students absolutely should be engaging in the global and national conversations about education. Of course, this would have been a lot easier had education been returned to local control (under a President Mitt Romney). Unforunately, that's not in the cards. Our current POTUS, President Barack Obama, is only a reformer insofar as it means making America like all the other nations of the world and increasing globalization. He doesn't care about the quality of education; he's more interested in its quantity -- that is, making sure all students fit under the umbrella of government schooling. 

While I agree all children should have access to learning tools, I disagree that all students deserve and need the same education. The difference? 

Learning tools tend to be universal: letters, numbers, blocks, books, videos, internet access. They are tools which can be used to present information in a beautiful variety of ways. 

It's not the same thing as providing "education" which to the government generally means a standard curriculum which all children are taught and must be proved to have accepted by means of standardized testing. 

But how is this resolved? How do we ensure we are providing top-notch tools and making sure those tools are used wisely for continued learning? How do we ensure students are prepared to become productive citizens who are also independent thinkers?

It's so tricky, really. I mean, there's a reason we haven't gotten it all sorted. 

The way I see it, there are two legitimate purposes for education, and a third more cynical purpose: 

1) To expand the mind and allow continued learning, 

2) To provide preparation, life skills, and job training, 

3) To manipulate the culture to fit a government ideal.

For that first purpose, you really don't need any kind of testing at all. Teachers can tell if a child is learning or not, and with such a broad goal as "continued learning" there's ample room for creative encouragement. In the past, before this round of standardized testing, American schools embraced the fuzzy math, creative spelling, e-for-effort ideal. The result of ignoring life preparedness and job training has been pretty glaring: America has fallen behind.

For that second purpose alone, you get China. No wiggle room for different types of learners. The sole purpose of education is to produce educated, useful citizens. You test into your caste system, as it were. Even before NCLB, we had this obsession with standardized testing. The results are no more desirable than previously. You get squashed spirits, kids who do fall behind a standardized norm, and tremendous burnout so that by the time kids get to college, they just want a break.

The third purpose needs no help. Those wheels have been in motion a long time, stretching into higher education and ensuring all teachers value the same government-sanctioned cultural ideals.

Going forward, we really need to figure out what our priorities are as a society. Personally, I value both 1 and 2, and am wary of 3. I'd rather see parents take care of cultural training. Nobody is an island, and we couldn't keep our kids from popular culture if we tried, but that doesn't mean we have to give up our traditions to favor a whitewashed, government model of culture. I know many immigrants have lamented that their children are abandoning their language and heritage because of this cultural immersion in government schools.

But where is the balance between 1 and 2? Is education for learning or job training? 

And who gets to decide?

My own view is that the decision should be left to individuals. Some schools (college prep, etc.) could specialize in life preparation and job training while others (charter schools with a fine arts focus) could specialize in the virtue of learning, separate from its job applications. 

The only way this works, though, is for school choice to become the norm. And that rubs the wrong way anybody who believes all kids should be learning exactly the same things (standardized education proponents). 

So the battle continues.

The plain fact...

This picture caused a bit of feather-ruffling on facebook, so I thought I'd explain why I thought it was worth sharing.

My friend, who is a public school teacher and whom I respect very much, had this to say about it:

I don't completely agree with this. There are some school programs, and certainly school systems in the past, that fit this quote. My experience as a public school educator for the last six years has not been to produce "docile and uninquisitive citizens." There is a lot to say for and against any type of educating system, homeschool included. I think homeschooling fits in this quote as readily as private or public education. Just my unsolicited thoughts.

My response:

I think there are those even today who do have this agenda, but they are not usually teachers. When you think of people in power (which power corrupts), you don't think of teachers as the top tier, do you? I certainly don't. As far as homeschooling being designed to push propaganda, I'd have to say that's a strange idea because homeschoolers are parents. Parents have a God-given mandate to teach their children and pass on their heritage - a stewardship which some choose to lend to outside teachers and tutors. Since children naturally question their parents' ideas, there's less danger of "gulping ideas ready-made."

The truth I see in this quote is that a person who has learned an idea as absolute fact has quenched his curiosity. When theories were being taught as theories, and opinions as opinions, there was plenty of room for curiosity and inquisitive students. Invention and innovation was at its height. But when theories are taught as if a general consensus proves fact (and some shameless teachers and curriculum-writers give opinions in place of knowledge), curiosity is quenched by something false - that is propaganda. Every parent has a responsibility to guard against this, and that's homeschooling, whether you do it in place of school, or after school around the dinner table. 

Being educated is not ultimately bad, but self-education is the best thing of all.

What are your thoughts on H.L. Mencken's quote?