Flinching and Education ( meant more for the investigator )

Originally written
Tuesday, 30. May 2006

It is a quiet morning and I found some time while the children are absorbed in games of make believe to write some reflections I’ve been having because of Adler’s essay (posted before this one).

Getting this essay came at a good time for me. I have been listening to well meaning people question the choices I am making with regards to our family’s learning. As much as I would like to claim I am unmovable in my convictions I much confess I flinch now and again. So this essay reminded me what I was trying to accomplish and why.

I think school or colleges should only be condemned when their policies and practices get in the way of my educating myself. I think generally, people look to find fault or look to blame something else for their troubles. I don’t think it is the schools' or colleges' job to educate me or my children. I really don’t. A school might be in the business of educating but I don’t think they replace my responsibility to my own education.
I see it this way... I want an education. Say, I want to learn to read. I seek out someone who can show me how. They show me. I learn. I can read. The teacher gets my thanks and maybe some of my money but beyond that I owe him nothing more. From there on I am pursuing my own education by using this new developed skill. That is a simply put as I think it.
Adler says this;
“The very best thing for our schools to do is to
prepare the young for continued learning in later life by giving them the
skills of learning and the love of it.”

Yes, I agree here. However, I am not going to count on or rely on some one to do for me what I should do for myself.

So many of us send our child off to school and we expect a teacher to educate that child. We all believe that is a teacher‘s main priority, right?

Here is where the problem is I think.

Schools don’t focus on teaching you how to think. They focus on teaching your child what to think. If the teacher gives Bobby enough of the what to think Bobby will hopefully learn how to think for himself in the process. I am sure there is some success in this because children are bright but unfortunately with age comes the dullness of life’s distractions. What happens, perhaps, is that when Bobby graduates and no longer get the ‘what’ to think from teacher he loses some ability ‘how’ to think and his education ends there...unless, of course, he starts to get his own education now that all the legal requirements are fulfilled.

What’s my point? My point is that no one should assume responsibility for my education but me. The message I try to send to my children is the same, ‘no one is responsible for your education but you.’ You can find others who know more and get from them what you need. I think in that case a mentor is much better than a teacher but that’s a whole different blog.

Some might say, “a child doesn’t know what he needs.”

To which I feel almost like laughing. No one told an infant that they needed to walk. They knew it on their own. We don’t send our babies to walking and talking schools. They instinctively know and learn without an institution claiming responsibility to educate the babe. (Although with all the little Einstein programs and developmental toys out there...Gad! But I am not going down that road. Nurseries burst with color sound and texture but a child is most stimulated by LOVE- always has been always will be).
Anyway, a child does know what he wants to learn. A child knows what he wants more than most adults do. When children like something and they go after it, they touch it, they ask a billion questions about it, they smell it , taste it, pull it apart. Children know what they want to learn and all we can do is be there with the billion answers and better judgment so that our children aren’t put in harms way. Done. But I’ve said this a gazillion times, or as my son says ‘five thousand hundred billion’ when he means to say ‘a lot’.

Education is simple - Read, write, discuss & explore. It is, admittedly, hard to do but it is simple.

A son says, “I like dinosaurs.” We pull out the Dinotopia series and start reading it. We pull out dinosaur books and start drawing pictures. We go to a Dino museum, give our child a camera and a sketch pad and chase after them not to climb the exhibits or open the ‘staff only’ doors.

Kids know.

A daughter wants to be a ballerina. We read the many reditions of Swan Lake and take her to the performance. We get her a tutu and slippers. She writes stories about ballerinas, she draws pictures of ballerinas (and leaves them all over the living room floor because the fridge is completely full of dinosaur pictures!). We find her a mentor and let her go to classes. We watch her dance and clap and kiss her.

Kids know.

A son catches a spider and pulls his legs off. We read Charlotte’s Web and talk about it. We get a tarantella from the pet store call him Harry and buy him crickets to eat. Harry gets out once and we take him back to the pet store replacing Harry with posters and rubber tarantulas.

Kids know.

Ha! No flinching today. Sorry for the rant. It’s almost like throwing up - once you start you just can’t stop.