Nurturing Autonomy – June 29, 2004
I continue to get feedback about the issue of parental
authority. The huge range of opinion has opened my eyes a bit wider to the
diversity of both Life Learning’s readers and other people who consider
themselves “unschoolers”. One woman, who picked up a copy of Life Learning
at a conference in British Columbia earlier this month wrote to say that Naomi
Aldort’s recent article about how kids learn manners (not by being taught but by
being respected, by having their authenticity supported and by having the
behavior modeled) is “utter garbage!” Hmmm. I don’t suppose she will be
subscribing but I do hope she will take a second look at her beliefs about how
kids learn various behaviors and skills. At any rate, those who appreciate
guidance about a non-coercive style of parenting can look forward to Jan
Fortune-Wood’s always wise and thought-provoking column that just arrived for
our September/October issue. She writes, “Nurturing our children’s autonomy
requires a great deal of parental engagement. Children are born rational and
creative – human in other words – but they are not born with knowledge beyond
the instinctual knowledge needed to survive as babies appealing for love warmth
and food. It’s this lack of experience that often leads parents and educators to
regard children as only part of the human “product” – we all too easily equate
lack of experience and developed knowledge with being lesser, more likely to be
self destructive, less likely to be able to think and make decisions. This isn’t
the case, but children are children – they do need something from parents. The
question is, what?”
Posted: 29/06/2004 2:41 PM
Success and Failure – June 22, 2004
Somebody asked me the other day if I feel successful. “Sure”, I said, “Some of
the time!” He looked at me oddly, which made me realize that my response was not
what he had expected; he was, in fact, referring to the fame and fortune sort of
success. So I shared with him a favorite quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, which
is that to have succeeded is to have laughed often, to have won the respect of
intelligent people and the affection of children, to have earned the
appreciation of honest critics, to have endured the betrayal of false friends,
to have appreciated beauty and to have left the world a better place, whether by
a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition. Success, given
this definition, is not about getting or having things, although it may well
lead to financial security.
In fact, success is not a condition
or even a permanent state of being. It is a process of accomplishing what
is required to achieve a task or realize a dream, plus the lessons you learn
along the way. And those lessons are invaluable even if the goal is not
realized. Unfortunately, our society doesn’t see it this way. Success and
failure are black or white, good or bad, proud or shameful. If being successful
is good, then failing is bad. Failure often is accompanied by shame and
ridicule. This leads us to a paralyzing fear of failure. We become focused on
trying not to fail instead of trying to succeed. We avoid taking risks, hold
ourselves back from fully living, from learning and inevitably from experiencing
opportunities for success.
Young children are good at becoming
successful. They ask incisive questions, they acquire information, they
experiment...they undertake the process of success. But they, too, can
learn to fear failure if their inquisitiveness gets turned off by teachers or
parents or if they are made to feel self-conscious if they don’t appear to
achieve success.
Posted: 22/06/2004 3:17 PM
Making Change – June 21, 2004
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something,
build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Buckminster Fuller
Posted: 21/06/2004 9:05 PM
In Charge of Someone Else – June 17, 2004
I just had an exchange with a woman who was trying to get me to approve of her
family’s style of educating by agreeing with her definition of “unschooling”.
Her modus operandi is to wait until her kids express an interest in something,
then organize activities around that interest. I said, in my opinion, that is
the best way to kill a kid’s (or anyone’s, for that matter) interest in a topic,
and that for me, unschooling means child-directed rather than parent-directed.
She said her kids were allowed to veto any activity they didn’t like. So I asked
her why she couldn’t just trust her kids to organize their own activities if
they so desired. Her answer was vague and a bit evasive, and clearly that was
not something she wanted to consider. I sensed that hands-off was not her style.
And I sympathized with her, because many parents tell me that not meddling in
their kids’ learning is one of their biggest challenges.
We chatted for quite some time and she
began to agree that her organizing was getting in the way of the sort of
learning she envisioned for her family. But I continue to be troubled by our
conversation; why was the definition of unschooling so important to her, I
wonder. I hear from people who frequent email discussion groups that there are
often heated discussions about whether or not a certain person is truly
unschooling in some kind of pure way, and that some people have even been
ostracized from online and face-to-face unschooling groups because their way of
living with their children doesn’t fit the definition. Yikes! That’s scary. But
it is understandable among people who are rejecting the status quo and who
therefore welcome the comfort of an identifiable peer group, not to mention some
rules to define the parameters of an otherwise unruly life/learning style. And
we should not forget that there is no one right way to help all kids learn all
of the time. Sure there are some principles in which I passionately believe, but
they will not work if both parent and child don’t feel comfortable. To each
their own! Now about those definitions....
