Kelly Crawford

After asking, are school subjects necessary?, considering how schools kill creativity, discussing the overrated college degree and apprenticeship and the philosophy of ‘school’ vs. ‘education’ , we’re finally ready to talk about some of the nuts and bolts–practical application of real education.

Let me restate the most important thing:

“So what does educating look like if not like “school?”

The good news is, it can look like a whole bunch of things, depending on the family, the child and/or the goals and opportunities of each. The thing that is precisely wrong with “schooling” is the attempt to conform every child into one learning mold. So the first thing to remember is: there are endless ways to learn and endless things about which to learn.”

The other most important thing:

We learn best by doing. And doing can mean telling or explaining, or demonstrating or teaching. Don’t forget this invaluable truth that lets your child keep information.

The fear of removing structure

There are skeptics, because of the reputation “unschooling” has received by a large sector who embrace a child-centered worldview, who avoid anything that resembles a child following his interests. The argument is (and I used to use it), that without the structure, regiment and schedule of a typical school routine, the parent is defaulting to child-centeredness. But don’t confuse “unparenting” with “delight-directed study.” 

Consider:

1. What is “unschooling”? Essentially, it is learning all the time, as opposed to “doing school.” Because the term itself has so many different meanings attached to it, we would do well to use a different word. But the philosophy has merit within the context of proper authority and a biblical worldview. I prefer to use terms like, delight-directed study. Gregg Harris has this to say:

“A delight-directed study is like a wonderful fire in the mind of a student. It starts small, but as it grows, it begins to consume vast amounts of information until it bursts into a roaring blaze of insight, understanding and creativity. It takes on a life of its own. In a delight-directed study, a child’s interests are fanned to flame and supported in ways that increase his interest in his studies. The child’s delight is the spark that ignites everything. Once established, like a fire, it is self-sustaining. The student begins to study for his own personal satisfaction, and the fruits of his study begin to flow outward to others.” Delight Directed Study

Remember how we learn as young children? Parents can have a perfectly structured home life, with authority in the proper place, and still be the facilitator of his toddler’s love of learning. Every parent, from the strictest to the most lax, teaches this way while his children are young, utilizing his God-given curiosities which propel him to learn what is necessary. If it is superior then, why not later?

2. Structure, routine and order can be implemented in all sorts of ways without squelching natural interests and learning instincts.

3. Rudimentary subjects can still be taught along with allowing your children to dive into subjects that interest him.

Those of us who reject the idea of a child learning what he loves is mostly still struggling to break out of the mental box of “doing school” to embrace a freedom of learning which should be more of a lifestyle than anything else. Yes, you can still require certain rudimentary work (we do.); but overall, education should be a living, constant pursuit of one’s natural curiosities.

Academics

This concept doesn’t mean there are no academics taught; quite the contrary. It sees real life as the perfect environment to make whole men and women, including the academics they need but not excluding the practical wisdom and skills many children and adults lack.

Textbooks, if used, should be thought of as tools, not masters, remembering that they are not the only way, and often not the best way, to impart learning.This is one big difference in schooling and education…we are educating a whole child, and the world is our classroom. Everything inside that world is merely a tool, to which we should never become a slave.

Here are some practical ways academics can look:

• Math games can teach basic arithmetic. With a foundation in numeration (understanding numbers well, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing), “real math” or “citizen statistics” is far more needful in this generation than higher math, for the majority of people. For one, our technical age affords us machines to compute difficult equations and problems. (Albert Einstein said, “Never memorize something you can look up.” )

Also, real math matters--tremendously. Think of the enormous financial trouble so many are in and what it has ultimately done to our national economy. Making wise financial decisions and understanding basic living math is far more beneficial than knowing the quadratic equation. And life affords plenty of opportunity to teach it. From cooking, to building a house, comparing prices and  learning how to budget money, math encompasses our daily lives. If children are a living, breathing part of our daily rhythms, they learn it. If a child needs to learn higher math for a particular occupation, he will have no problem doing so. He has been given the tools of how to learn.

