Yeah, I am deep. I get deep and I stay deep. I'm not sure if I can even help that. I really think I may have been made that way or maybe I am just slightly demented in the brain to want to think of serious things and often. What I really need is a great, big, long, really long moment of laughter. The kids provided a bit of laughter this evening with their improvisational skits about bad kids going to see a bunch of deranged psychologists. We also sang Weird Al songs together in one big anthem of intentional stupidity and fun. That's my house, the one I live in. Yup. They even had all the lights off and held up l.e.d. flashlights over their faces to make it all legit like they were on stage or something. So, yeah, a little laughter, but no, I really need one of those laugh yourself silly moments. Maybe later. But here I am again. Something is bugging me down to my itchy, scratchy, drive you crazy middle part of your back that you just can't quite reach. And I am tired of thinking, so I'll write what I think and lay it all down, well, a good portion of it, my thoughts.
I hate school. I hate the word school. I hate the word education. Well, actually to be more concise or coherent, I hate what these words stand for in our modern American culture today. School...a building, the supposed main place people learn stuff they don't want to learn or maybe they do want to learn something there, but typically not the things they love or that or relevant or the people teaching don't love the stuff they are trying teach so the kids of course could care less about the subject, the material, the...the...passionless passing on of useless information to the hearer. Education...what some guy or gal decided in some test lab somewhere what and when we should learn stuff and how we all should learn it...basically one way for everybody most of the time. One size fits all. Yeah, try that cheesy t-shirt on for size, won't you? Well, the poor kids have to. You may find my words unforgiving. I can't help how I feel.
I was recently at a beatiful park in Wisconsin and the Fall colors were at their peak. What a perfect backdrop for learning, for playing, for being, for observing, for messing about, for meadering, for exploring, for our being available for a thousand and one questions. But there was not a child, there was no one. Where were they all? In school, at work or home or wherever else. 20-30 kids behind a door with one in charge over every aspect of problem, difficulty, question or advancement. Set them free, I say. If there must be school take the majority of the time outdoors. If the kids must be babysat so that both parents can work all day...let them have time just for them to explore the world as they choose, in the way they choose. Let not every moment be dictated to them from beginning to end. Where does true thinking and learning begin? Where does the desire to learn come from and how is it fueled or assisted or how do we make their natural passion to learn grow further? Not the way we are doing it. Only the smallest minority excel in the school environment as it stands for the majority.
Kids are immobilized each week for more time than they can feasibly take(the younger the child, the more they endure), listening to someone yack all day about what they need to learn(much of it they don't want to learn and why is that?) all while the majority of a child's creative, self-teaching development gets cast off. He was really enjoying himself until about 3 or 4 and then off, off, off to school he, she, they go. I think it's just plain stupid...the whole thing. The whole sheee-bang-doodle. Something not short of magical happens at the ripe, old age of five and these kids are shoved into a box. And these kids. Well, they are poor. Not poor broke, but poor not being helped. It's indecent, it's inhumane and just because we have always done it, doesn't mean we shoule always do it! Stop the madness. If we can't deal with our kids at home...our child, the one we love, the one we sacrificed for to have, the one we are hopefully nuturing and enjoying for the most part...if we can't deal...the one who knows the child the best...how well is the teacher dealing with your child who they barely know, who they barely understand in a crowded class of 15/20/30 others. It doesn't make any sense. They try, but still...
Just not being set free and not being given the ability to see what they are capable of because they are too busy going to school. And I get the whole "if these kids didn't go to school they would be abused or neglected at home" and in that case, yeah, I guess anything would be better than that I guess, so yeah, please send them down to the dumb, old school, but no, maybe there is something else? Or wow...we all work, so my kid needs to be at a day care/school of sorts...I get it...there needs to be places, good places for kids to go while mom, dad, caregiver go to work. Yes, I agree, but a huge paradigm shift needs to occur. And please understand me well. Well meaning people can do some very dumb. Things. Ignorant people do some very dumb. Things. And despite what I say, I KNOW there are some great schools that think completely different and offer up a way of learning and stepping stones for growth that are actually going to help kids and not hinder them and to them I say bravo, stunning, brilliant, bravo. We can learn a million things from you. And there are brilliant teachers trapped every where in the public school system constantly trying to get around the educational, factory-style driven, institutional setting to do what is best for their kids so they can grow, be helped and progress. They are being fought against relentlessly. Yes, the good teachers are being fought against...not encouraged! They want to break the cycle and really help their kids and most of them just, well, they just aren't allowed. And kids...they just want to learn because they love it, because they want to...they always loved it until that love got stripped away by well meaning people. Some are not so well-meaning, but flippant and calculating, but many I believe want to do good but don't know how or they simply are not allowed to or they get fired for fully trying to meet the needs of all of their kids in a radical, out-of-box kind of way.