Posted: 17/06/2004 3:42 PM
Fairytales – June 16, 2004
Sometimes I feel like Alice in Wonderland, in that everything is not what it
seems. The term “life-long learning” has become popular (trendy even) and
educators of all stripes say they realize that people learn best when they are
interested in a topic and when it is in a real-life context. Nevertheless, our
age-segregated, factory-model public education system is still firmly in place.
And true self-directed learning is still very much on the fringes. It is being
given lip service but there is no real understanding of what it really means or
of its ramifications.
Why?
Educators (and many parents) tell me it is utopian and impractical, not to
mention practically impossible for many families. Nonsense! If we really wanted
to make life learning available to all, we could and would. Even though most
adults would have to admit to the poverty and dullness of their own school
experiences, and even though the experiences of many thousands of unschoolers
prove there is a better way, few people are willing to admit the Emperor
Has No Clothes. Even the majority of homeschoolers believe that children must be
made to learn – at least “the basics” – using workbooks, curriculum programs and
other specially tailored products. Part of the problem is that those products
are part of a huge school industry, which has a vested interest in perpetuating
the myth that tests, texts and teachers are essential to educational success.
But aside from that powerful influence, I often wonder why it is so difficult
for families to take that leap of faith away from their own familiar experiences
toward something so much better, even when they admit that their own experiences
were not all that positive.
Posted: 16/06/2004 11:48 AM
Baby Signs Feedback – June 14, 2004
I have received a couple of pieces of feedback on my entry about baby signing.
Here is what Jenny Woodall from Maryland had to say: “I used sign with my
daughter, who was adopted internationally at age 11 months. While her brain was
busy learning a second language, sign allowed us some basic communication almost
immediately. While she eventually learned about 50 signs, her most frequent
signs always included the basics: food, milk, more, finished. She communicated
with us in a delightful mix of sign, gesture, words, and sounds, as spoken
English gradually became her primary mode of communication. Did it help decrease
frustration? You bet! My feelings about our experience are only positive, and I
really believe that exposure to language and communication can only be a good
thing. As for those people who use the research and popular beliefs to
shamelessly market high-priced baby learning toys, more power to them! But shame
on those who buy into it, instead of realizing that a basic sign book or video
from your local library and a little time practicing is all you really need. I
suspect those are the same people who buy scads of Baby Mozart and Leap Frog
stuff while my daughter plays with sticks and water and toys from Goodwill. To
each her own.”
Posted: 14/06/2004 11:04 PM
Baby Signs – June 3, 2004
There is a new movement afoot called
Baby Signing. It helps parents and young babies learn sign language in
order to communicate prior to the children learning how to speak. Apparently,
infants develop the fine muscles in their hands before they develop those
required for speech, so they are equipped to communicate before they can speak,
by the age of seven or eight months, according to researchers. At that age, they
also have the conceptual ability to understand and use language. The sign
language that is generally used is similar but not identical to American Sign
Language, which is used by the hearing impaired (and that is an issue of
controversy within the baby signing community).
This could be seen as an extension of the
gestures most babies learn to make, such as waving goodbye and pointing to
mommy’s breast when it’s time to eat. Or it could be seen as an extension of the
give-them-a-head-start/teach-your-baby-to-read philosophy, which I detest.
Drs. Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn and
child development specialist Joseph Garcia “discovered” baby signing in the
1980s. Acredolo and Goodwyn conducted the research for the National Institute of
Health that is said to demonstrate the language and cognitive benefits of baby
signing. Their research seems to show that teaching babies to sign increases
their IQ and enables them to talk at an earlier age than those who don’t. Babies
who sign apparently do better on infant IQ tests at age two. Age two???
Garcia is the author of Sign With Your
Baby. Acredolo and Goodwyn authored the book Baby Signs: How to Talk With
Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk. And they have written other books,
including a whole raft of baby signs for specific purposes titles and Baby
Minds: Brain Building Games Your Baby Will Love.
There are both supporters and skeptics of
baby signing and the claims made in its favor. It seems to act as a bridge into
speech, rather than delaying the spoken word. Some psychologists feel that any
developmental advantages may come from the close contact between parent and
child, rather than from signing specifically, and say that, like with early
reading, everybody catches up in the end. Signing may reduce parental
frustration and thus decrease family stress – ever tried to figure out whether
your fretful baby was hungry, wet, uncomfortable, cold, hot or otherwise upset?
And there certainly doesn’t seem to be any harm done, except perhaps to the
family bank account.
Like any movement – especially those that
involve parents who are vulnerable to spending money because they want to give
their kids a head start – this one is breeding an industry of baby sign language
instructors, videos, CDs, books, websites and even home business opportunities.
Next week, I will be on vacation, which is
a rare occurrence. So I will not be posting to this blog until at least June
13.
Posted: 03/06/2004 7:45 PM