• Educational prompts–create an environment of interest and stimulation. It might be a map laminated and placed on the kitchen table, a microscope available for use, musical instruments, particular books chosen and placed in view–anything to prompt a child’s curiosity and begin a journey of experience/investigation/conversation. Guide books are particularly helpful for finding specific information about a topic of interest.

• Using thank-you notes, stories and written summaries, etc. for grammar, spelling and writing makes more sense to a child than diagramming sentences. I did this with my own students when I taught English, and I still do it. Writing well means understanding how words fit together and which ones to use at the appropriate time. I know many great writers who have no clue what a past participle is and still use it correctly.

(Interestingly, I found this in an author bio of an article I was reading about marketing, not even looking for it: “You may find it amusing to know that I have never learned the formal rules of grammar. I learned to write by reading obsessively at an early age, but when it came time to learn the “rules,” I tuned out. If you show me an incorrect sentence, I can fix it, but if I need to know the technical reason why it was wrong in the first place, I go ask my wife.” Brian Clark, Founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Copyblogger Media, and of course, writer.)

• Documentaries. Don’t underestimate the power of learning through listening to fascinating authors and watching programs on areas of interests. For my visual learners, this has been huge. There are great “how stuff is made” videos on YouTube and a good source of documentaries is Netflix and the library.

Example of interest-led learning:

My ten-year-old daughter, Alexa, decided she wanted to keep bees. So last week, we bought two hives with bees. My son will be helping her and so I am planning as many projects around bee-keeping as I can. I bought some books and magazine subscriptions and we’re diving in. Their written and verbal narrations and summaries are about the material they read on bees. We’re learning about the medical benefits of honey, that bees were the first inventors of evaporative cooling, why a honeycomb has a hexagon pattern (and what a “vertex” is), fermentation, pollination, charting and graphing, and a hundred other things.

We are studying several beekeepers from history and looking at geographical interests around the subject.

She plans to sell the honey too, which will facilitate great business and record-keeping skills. This is just one example of ways to capitalize on interests.

Don’t underrate interests in the arts.

As the video in part 2 stated, the arts are always rated less important than academic pursuits, crippling the creative gifts of children. If a child shows a propensity for a certain creative expression, consider letting him focus on that in any way that makes sense.

Talk to people.

Having people from a variety of backgrounds and experiences in your home is a priceless way to expand your family’s education. Of course traveling and experiencing other cultures and backgrounds first hand is the best way, but for many not possible. Everyone has a story and life lessons to share; form a habit of listening.

Get outside to the classroom of Nature.

Charlotte Mason believed that Creation provided a wealth of educational opportunties. She writes:

“We must assist the child to educate himself on Nature’s lines, and we must take care not to supplant and crowd out Nature and her methods with that which we call education. Object-lessons should be incidental; and this is where the family enjoys a great advantage over the school. The child who finds that wonderful and beautiful object, a “paper” wasp’s nest…has his lesson on the spot from father or mother.”

Children can be given journals and art books to record their findings or just be prompted to write about their feelings and discoveries. We have been programmed not to think of these things as educational because they are not measurable. But historically, nature was the best classroom.

“Without continuous hands-on experience, it is impossible for children to acquire a deep intuitive understanding of the natural world that is the foundation of sustainable development. ….A critical aspect of the present-day crisis in education is that children are becoming separated from daily experience of the natural world, especially in larger cities.” -Natural Learning, Creating Environments for Rediscovering Nature’s Way of Teaching, Robin C. Moore and Herb H. Wong

“Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives.” – Thomas Berry

Don’t forget the main attributes of a well-educated child and form your learning style around them:

• demonstrates wisdom (“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”)
• communicates well–all forms
• demonstrates strong character traits of virtue (Character First Qualities)
• self-sufficient and knows how to solve problems
• eager to learn and knows how to find what he is looking for
• can think critically about a diverse range of topics
• can defend his beliefs and values
• knows how to handle numbers
• has a wide exposure of interests
• has hands-on experience with different skills
• has good conflict-resolution skills, especially with those in his home

“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

I hope you have enjoyed reading this series as much as I did writing it. And I hope you’ll leave your own observations, thoughts or challenges in the comment section!

