Tag: learning

Educating Freedom

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Some good friends of mine, a tight-knit family with parents in human support fields, both working with adults who are struggling to function (imagine that) were telling me how difficult it is to drop their 5-year-old daughter off at kindergarten. She screams and resists and they pretty much have to drag her into school.

Red flag? I think it should be. Yet, we’re brainwashed into believing there are no other options. This is what kids are supposed to do. They go to school where they’ll learn everything they need to know to function as human adults in our society, right? So what is it they need to know?

Historical facts and dates? They’ll forget those. How the world works? I learned everything I know about physics when I became a second grade teacher because I’d forgotten every little bit of science I learned in school. How to read? When I was a third grader, I sat silently terrified, surrounded by “big kids” in a sixth grade reading class because I had already discovered a way to escape my life in highly engaging chapter books and devoured them voraciously. That’s all I remember about “learning to read” in school—oh, and that I was “smarter” than my classmates because of how quickly I sped through the colors of the SRA reading program. Algebra and geometry? What I learned in my high school algebra class was that I hated math; in geometry, I developed my social skills by convincing the kid behind me to let me cheat off his work so I could avoid my creepy perv of a teacher’s hand on my waste when I went up to his desk to get help.  What do you remember learning in school?

I’ll bet you remember learning how to sit still and raise your hand when you wanted to speak. I’ll bet you remember paying careful attention to the bathroom policy so you’d know how long you’d have to hold it. Or maybe, you remember coming up with clever ways to convince your mom you were sick so you could stay home. I remember thinking if I took the thermometer out of my mouth when my mom was out of the room, the reading would be off enough that she’d have to keep me home—clearly all that science was paying off!

I remember getting antsy when someone else turned a test in ahead of me because it meant I’d lost the race and someone else might be “smarter” than me. I learned that there’s only one right answer and not to ask too many questions. In high school, I learned really well how to fly under the radar, how to be invisible, how to cram for tests the night before so I could get away with ignoring my homework. I learned exactly how little I could do to still graduate, so I guess I learned efficiency?

I also figured out the best time of day to leave campus and walk across town to my boyfriend’s house. (Though there was that one day my dad randomly drove by and I was busted!) I learned that my hair and make-up mattered and that my wardrobe was insufficient. In fact, once when a boy was picking me up for our first date after I had agonized for hours about what I could wear, he looked me up and down and asked if I could change. I learned that the best way to get through high school was to be in the popular crowd, yet I never seemed able to quite break into that. The next best way was to always have a boyfriend, whether I really liked the boy or not.

So what did I really learn? I learned that using my resources was cheating, my worth was determined by how well my teachers liked me, needing others was bad, my thoughts and feelings held no weight, attractive people did better in life than nice people, that my gut was not to be trusted. I learned to please the adults who were always right and that authority figures had total control over my life.

I learned that anything I studied could be forgotten after the test, mistakes were punished and there were no do-overs, failing was to be avoided at all costs. I learned to study my teachers so I knew exactly what they wanted and just how little I could do to keep their favor or at least not attract their contempt.

And I learned what freedom means. It means giving up control over the majority of your time so you can have the freedom to buy a house and toys. It means busting your ass to build someone else’s dream so one day when you are old, you can stop working and be free to finally figure out what your dream is. It means sacrificing your childhood and your sense of self so you can appreciate living in a free country where you get to watch other people live their lives on reality TV.

There’s a powerful reason that five year old girl screams when she’s dragged into that classroom. Children know what true freedom is…and what it isn’t. Alarm bells are ringing in her head and heart; she recognizes that environment has no real interest in who she is and its sole purpose is to suck away her one and only childhood and educate her how to be in this free world of ours.   

What’s the Harm?

justjenLeave a comment

So, when my son was in second grade, his teacher (like many of the other teachers in this school that had a no homework policy) offered the Pizza Hut reading club where if you spent a certain amount of time at home reading, you would earn a free pizza!

