“Since we can’t know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.” -John Holt
My 18-month old kid is so smart. I wouldn’t say he’s smarter than me yet, but he’s on his way.
Kid’s learn really fast. A newborn knows nothing except instinctual habits, how to breathe, scream, poop, and cry. They can’t control their hand movements or eye movements, they don’t even realize the concept that their hands belong to them. A year later they are running around and gaming the system to get what they want. That’s about a 10,000,000% increase in functionality, how much did you improve in the last year?
Yeah, me neither.
We can’t keep up that rate of learning, but if we could we’d be doctors by the time were were two, laughing at Einstein’s theory of relativity by 3, and immortal gods by 4 years old. Like I said, we can’t keep up that rate of learning, but we can encourage our kids to hold on to the things that drive the behavior of learning for as long as possible. How do we do this? Well, first, we have to figure out why they learn so much so fast in the first place. I think I’ve figured it out, and there are 4 simple reasons:
Curiosity – Kids are born with an insane amount of curiosity. They want to learn how things work, what things taste like, how to move things and how to get to things. They want to know what happens when they throw things against the ground and what daddy will do when they climb up on something tall. Everything is a grand experiment to them, and they are excited about finding the results. When was the last time you were curious about something and without pause you just did an experiment to figure it out? Yeah, I can’t remember either. And it ticks me off.
Desire and excitement – I remember when my son first realized that his hand belonged to him, and that with enough concentration he could move it in the direction he intended. It was an amazing thing to watch. I held out a rattle and he moved his hand towards it. His hand would move up and down, left and right, slowly getting closer to the rattle. His concentration was incredible. I can’t name a time I had that level of desire to accomplish something. The last time was probably when someone held a rattle over my head 30 years ago.
Persistence – Kids won’t quit until they get what they want. And they recognize something that most of us have forgotten in our “wise” old years – that you can’t lose if you never give up. If you try to climb up on the table but fall, that’s OK because you can try again. And if you get onto the table but before you stand up mommy sees you and makes you get down, thats OK too because you can try again when she’s not looking. And when you finally get up there, and you stand up t osee the kitchen in all it’s glory, it won’t matter how many times you failed because the glory of standing up on that table and seeing mommy’s face of shock when she walks into the room will be so worth it!
No Fear – Kid’s don’t fear failure because it doesn’t exist to them (see Persistence above). They don’t fear pain or rejection. They don’t fear growing poor or hungry, and they aren’t worried about what others think. So they do what makes sense to learn with no fear, uncertainty, or doubt.
Notice that none of the characteristics that breed learning have anything to do with restrictive lessons, punishment, or homework? You can force a kid to read a book, and you might even force him to memorize some words or facts, but you can’t force him to get excited about it and to love it. And if they don’t love it, they won’t take it to the next level, they won’t create something. Schools and teachers and required textbook readings restrict learning because they don’t work with human nature. They assume that a small group of people writing cirriculums for millions of kids in hundreds of cultures in dozens of age groups all have the same learning requirements. When you put it that way, that just sounds stupid. Conventional schools are factories, but I don’t want my kid to be the product.
So what is the answer? Unschooling. Well, maybe…
“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. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of, before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experience.”– Anne Sullivan
Unschooling is letting your kid learn on his own, where the parent is not the dictator but an enabler. My job as a modern dad is to provide access to the world for my kids, not restriction. To remove fear of failure and replace it with excitement for learning. There are a countless amounts of things my child can learn, my job is to expose them to as much of it as possible and let them chose what excites them, not what a curriculum advisor decided in the 1920′s.
Unschooling goes to some extremes I’m not ready to sign my kid up for, but it’s on the right track. More on this later…