“We need to scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair — one or the other.” John Taylor Gatto, Why Schools Don’t Educate

If you’ve landed here before reading Part 1, 2 or 3 of the “Rethinking Education” series, I highly recommend reading those first. Tomorrow’s post will address the “nuts and bolts” of today’s topic.

Education and School are not the same.

If you have agreed with the authors I’ve featured in this series, and there is something unsettling to you about the “assembly line” method of education we are convinced is “the only way”, perhaps you will enjoy thinking through some of these practical thoughts on education.

Understand that I’m writing about something “different” because I believe the current method is grotesquely flawed. And I’m not the only one:

John Taylor Gatto, who spent thirty years teaching in an American classroom said, “Education and school can never be the same thing.” And yet, very few of us believe that. “School” is probably the most protected, embraced and trusted entity in America. The majority see it as the ONLY possible means to “success” for their children.

But when we consider that the literacy rate has never been higher than it was before compulsory education, any thinking person should understand that “schooling” is not the superior form of educating. Your aim will determine your methods.

“Government schools were not a response to the lack of private education but rather a direct assault on it. Public education was the brainchild of the “Progressive” mindset, which sees only disorder and chance in liberty. Public education would, in the Progressives’ view, homogenize America’s ethnically, Culturally, and religiously diverse population and create a national culture.”  Sheldon Richman, Freeing the Education Market

Philosophy of  “Educating” vs. “Schooling”

So what does educating look like if not like “school”?

The good news is, it can look like a whole bunch of things, depending on the family, the child and/or the goals and opportunities of each. The thing that is precisely wrong with “schooling” is the attempt to conform every child into one learning mold. So the first thing to remember is: there are endless ways to learn and endless things about which to learn.

“It’s high time we looked backward to regain an educational philosophy that works. One I like particularly well has been a favorite of the ruling classes of Europe for thousands of years. I think it works just as well for poor children as for rich ones. I use as much of it as I can manage in my own teaching — as much, that is, as I can get away with, given the present institution of compulsory schooling. At the core of this elite system of education is the belief that self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge.” John Taylor Gatto, Why Schools Don’t Educate

Educating looks a lot more like life, and a lot less like worksheets.

“In centuries past, the time of a child or adolescent would be occupied in real work, real charity, real adventure, and the real search for mentors who might teach what he or she really wanted to learn. A great deal of time was spent in community pursuits, practicing affection, meeting and studying every level of the community, learning how to make a home, and dozens of other tasks necessary to becoming a whole man or woman.” John Taylor Gatto, Why Schools Don’t Educate

As we’ll discuss more in the next post, life provides richer and far more relative opportunities to learn about the things one most needs for a productive life. Worksheets were invented as a control measure for corralling and confining large numbers of children, not because they are a superior way to learn.

In a nutshell, DOING is real learning.

Don’t miss this–“The act of knowing”

An over-arching principle we’ve tried to embrace was first articulated by British educator, Charlotte Mason. Simple but profoundly accuracte…”performing the act of knowing”. More commonly called “narration”, it is the retelling, in one’s own words, of a thing. (Narration can be dictated or written, but both need to be mastered.)

Karen Andreola said,

“Narration is important for the young learner because it challenges and strengthens all the powers of mind. Charlotte Mason categorized some of the mental powers this way: attending, remembering, visualizing, comprehending, synthesizing (seeing the whole from the parts), and articulating.” Narration: Tapping into the Talking Resource

Children largely lose what they’ve read or heard if they don’t “own the information”. Asking them to tell/teach what they are reading is one of the most important ways to make sure their time isn’t wasted.

Remembering the important things

In the last post, I linked to an article where employers were lamenting that the most desired trait in an employee was the one most lacking in many college graduates. What did they consider the most important quality? The ability to communicate well, verbally and in written form. Coincidentally, narration, as I just mentioned, is an excellent training tool for communication.

