Re-learning to Love Learning

“What makes people smart, curious, alert, observant, competent, confident, resourceful, persistent – in the broadest and best sense, intelligent- is not having access to more and more learning places, resources, and specialists, but being able in their lives to do a wide variety of interesting things that matter, things that challenge their ingenuity, skill, and judgement, and that make an obvious difference in their lives and the lives of people around them.”
~John Holt~ Teach Your Own

As far as I can remember, no one ever sat me down to teach me how to read by kindergarten, but I recall being zealously interested in making words and letters, often competing with my older brother. (I’ll never forget how I overheard he got a word wrong on his spelling test – the word “perpendicular”. I then memorized it to show off – I was in first grade.) I have a memory of making up games with my brother during road trips, counting to 100, and I couldn’t have been more than 5 at the time. What I do not recall is ever having an adult teach me to count, unless I asked them to count with me. When I got to school, I distinctly remember feeling like I had to slow down for the rest of the class, especially when reading or doing crafts. I have a few report cards that were saved from elementary school (I went to 9 different elementary schools so I was always kinda the “new girl”) and one I particularly find funny is the comment “Vivian shows exceptional artistic and language skills, though I do wish she would play more with the other kids”.

Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought.–Ludwig von Mises

Fast foward to high school, where one year I missed 55 days of school in one semester because I loved sleeping in, waking up on my own time and finishing the work I knew they would be doing in class in a fraction of the time. The only classes I really showed up for were the one’s I was really interested in, or the one’s with a harsh penalty for absence. I had a 4.7 GPA when I graduated, already had 18 credits obtained in college courses. I took my SAT’s one time, in 11th grade, scored 1340 which was “good enough” for college and scholarships I needed, so I was fine with it. But I had missed a TON of school. I loved AP Music Theory and AP Environmental Science, and remember those and a few english courses more than any other classes I’ve ever taken. That leaves 90% of the classes I had to take out. Let me rephrase that: About 90% of my education taught me nothing.

My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself. –George Bernard Shaw

I remember having a lot of conflicts with a teacher my freshman year of high school – she was a great educator, it was an english course. But she didn’t like that I, and I quote, “played the system”. In my opinion, I had no other choice. Were I to sit on my sore butt for 7 hours a day when I wasn’t interested, I would have lost my love of learning entirely. But not excelling in school was not an option, so I had to “play the system“. I knew that I wanted to one day go to college to study what I really wanted to learn about, and I knew I would have zero money to do so. My goal throughout high school was to make sure my college was funded, period.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.–William Glasser

In college, I really wanted the freedom to be absent as much as possible then too. I was deeply interested in a few classes that I’ll never forget: Principles of Teaching, Children’s Ministry, Life of Christ, Personality Theory, Creative Writing, Advanced Expository Writing, and Integrating Faith in the Communication Field, along with art, photography, and film classes. The rest I can barely tell you what they were. I finished all my math and science requirements for my 4 year degree by the very FIRST semester of college so I would never have to take them again, lol. I took my college exit exam my first semester too, scored very well, and have never had to take another standardized test again, thankyoujeebus.

I believe that the testing of the student’s achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.–Carl Rogers

Speaking of those standardized tests. The first one I remember taking was in 7th grade, when they first started making you take the psat’s or fcats or something. I was told that my scores on that particular test would, on their own, determine my placement in classes in high school two years later. Friends who were way more intelligent than me, but not good test takers, were “tracked” into “regular” courses while I got some honors courses. The course of our high school careers were determined by our answers to one test, one or two hours of our lives TWO YEARS PRIOR (which I later learned in my “Into to Education” class is called “tracking”).

I remember my senior year of high school, me and just a small handful of other seniors were asked to meet in the library where the Dean informed us that we had excelled in some area of study so much that we were being able to take a test to place us as finalist for some major award or scholarship. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, but I want to say it was a national merit scholar something or other. All I remember was how I was told that I supposedly excelled in social studies. Social studies? I hadn’t been interested in a single government or history class in my whole life. I usually took “regular” classes with the football coach teacher for those courses so I could free up another hour for a music or english class. When I asked about it, I was told I must have scored well on some test year’s ago, which now dictated that I was nominated for the social studies award. I told them, thanks, but no thanks. I’m not interested in social studies and didn’t want to study for the test I “got the privilege of taking”, so I left the meeting.

Where I am going with all of this is that, while I might have appeared to do well in public school, most of the actual learning I remember took place outside of the classroom. Most, if not ALL, of the skills I now use for work were learned outside the classroom as well. When I was 13, I was reading books in my spare time that were either about spirituality, writing, or art. 12 years later, that hasn’t changed – just add parenting books to the list, lol. Last January, I grabbed a few things from my dad’s while we were in Florida and found a huge binder of poems and short stories I wrote in my spare time from middle school and early high school. I had written down the books I was using at the time to practice my writing, which included Poemcrazy and The Artist’s Way. I didn’t really enjoy novels, and I still don’t. In college, I took a course in Layout and Design in which we learned Adobe Photoshop and PageMaker (the old InDesign, basically). I hated it, though I got an A. I was bored out of my mind and never felt like I was “getting it”. It wasn’t until after I graduated that I got interested in blogging and I wanted the knowledge and freedom to change my blog design, without having to rely on some one else or pay for it, so I spent my spare time trying to change code that I had no idea how to read and used as many resources and knowledgeable friends I could. It was hard at first, I would spend 10 hours on the same darn problem because I had no basic understanding of the html or css language. I would just change something, look at the site, see what I had just done, figure out the correlation, and then see if it worked every time. (In this case, having some one teach me would have saved me a LOT of time, though this eventually did happen, as I had a few knowledge friends or got a hold of some books and slowly found some spare time, little by little, to learn more.) This is how I learn, how I suspect we all do – we have a goal and we need to know something to achieve it. We don’t back down or quit or get disinterested when we really want to learn something- the passion for figuring it out, the curiosity, it will win over in the end. For a time, you can even get obsessive about it until you feel you’ve achieved a certain level and then you can finally get some rest. (In fact, I am currently in this process with knitting!)

