Unschooling Ruminations

My hubby and I are watching the series “Kyle XY” from the beginning. If you’re not familiar with the concept, a boy is found who remembers nothing and knows nothing about the world. He’s like a newborn 16 year old. At one point, he goes to the local high school to register (because, that’s what’s “done”), and has to take a bunch of aptitude tests to find out his grade level.  He is frustrated with many of the tests because they are on history and social studies, things he has no knowledge of. The narration contains an excellent commentary on our school system in one question: Isn’t school about asking questions, not answering them?

Needless to say, I immediately elbowed my husband. Kyle, this voice of an outsider to our culture, completely gets the entire problem with our educational system. And no one will ever notice. Yes, school SHOULD be a place to ask questions, not a place where you are expected to answer them.

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My son is now 9 months old. His days consist of waking up, eating, playing, napping, playing more, eating more, bath and bedtime. He’s not being very productive, is he? Well, at least that’s how many would react if he were, say, 9 years old. And, to be honest, I sometimes feel this way. I don’t think it’s a natural human reaction, but more of a cultural one. We see children playing all day and think, “Shouldn’t they be doing something productive with their day?”

We’re slaves to the concept of “productivity.” I often get to the end of a day and feel guilty that I didn’t get enough done. Hey, I’m a mom. Sometimes it’s an accomplishment that I ate at some point and that my son got his diaper changed at regular intervals, let alone what state the house is in, what writing I got done, if the bills were paid, etc.  And, I tell myself this all the time, but that doesn’t alleviate the guilt.  We all have felt this way, and are constantly working to do enough to make ourselves feel productive.

I think that’s why adults feel much more comfortable to confine kids to schools. We know that at school, kids must be productive. They must do math problems, read poems, write essays, etc.  That’s their “job.” Adults work, kids go to school, animals stay in zoos, criminals stay in prisons. That’s the natural order of things. Everything in its box. Everything is under control and tamed.

And, although I heartily disagree, I have been engendered to react this way. To myself, and even to my 9-month old, who actually is being very productive by taking two blocks and banging them together repeatedly.  This will be a reaction I will have to work on in the coming years.

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adults, productivity

Much time is spent talking about the kids who, in a traditional school setting, flounder and fail. These are the kids that concern the parents and politicians, and are often our impetus to find another way.

But, since I have a habit of comparing my now 9-month old son’s activities and learning experiences with that of school-aged children, I stumbled upon another metaphor.  And this one speaks to those kids who succeed at the game of school.

When you have a baby, numerous toys and activity “centers” are thrust at you, and you must decide, post haste, whether you believe they will help or hinder your child and your life. One such device is the walker.  At this point, most parents don’t have them around. But, you will run into a few who really don’t see any problems with it, and they invariably want to give you one.  Well, if you’re not a parent, or if you’re a parent who sings the praises of the walker, let me explain.  (A walker, my non-parent readers, is that contraption that allows non-walking infants to push themselves along the floor, a la Fred Flinstone.)  Aside from the tremendous safety risk posed by walkers (i.e. they can easily topple over, or worse, down stairs; your child is much faster than he should be and you suddenly find him headed straight for the open oven door, etc.), these devices have been shown to impede the development of actual walking. So, the child is given the benefits and rewards of very fast walking, without doing the work to attain it. They therefore have no motivation to actually learn to walk.  It’s a false success because once the walker is removed, the child no longer attains the same performance.

The system of grades and commendation within the school system can nurture the same false success for those students who excel at it. How many students do you know who received excellent grades, high test scores and top-notch class rankings, and when they graduated had a hard time succeeding in their job? Or, even more common, were directionless and unable to find something they truly enjoyed?  The school system is like a walker for babies. We can clap and say, “Look how fast you’re walking!” but once that system is taken away, many just collapse on the floor, unable to move. The system isn’t only unhelpful, it is actually detrimental to development. Schooled students end up years behind unschooled students in maturation and “real world” capabilities.

Children should learn life by really living, just as they learn to walk by really walking.

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grades, metaphor, school system

Idzie’s much anticipated e-zine is finally available. Go here to read her post about it, and here to download it in .pdf version. Thanks, Idzie!

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I started this blog out with a bang. Every day, I couldn’t wait to get some of my thoughts typed out and online. I always had about 10 more post ideas waiting to be fleshed out. But, then, the holidays hit and my quest for perfection took me out. I just couldn’t seem to muster the energy to create anything thought-provoking or interesting. So, I avoided it altogether.

I have decided, however, that I refuse to drop out of this community because of my low energy or high standards (for my own contributions). I just want to post and say, “I’m still here and I’m still thinking.” Just, not very clearly at times.

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I just read this lovely description of unschooling by Deb, a member of the unschooling-dotcom Yahoo! group. I enjoyed it so much, I just had to share it:

Unschooling, in essence, is exactly what you are already doing with your
3 year old – living life and letting learning happen in all sorts of
wonderful and exploratory ways – whether it’s spending time reading
stories together or exploring a local park or playing with water toys in
the bath. It’s life, it’s learning, it wonderful! Unschooling is simply
extending that trust in life learning or natural/organic learning into
the “school age” and not dividing life up into little boxes called
“math” or “history” but seeing all of life and learning as
interconnected.

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definition, description, life learning

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post defending teachers.  I still agree with my post, but I do feel that some of my viewpoints have been refined slightly. First, I feel that it is very very politically incorrect to criticize teachers. We must always acknowledge how great they are, how they are in the trenches, how hard they work, and on and on. But, this isn’t always the case. There are many, if not most, teachers who have really lost sight of the goal of their vocation and who have certainly lost the passion and enthusiasm for it.  And, so, I will not strive to be politically correct in this post. As such, I will likely offend a few people and raise a few eyebrows. But, as long as we tread lightly on this topic, educators will keep going down the same path, believing the lip service about how brave and courageous they are, and how we all admire them.