It is all of our jobs as the people of the human race to re-ignite or rather, just allow that natural love for learning in our children, the love that was saddled in them at birth. It is your job. It is mine. And how? Trial and error. Getting excited again about our own passions to learn the things we love and put that out there for the kids to see. Our own kids, the neighbor kids, the kids at church, at the store and all around the way. It's amazing when you jump in on this process how kids just light up. Lit up learning...it's enjoyable, imperfect, rote only when it has to be and infectious! And this is a radically new movement, an old idea forgotten, it is how we are stinkin' born and little by little it gets muddled, suppressed and then down right forbidden! What in the world, folks?!
Well, let's get back to those dumb things I was mentioning beforehand and why, what do you mean, dumb things? Number one. Learning is progress, progress is learning. Can we force a person to learn things he hates. Yes. Can we force a person to learn things that mean absolutely nothing to him? Yes. But we shouldn't or we shouldn't teach things or learn things we don't see value in, have a love for or experience enjoyment from, understanding in as a result of, a reward achieved, etc. I saw a commercial on tv with a mom and kids in the house on a rainy day with nothing to do. The mom gets out a bunch of brown paper lunch bags and opens them up on the floor. She had a very small bouncy ball and started to bounce it onto the floor and into the bags. Enthusiastically the kids jumped up without being asked to join in and wanted to play as well. She initiated the process, provided the tools and joined in or stepped back or whatever. That commercial gets me right there...wherever there is, but I like it. It always made me smile when I saw it. Why? It's just a commercial! Why? Because I experienced that setting with my kids and I want to increase these initiations in the process of love learning, it's where it's at in this life. Get excited yourselves, providing children with tools, but not becoming a teaching tyrant when you hand them over. You may offer assistance but never tyrannical control over the learner. There is order, but it is heart strung over days, moments and minutes together, it's intentional, but never breaks down the relationship of child and teacher, it's spontaneous and many, many times simply self-directed. I am going on nine years of homeschooling my kids and the best learning and the most progress came when we went with "the flow" with the things we really wanted to learn and from that found our science, geography, literature, reading, math, understanding, wisdom, character, excitement and just flat out joy...enJOYment. It's simply the best and my kids can tell you to this day what happened on those kind of days, that kind of learning, that kind of reinforcement. It is radical, it is as old as time and it is being stifled everywhere and kids are giving up...just raising their hands in the air and literally succumbing to their fate in many ways and many times in all ways. I'll say it again...these...poor...kids.
Number two. Learning is everywhere about anything because you want to because you like it, you need it, you want to know something because it means something to you, a desire is formed by the people around you. The desire is formed by the people around you and you in kind are allowed to roam in that creative mind God gave you, experience, learn with real learning that sticks, helps and equips. Relational, connective learning lasts a lifetime. Disconnected, incoherent, unrelated "learning" may last for a moment but it will always slip out the back door of the mind in the end. ALWAYS.
Number three. And really, there is no number three, just a reinforcing of what I am trying to say. Meaningful inquiry out of a sheer desire to learn is the kind of learning that sticks. Forever.
I love music, singing, the idea of writing music, instruments and thought these things would be a part of my every day life because I enjoyed them so much and really, they are most days. Singing was my passion, but I really wanted to play the piano, too. For as long as I can remember I wanted to play and wanted my mom to teach me, but she never would. In college I studied music with a voice proficiency, but didn't know much about music theory, never had lessons in piano in my life so I was railroaded when piano classes were a mandatory part of my degree. They handed me music and said go practice this and come back and play it. I thought, man, I am in some serious trouble. Everyone else thought it was a piece of cake, they had had their lessons. And yes, it was a beginner's playing class, but it was all Greek to me. I had no clue where to put my hands, where the notes were, what the notes were. And in the end I left college not knowing piano much better than when I went in. I bought a piano when I got married and vowed that I would teach myself how to play and well. It took 14 years to get here but I can read pretty much anything. It's slower for harder pieces, but if I practice I can do them eventually. I am not the best piano player, but I can actually play many songs without looking at my hands much. And reading the music comes natural, like breathing almost. I wanted to learn...so...bad for so long. I gave up a few times in the middle of those years, but I kept at it and I figured it out. I even figured out how to transpose anything, now...writing music that would be my next goal. Desire. I know it took a long time, but to me it proves that I can learn anything if I really want to learn it and guidance of my choosing in any form, the kind that equips and helps and offers tools, coupled with that true desire then there's nothing I couldn't achieve.
The same goes for you and all our kids, too.
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