PRESS ON. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.–Calvin Coolidge

And so I come closer to my “point”: in the last, say, 7 months or so, I have found myself feeling disappointed in my approach to teaching/parenting my preschool aged son thus far. I never stopped to think about how I learn until recently, and since I could always do worksheets, tests and assignments so well, I spent most of the last 3 years vacillating between structured “teaching” towards Lil’ E, or no instruction at all because I have so little patience teaching something I myself am not interested in, lol.

Now that I’ve embraced the decision to home school, I’m giving a lot more thought to the process of learning, my own experience in and out of school, the differences as well as universal similarities in children. I find myself having to “unteach” myself about how to best foster a learning environment for him, one that takes cues from his interests rather than a “skills set for every 3 year old”. I suspect many, many parents go through this, especially if they want to home school. It seems so backwards, after all – to back off, observe, and trust that your child’s natural curiosity and inclination towards learning will have greater success on developing their intelligence than any subject we could force upon them. But it works time and again, doesn’t it? Just this lasts Winter while visiting in Florida I was chatting with my friend Kubby, who was homeschooled. He explained how he taught himself to read at a young age, and how by the time he was technically in “middle school” he would pick his own books for his curriculum and what he was interested in, read them and teach himself everything he was interested in, and with the efficient use of his time, ended up “learning” much more than most kids his age by 18. (Not surprisingly, when he went to college, he ended up getting very bored!)

Imagine if we all were given the opportunity to focus on our interests and were told that the sky was the limit with regards to how much time and energy we want to spend on them? How many of us would be specialists in a field and today be actually enjoying our jobs (even if that means homemaking, cooking, knitting, what have you) rather than watching the clock each day and deciding the bi-weekly paycheck makes it “worth it”. I know that I cannot imagine myself in a traditional “job”. For me, the freedom to set my own hours, take a walk or a poop or a nap whenever the heck I need to, spend ample time with my primary interests (family, faith and art), and navigate towards my “work related” interests within the field without the monotony of repetition is exactly what I need. I wonder if I’ll ever hold a “job job”, for I fear I will lose interest in about 1 month and be miserable. Not a day goes by that I am not incredibly grateful for the opportunity to earn money in this way. I hope that Ethan and Verity, should they want to, will have this opportunity when they grow up.

“True learning – learning that is permanent and useful, that leads to intelligent action and further learning — can arise only out of the experience, interest, and concerns of the learner” –John Holt

As I began to embrace the idea of a lose “unschooling” philosophy (if you will?) towards Ethan and Verity in the coming year or so, I found myself wondering most about Ethan’s social interactions. I so wanted to establish a regular group of peers for him, where he could have a handful of “friends” and perhaps 1 or 2 “real buddies”. (It could benefit him to learn that perhaps hugging, kissing and saying “I LOVE YOU!” to every single brief playmate on the playground isn’t appropriate to the level of intimacy in their relationship, lol.)

Enter the wonderful world of yahoo groups! Recently my friend Misty decided to also give homeschooling/unschooling a try and while I was home nursing a newborn, she tapped into some local resources for us and landed on a group of gals who began meeting just last week at Kenton park (which happens to be the park we go to about .25 miles away!) and then for lunch at Posie’s coffee shop after wards. The group consists of, so far, about 5 moms of preschool aged kids, most are 4 years old it seems, with a few younger or older siblings. I met with them last week for the first time (and it was such a coincidence because I had met the ring-leader, Laura, two weeks earlier while our sons played together at Posies. She had given me her email and I had yet to get ahold of her, and then life brought us back together again. Funny how those things work out, isn’t it?) The moms I met were smart and talented, and had a strong desire to facilitate a love of learning in their children. We have now agreed to meet weekly at Kenton Park for our children to have regular playmates, and then once per month do “field trips” together. I am over the moon about finding this little group of moms and their kiddos.

I’ve taken a break from focusing on homeschooling since shortly after we moved here in March, what with the move and Verity’s arrival on the horizon. My goal has been to kick things back up around Ethan’s 4 birthday, which is a month away, and it appears we are ahead of schedule! Recovery has been so great with Verity that I feel we have already begun many things, lately focusing again on letters and reading since that is Ethan’s interest, and also on planting/gardening that he asked to learn about. Otherwise, we have everyday learning all around us, and now we even have a group of buds to learn with once a week. Good stuff.