I was furious when I learned she was doing this. I immediately sent her an email asking if we could have a conversation. By the way, my son was one of those many second graders whose brain was not yet ready to easily pick up the skill of reading. Reading was effortful and not fun for him as a result. This is not uncommon among 7 year olds, and even some 8 and 9 year olds. More on this another time…

Back to the phone call. I reminded her that the school had a no homework policy and that by implementing this program, she was breaking that policy. It’s important to note there was a little different relationship here than just teacher/parent. I had been a second grade teacher at this school just the year before. This teacher had been a colleague of mine that had actually taken over my classroom when I decided to not renew my contract.

She said she didn’t think it could do any harm for the kids to earn a free pizza as a way to encourage them to read more. It’s been a few years since this conversation, and I can’t quite remember whether I raised my voice. I know I definitely come across as intense when my passion is driving the conversation. My response went something like this, “It DOES do harm. You are reprogramming my child. I want him to love reading, and you are destroying that possibility by dangling a carrot. He’s learning that reading is hard work that’s only worth doing if you get some kind of reward on the other side of that work.”

I know I was putting her in an impossible position. She mumbled something about all the other teachers doing it, but acknowledged that what I was saying was accurate. Unfortunately, she was also putting me in an impossible position. Do I support my 7 year old son’s teacher and play along or do I encourage him to not participate in something his whole class is doing and visibly tracking?

There are so many things wrong with the Pizza Hut reading program that I’m not even sure where to begin. Here are just a few of the most obvious—that may not be so obvious if you’re in the practice of just trusting the “educators”. Don’t beat yourself up if you are one of those people. It’s likely you went through this same system and you learned not to question the “experts.”  

1. As already mentioned, children are being reprogrammed. They are losing their internal locus of control through the use of rewards and punishments. They’re not learning for the love of learning but instead cramming content as a result of coercion. You can read more about this in yesterday’s post.

2. Pressure to participate in such a program makes those who are struggling with a skill BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT YET READY TO LEARN IT doubt their ability to ever learn it. This starts to take a toll on the identity as children internalize being “behind” other kids their age. We’ll dive deeper into this one when we look at the insidious concept of “average.”

3. Homework. This one also deserves its own post (or two,) but a quick primer. Homework typically requires that the parent become the enforcer of the school’s agenda. This has the potential to damage the family dynamic and make the child feel even more isolated and confused about why school feels so wrong. If we must have our children in this unhealthy school environment all day, it’s even more important that home be a place where the child is encouraged to engage in self-determination which requires autonomy, competence, and relatedness<–not things many kids are getting at school.

4. There’s probably more, but I’ll end with this one. If you’re a parent, have you ever found yourself at odds with your intuition in your role as the school’s enforcer? I do want my readers to pay attention to how all of these practices add up to a systematic dismantling of our intuition. Can you see how the Pizza Hut Reading Club could contribute to the questioning of one’s inner knowing not only for the child, but for the parent, and even the teacher?

To the parents out there whose second grade children are struggling to read: don’t force it! They’re not ready. Some kids are ready to read at three, some not til they’re twelve. If you don’t make reading a chore or worse yet, a source of pain because it’s amplifying perceived defects, they’ll learn it much more efficiently when they’re ready. Let your child follow their interests at home. Read TO your child about things they love or stories that explore issues he’s currently dealing with or curious about or that just make him laugh.

Forget about the school’s rating—that’s why they scare you into thinking your child is behind, but you can’t worry about that. Take care of YOUR kid and your family’s health. And make sure your child knows there’s nothing wrong with him if his some of his peers are reading faster than he is. This second part is the hard one. Your child is immersed in an environment where he’s got a constant awareness of how he stacks up against his same-age peers. And we wonder why social media has so much power to damage our kids. Comparison is constantly reinforced and made high stakes in the school environment.

