On education and children learning

While substitute teaching in a wide range of grades and subjects I've had the opportunity to observe a wide range of teaching and learning behaviors. I've learned a few things. First was just how unusual I must have been as a teacher with my curricula continuously changing and experimenting with differing teaching strategies. My friend Richard D. called last night a bit worried about how people in our "Ark community" were perceiving his rearing of three active boys.

Don't worry these two themes will come together in a bit.

Richard and Aimee are great people- active and thinking minds, certainly well above even the experts in their perceptions of the effects of present day society has on mental and physical health on people, especially kids. They home schooled their three boys until they had a horse and buggy/car accident that left them recovering from a wide variety of severe physical injuries. The community got together and funded the tuition of getting the two older boys into the local private school hosted by the nearby intentional community. The kids did well there, we all noticed changes in their behaviors that we perceived as positive, especially in their ability to socialize...but were our observations correct? or were the behaviors just what we were used to.

Richard and Aimee have a plan for their kids and it doesn't involve getting their kids into the lock-step regimen of present day educational standards. Some of their approach is sort of Montessori-like and some is conditioned response more on par with the old school of learning. Mostly what they did was to allow their kids to explore the carefully arranged world of their home and farm. While their spelling and 'rithmatic might have suffered a tiny bit, their abilities- and I mean all three of the boys!- to problem solve, interact with the natural world, fix things, use tools, and hundreds of other things was hard wired into them. I watched them doing various things around the new property that amazed me, when the oldest wasn't more than 5-years-old
the three of them managed to figure out how to dig out a hay wagon that had 'melted' into the farm field. It involved figuring out just how much soil had to be removed from the front of each of the tires and at what angle, how to set up the levers and fulcrums and where to push to get this 1000 pound+ vehicle moving again. Dad came over and gave one push with them and it was freed! They spent days doing this project. What 'normal' kid has this ability and endurance...the younger brothers took directions and made suggestions (well maybe the 2-year-old was a bit quieter) to take on a project like this. Tree forts, rebuilding bicycles, and tons of other things are constantly going on.

Their parents, like Krista and me, believe we're on the cusp of a major societal change to a much lower energy economy and lifestyle. What good will all of the computer skills in the world do any of our children if they can't fix a window, grow food from seed, kill a chicken, cut and split firewood (let alone build and tend any kind of fire- even a campfire!) and the thousands of other skills needed to survive a difficult future? Education is supposed to prepare you for the future, right? These kids are already there.

They are three active boys and sometimes the message of "don't" doesn't penetrate their ears...and sometimes they get 'swatted' by their parents. What a wimpy world we live in. People will feed their kids into morbid obesity, allow them to watch countless hours of mindless crap and advertisements on the television, i-pod themselves into a catatonic state, nintendo themselves in a world of imaginary life-destructive computer games, yet they object to a well deserved spank on the rear if one boy is hurting his brother and not stopping after a verbal warning. I have a whole philosophy of education on how narrowly our educational system educates the senses and if you are a tacto-kinectic learner and not an auditory or visual learner you are labeled 'special ed.' What a waste of good energy for the sake of passing a standardized test.

The time I've spent in 4 different school buildings over the past few months has been eye opening. As a sub I have the time to observe what the "don't say 'no'" philosophy has done to the kids. Only positive reinforcement (not in the psychological definition of that term...a punch is a positive reinforcement according to my Psych 101 prof) and making them feel good is turning them into a bunch of spoiled whiners. "This is too hard", "This is boring", "I'm not doing this",
and "They have to pass me anyway" are common phrases in every room I've been in. Granted, I'm just the sub, but the quality of education and even the competitive spirit is being diluted to the point that I don't get the point of it all. I guess I got out of the full-time education business just in time, I would have had a break down if I'd have opened my eyes a bit more the last several years of full-time employment. If we are truly looking to compete in the world educational market we need to stop worrying about scores on standardized tests and get the kids back into the art of learning for the sake of learning.

If I were king of the world most schools would lose about 1/3+ of their student populations just to make the educational system better for the rest. What would those 'losers' do...in the words of my daughter "IDK & IDC" (I don't know and I don't care). I worry about the skill sets of our future doctors and mechanics if all they learned was from a 'standardized curricula' and their parents weren't creative enough to expand their horizons. Richard and Aimee have expanded the horizons of their kids probably ten years beyond their peers by 'keepin them down on the farm' and I applaud them for it.

By the way, the kids are enrolled in the local public school right now and even though they 'tested' a year behind their age related peers at the start of the school year they are all at the head of their classes now! Their parents timed the situations perfectly, the boys were 'ripe' for learning rather than being bored or zombified they are eager to learn...how many of you can say that about your kids?

I work with some home schooling groups and just judged the Home Schooler Science Fair. Now there is a group of eager learners! The projects were great, the kids were oddly socialized and I loved it! Do we want cookie cutter kids or independent thinkers...?

"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the curiosity of inquiry." - Albert Einstein

Enough babble!