Conversation in general, an increasingly uncommon activity, is invaluable, all by itself in promoting good communication skills. But the attentive parent can take it up a notch: deliberately asking, listening and answering with educational intention. I cannot emphasize enough, how important this is.

This year, we have added narration, three times a week, on video. This adds the element of “public speaking” (the video will ultimately be part of a film they will enter in a local film festival). We have had them do “unit study summaries” for grandparents for this purpose as well.

Parent as facilitator

Fostering a love of learning and creating a learning environment and projects that will stimulate your children is a LOT more work than handing them textbooks. But it’s worth it!

Get them doing things. It’s really the only way to learn. Just like you can take classes and watch videos about driving, it is not until you do it that you really learn. In the next post, I’ll share an example of how we’re using interests as a springboard for learning. The best way to inspire them to *do*, is to remove mindless entertainment. They won’t stay bored long and that’s when the good stuff begins.

A reminder about the importance of learning life skills:

Let’s follow the simplified, typical educational thought process:

“Go to school, get an ‘education’ so you can get a good job to make enough money to pay for stuff.

But the more skills one possesses, the less money one has to pay. Car repairs, plumbing repairs, house repairs, etc.–skills save money.

Expand this concept to skills that allow product-making and you can save and/or earn money.

Our efforts to equip our children in this capacity should far outweigh our stress about algebra.

“Right now we are taking from our children the time they need to develop self-knowledge. That has to stop. We have to invent school experiences that give a lot of that time back. We need to trust children from a very early age with independent study, perhaps arranged in school, but which takes place away from the institutional setting. We need to invent a curriculum where each kid has a chance to develop uniqueness and self-reliance.” John Taylor Gatto, Why Schools Don’t Educate

Create, make, experience, talk, problem-solve, invent–these are the bedrocks of education.

This is why I wrote the book, Think Outside the Classroom, a great start for a practical overview of what I call “relaxed homeschooling”, a more natural approach to learning. (You can grab it here.)

“Nothing gave me more confidence as a homeschool mom than this book. Thank you a thousand times!” -Rosa M.

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(Part 1: Rethinking Education: Are School Subjects Necessary)

I decided to do this series on education not because I am opposed to the public school system (which I am, on many levels), and not because I think everyone should homeschool (which I do, more or less), but because all of us are affected by the way we collectively educate our children. And if something we place so much stock in could be improved, or is perhaps even harmful to some children, shouldn’t we all be willing to consider alternatives?

“I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my 25 years of teaching — that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aids and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard the institution is psychopathic, it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.” John Taylor Gatto, Teacher of the Year Acceptance Speech

And while I think there are many different ways to educate a child (precisely what this series is about) and so not “a” right way, our greatest dilemma is thinking that there is only one way to educate–by the same classroom method you and I were taught, the same method proving substantially lacking for producing well-rounded, equipped-for-life individuals. (I keep envisioning a t-shirt that says, “Everything I’ve ever learned, I learned after graduation.”)

Which is why I wrote the book, Think Outside the Classroom, a great start for a practical overview of what I call “relaxed homeschooling”, a more natural approach to learning. (You can grab it here.)

“Nothing gave me more confidence as a homeschool mom than this book. Thank you a thousand times!” -Rosa M.

There are so many problems with the current system of education, we will have to take them one at a time. Ken Robinson gives a brilliant, hilarious and deeply thought-provoking spin on the tragedy of killing our creativity in the system (and why that is so bad), and what it does to swarms of brilliant kids. He also briefly mentions a little about the history of the system and why it was created, which should give us great pause. This is a talk you don’t want to miss!

“[Reform] in education is no use anymore. Because that is simply improving a broken model…this has to be transformed into something else.” Ken Robinson, Bring on the Learning Revolution

Robinson’s follow-up talk, Bring on the Revolution, given four years later, is equally brilliant if not more helpful in revealing the problems of our current educational system.

Part 3: The Overrated College Degree-What About Apprenticeship?