Stay attuned to YOUR child. As much as your child’s teacher may want to best serve your child, you know him better than anyone. YOU are the expert on your child. Listen to your gut, advocate as best you can for him, and don’t let the school bully you. Oops, did I just say that? Hmm, seems like another post topic…

By the way, really take in this photo that accompanies this post. If you’ve been following my writing, this one should be pretty painful. Feel free to comment!

Word Play

justjenLeave a comment

So I asserted yesterday that school “teaches children that learning is work, work is not fun, and play is frivolous “

There’s a ton to unpack in that statement, and this post won’t get all the way to the heart of it, but I thought we’d begin exploring this one by really examining those key words, “work”, “learning”, and “play” and their connotations, and how those connotations shape our lives.

Let’s start with the word “work.” How does that word make you feel? Does it feel heavy or light? Do you associate creativity or drudgery with the noun, “work”? Is work ever fun? When I Google “work”, I get these definitions:

“a task or tasks to be undertaken; something a person or thing has to do.”

“activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.”

Even those two definitions feel very different to me. Which feels lighter to you? Lens matters, and the language we use shapes that lens, don’t you think? When I think of something I have to do, it tends to feel heavy. But if I am doing something that involves effort to achieve a purpose, that seems meaningful and can be really energizing—this feels very different to me than the first definition. I do think for the majority of us, “work” has become those things we have to do. In fact, one of the listed synonyms is “drudgery.”

Has school played a role in shaping our culture this way? I think it would be hard to argue otherwise. Though if we chicken and egg this, did school come after culture or the other way around? We’ll eventually examine how school’s primary purpose is to indoctrinate culture.

What about the word, “learning”? Does that word make you think of classrooms and teachers? Does it inspire you or make you tired? Does how it makes you feel depend on the reason you’re learning something new—like whether you’re being forced to learn something for your job, something you have to learn vs. something you’re really interested in and choosing to learn?

The noun, “learning” is defined as:

“the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught”

Let’s unpack that one a bit! How different does it feel to acquire a new skill through experience vs. being taught? Which is more efficient? One might say being taught is more efficient than learning on one’s own, through trial-and-error, but then which is more effective and enduring? And by this definition, if learning comes from experience, is it happening all the time? When are you not learning? Does this challenge our cultural idea that learning only happens at school or when we’re being taught by another or studying something?

And the word, “play”? Does this word conjure up images of creative endeavors such as knitting a scarf? Writing a song? Making dinner? Maybe “play” to you is more active like riding a bike or participating in a team sport? Or do you think of watching television or sipping a drink by a pool? Maybe all of these things feel like play to you? Do you feel guilty when you play or like it’s a waste of time?

Play, verb form, is defined this way:

“engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.”

As a noun,
“activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation, especially by children.”

Seems like it’s the opposite of “work” which is done for a purpose. I’ve definitely used this idea to distinguish these two concepts and play experts often contrast these concepts in this way: “play” being intrinsically motivated and activity that has no intended outcome where “work” is purposeful and is done precisely to achieve an outcome.

Then is there any overlap between work and play? What about learning and play? Learning and work? Is play truly frivolous? Does it not provide experiences through which we learn?

And how about that idea in the “play” definition, “especially by children”? Seriously? What is implied by this definition? That adults don’t play? Shouldn’t play? Maybe that play is frivolous? Frivolous is a fun word too, isn’t it? How does that one make you feel?

I want to continue into the idea of play and its relationship to learning and work (and frivolity) in a future post, but for today I might leave it here. Play (yes that was an intentional word choice) with these questions, with this language. Examine your own response to these three words and your philosophy of work, learning, and play.  How do they make you feel? Did the culture you took on throughout your schooling affect your perception of these concepts? Has that perception affected the way you live your life and how often you play today? Or learn? Or work? Are there ways or times in your life when all three are happening at the same time? Is this even possible?

Does the idea of answering these questions feel like “work” or “play”? Please feel free to comment with your answers to any of the questions posed or your response to even being asked the questions. Or whether you think this is a pointless exercise. Bring it on! Let’s get this party started.