How Do They Know That? – August 2, 2008
Ever since our daughters began to learn without school over 35 years ago, I have
wondered about something. I’ve not been curious about how learning happens,
but about why so many people need to know. Reporters, relatives, colleagues,
other parents and the merely nosey have all, over the years, expressed a burning
curiosity to understand how my children learned to read, write and multiply. I
used to say that it happened by osmosis. Interestingly enough, I’ve never once been asked how they learned to talk or
walk.
But why does it matter how children learn? Or adults, for that
matter? So much of educational research is aimed at finding better ways
to teach things (and, of course, better ways to artificially motivate children
to be receptive to that teaching)…things that would be learned anyway without the
teaching and better, in some cases, without what amounts to interference
masquerading as helping. I think that mostly comes from academic elitism, an
adult arrogance that says we can help them do it faster or more efficiently than
if they left to their own devices. We also need to understand (and control)
the process of learning because we think it is difficult, a belief seemingly reinforced by
most school experiences. However, children who have the opportunity to learn
informally instead of attending school demonstrate that much learning happens
effortlessly without adult interference when the time is right – meaning
the motivation is present – and usually without the learner being aware it is
happening. And when the motivation is present, even inherently difficult
information can be mastered with joy in the absence of planned pedagogy or
professional organization.
Or maybe we misunderstand what learning really is. Much of
what is supposedly learned in school is mostly material that has been memorized,
whether history dates, mathematical formulae or the difference between a verb
and a noun. Absent any interest in learning the material and any context for it,
as well as sufficient time to experiment with, adapt and apply the information,
this process cannot be called learning. Rather, it is memorizing, regurgitating and forgetting. (Why else would teachers and some parents bemoan
the “ground lost” during summer vacation?!)
When supporters of informal and home-based education try to
understand how learning happens, their motivation is somewhat different. For instance,
British academics Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison researched and wrote How
Children Learn at Home (Continuum, 2008) in order to challenge many
of the assumptions underpinning educational theory and to demonstrate the
efficacy of parent-modeled life learning. And their book does that well, largely
by quoting parents who admit often to not having a clue how their children
learned something! And I think that’s just fine, especially if it helps us
learn to trust the children and the process.
Thomas and Pattison write: “If we begin with a child’s
eye view of the learning situation, asking what attracts children’s attention,
why, and how they then go about exploring these things, we begin to be able to
see learning as a form of growth in which children add, flexibly and
organically, to their understanding of the world around them. Such a view
further enables us to see how learning is structured by the child’s day-to-day
environment and is accomplished as an ongoing facet of the things that children
do.” Just like adults learn.
Posted: 2008/08/02 7:10 PM