Now that I’m done warning you, let’s get down to it, shall we? I had a slightly disturbing interchange with a few teachers a couple of weeks ago. It was in response to this article on the detriments of grading. I posted it on my Facebook page, and the discussion ensued. I was glad that some teachers were reading it, and I did get some in agreement with the article. But, others thought that grading was not only necessary, but it is good and useful. As they said, it helped assess the children to make sure they were reaching the standards set forth by the state.

Here is where my stomach dropped. This is how these teachers see their jobs. Not to inspire or to expose children to the world; not even to educate them or facilitate their learning, at least not in true sense of the word. No, their job is to make sure kids can regurgitate facts well enough to pass the tests so they get a so-called “good grade” and we can give them our rubber stamp of approval that they have attained the standard set forth by the state.  I’m sure they wouldn’t characterize it this way, but that’s how I see it. In my view, grades are only an assessment of how well a student has learned to play the school game, not what they have learned. Grades, along with standards, tests, curriculum, assessments, conferences, IEPs, and all the rest, have really served to convolute what education is supposed to be about – educating.  Teachers who vehemently defend this system are, in my estimation, blind. They make work tirelessly and deserve pats on the back because of that, but they are working blindly toward a flawed end. And, that makes them worthy more of pity than of gratefulness.

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assessments, grading, standards, teachers

At the end of last week, I was part of an excellent online discussion on the differences between teaching and learning, and the detriment of using the word “teach”. This conversation was held on Twitter and blog posts and comments, and was sparked from my post called The Role of Parental Instruction. You can see that Idzie responded here, and the comments on her post carried the conversation further.

So, I wanted to cap off my end of the discussion with my final thoughts (for now).  In the end, I agree with both Tara and Idzie that the word “teach” can be detrimental because it focuses the attention on the teacher and does not automatically mean that learning happens. However, our society sees no difference between teaching and learning, and so they assume that where teaching happens, learning does also. In unschooling, the learning comes first. And then, when necessary the teaching. These situations would be when a child wants to know more about something and they decide to go to a person for that knowledge. They request the instruction. So, while there is a “teacher” involved, it is still child-directed. This is a much different model than, “I want you to know something, and so now I will teach it to you. Sit down and learn.”

I am in an unschooling Yahoo group and one member shared a story that perfectly illustrates this. Linda writes:

“Just under an hour ago, I saw an accounts ledger that my daughter has been keeping for her scout group, to keep track of their popcorn sale fundraiser. She was elected purser of the group, and accepted the office. This is the kid who hates math with a passion! If I had told her she must make up and keep an account book, including tallying up many separate sales, for some phony assigned school-ish project, she would have refused. But she came downstairs almost in tears a while ago because the amount of cash and checks in her cash box did not equal the amount she had entered in the book. She had recounted/added everything up 3 times! (With a calculator; it wasn’t the actual addition that was the problem; it was a missing or incorrect entry.)

“It turned out that she had $20 more than she thought she should. She was also absolutely certain that everything in the ledger had matched with the actual cash and checks in the box until just before last night’s meeting. Last night, she received some more cash and checks from one of the scouts, and hurriedly recorded it all as one lump sum in the ledger, at the end of the meeting. She couldn’t understand how she could have mis-counted it last night – even though she admitted she was rushed!

“Anyway, I calmed her down, assured her she was doing a fantastic job – especially for having caught her error before any more amounts were entered (and told having more money than she thought she should was a LOT better than having too little!), gave her a bottle of white-out, showed her where to white out the incorrect amount, told her to enter the cash and each check separately, recounted the money with her, and all was well. (All the previous entries were listed properly; no one had handed her cash and checks together before.)

“So, this is one example of how I “teach” my daughter. It was a real-life problem, and I helped her solve it.”

I love this example because it shows just how wonderfully unschooling works. There are myriads of these examples in the unschooling community, and in many situations teaching is involved. It’s just from an entirely different perspective than the schooling world understands.

And so, this is how we need to shift our thinking about what it means to teach. It is providing answers when asked by a curious child, or helping them work out a problem they could not solve on their own (but letting them try first and come to you with the problem).  It is not (or should not be) parent or teacher-directed content thrust upon an unwilling mind.

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example, learning, teaching

In a previous post, I talked about having to “teach” our kids healthy eating habits. I have to admit, I’m having second thoughts about that sentiment. First, Idzie shared her experience with being allowed to choose her own eating choices and that she came to the conclusion, at the ripe age of six, to become a vegetarian. Then, The Organic Sister posted this entry about her son’s eating habits and how he has been free to eat whatever he wants, yet mostly chooses healthfully. I have to remind myself that I came to my (usually) healthy eating habits once I started listening to my body and researching it on my own, not because my parents taught me.  I completely agree with Organic Sister’s assertion that food issues are almost always emotional. Yes, refined sugar is chemically addictive, but it can only become so if you eat it habitually. And, since it usually makes you feel like crap, if you listen to your body, you won’t want to eat it habitually.

I am still struggling with my own food issues. Food is one of my main sources of comfort when I’m down or frustrated. My mother has lots of food issues that she has obviously passed down, and I was so fearful that I would do the same to my kids. Therefore, I wanted to “teach” them how food is fuel and what preservatives can do to your body. But, why would that be any better than the restrictions and guilt that my mom used to try to get me to eat healthier than her?

Thanks, Idzie and Organic Sister. I guess I’m still ‘deschooling’ in some areas.

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choice, food, health