More Educational Woes
While I don't consider myself a teacher by trade, I've sort of fallen into it. I teach acting and life skills to all ages and I am just now coming to a point where I'm not just teaching in "survival mode". With any new job there is always a weird learning curve where you try to navigate the processes of the organization you are working with and try to find your own voice. I'm not a master teacher. I don't know if I ever will be. But I had a moment of clarity this morning and I feel like sounding the alarm.
I'm interested in funding schools, I'm invested in providing socialization and information and encouraging curiosity about the world around us. However, it has been clear to me for many years that money is not really what schools need. Yes, computers and technology are important. Libraries and bathrooms are important. Helping each student reach a certain level of proficiency is also important, but cataloguing kids and herding them into this group or that group just isn't good enough.
PING!
Here's why: Learning is a much longer and more mysterious process than public education, as it stands now, has the ability to accomodate. It is not the rote spitting back of dates, equations and principles of grammar that indicate expansion of the mind. It hardly even qualifies as knowledge. If you can't apply it to anything, what does it really mean?
I'm learning, through my own classes, that you really can't say that at the end of ten weeks these kids will know such and such. It doesn't work that way. You have to teach them where they are at and guide them on their own journey for it to be meaningful and have resonance in their lives. You can't take them on YOUR journey. You can't take them on the TEST'S journey. That path is not available to them because they are different people with different experiences and different perceptions of the world. They need to see, touch, smell, hear, and taste the concept and its application before it can be used. It is the SKILL that is important.
Does the Holocaust mean anything if it is a bunch of numbers, train schedules and dates? No. It has meaning when it is contextualized and given weight by personal reference. Imagine reading a train schedule, getting personal profiles of the passengers on that train and then trying to wrap your head around what happened to them once it reached its destination. Imagine getting to like one of those passengers, like Anne Frank. Now those train schedules mean something. The numbers on board those trains begin to have faces, names, histories, families and they become closer to you. Numbers are important, but only in relation to what they represent. Is E=mc2 relevant to anyone's life in and of itself? No. Not until it is contextualized within the spectrum of perception of the physical world from the Newtonian Universe to String Theory. How does one ingest that kind of knowledge? Through observation, guidance and patience. It can be achieved through integration of the whole being into the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. This cannot be tested. It cannot be weighed or measured, but if you talk to a person who has this kind of knowledge and understanding you recognize it right away.
That is the kind of knowledge we should want for our children and for ourselves. Although many children can be successful at taking tests and some may even be successful at absorbing knowledge through this kind of teaching, I don't know if that is any true measure of how well a school is performing. I knew tons of bright kids who were not served by the public school system. I also know a few kids in private school and in home school situations that are not being served by their educations. Why? Because the process of acquiring skills demands the stimulation of the whole person and I am just not seeing that happening right now.
I had a discussion with Sullivan's teacher yesterday. I think she's brilliant and she gave me a little nugget that I hope to implement in my own classes. She told me that she doesn't get too hands on becuase she just needs to set up the structure and let them discover for themselves. Her job is to just redirect them when they go astray. Every kid in that classroom is thriving under her skillful direction because they are learning that learning is fun and they are learning to trust themselves to learn. I tend to get stressed out when my kids are wandering away from me and I tend to do what I do with an audience and try to win them back with my humor or my sweetness. What I need to learn is that their journey has nothing to do with me and if I set up the circumstances, they'll naturally explore within without too much prodding from me. This is scary because I want to be in control and reach my objectives.
Maybe instead of reaching for my, rather arbitrary, objectives I should be helping them to shape their own.
I'm interested in funding schools, I'm invested in providing socialization and information and encouraging curiosity about the world around us. However, it has been clear to me for many years that money is not really what schools need. Yes, computers and technology are important. Libraries and bathrooms are important. Helping each student reach a certain level of proficiency is also important, but cataloguing kids and herding them into this group or that group just isn't good enough.
PING!
Here's why: Learning is a much longer and more mysterious process than public education, as it stands now, has the ability to accomodate. It is not the rote spitting back of dates, equations and principles of grammar that indicate expansion of the mind. It hardly even qualifies as knowledge. If you can't apply it to anything, what does it really mean?
I'm learning, through my own classes, that you really can't say that at the end of ten weeks these kids will know such and such. It doesn't work that way. You have to teach them where they are at and guide them on their own journey for it to be meaningful and have resonance in their lives. You can't take them on YOUR journey. You can't take them on the TEST'S journey. That path is not available to them because they are different people with different experiences and different perceptions of the world. They need to see, touch, smell, hear, and taste the concept and its application before it can be used. It is the SKILL that is important.
Does the Holocaust mean anything if it is a bunch of numbers, train schedules and dates? No. It has meaning when it is contextualized and given weight by personal reference. Imagine reading a train schedule, getting personal profiles of the passengers on that train and then trying to wrap your head around what happened to them once it reached its destination. Imagine getting to like one of those passengers, like Anne Frank. Now those train schedules mean something. The numbers on board those trains begin to have faces, names, histories, families and they become closer to you. Numbers are important, but only in relation to what they represent. Is E=mc2 relevant to anyone's life in and of itself? No. Not until it is contextualized within the spectrum of perception of the physical world from the Newtonian Universe to String Theory. How does one ingest that kind of knowledge? Through observation, guidance and patience. It can be achieved through integration of the whole being into the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. This cannot be tested. It cannot be weighed or measured, but if you talk to a person who has this kind of knowledge and understanding you recognize it right away.
That is the kind of knowledge we should want for our children and for ourselves. Although many children can be successful at taking tests and some may even be successful at absorbing knowledge through this kind of teaching, I don't know if that is any true measure of how well a school is performing. I knew tons of bright kids who were not served by the public school system. I also know a few kids in private school and in home school situations that are not being served by their educations. Why? Because the process of acquiring skills demands the stimulation of the whole person and I am just not seeing that happening right now.
I had a discussion with Sullivan's teacher yesterday. I think she's brilliant and she gave me a little nugget that I hope to implement in my own classes. She told me that she doesn't get too hands on becuase she just needs to set up the structure and let them discover for themselves. Her job is to just redirect them when they go astray. Every kid in that classroom is thriving under her skillful direction because they are learning that learning is fun and they are learning to trust themselves to learn. I tend to get stressed out when my kids are wandering away from me and I tend to do what I do with an audience and try to win them back with my humor or my sweetness. What I need to learn is that their journey has nothing to do with me and if I set up the circumstances, they'll naturally explore within without too much prodding from me. This is scary because I want to be in control and reach my objectives.
Maybe instead of reaching for my, rather arbitrary, objectives I should be helping them to shape their own.
posted by Bree O'Connor at 9:33 AM
3 Comments:
I think you've hit it on the head. With the likelihood of being a father sometime in the next year or so, I have thought deeply about how I want to raise my children. Interestingly enough, I've come to the same conclusion as you and the teacher -- redirect when necessary, otherwise, let them explore as much as possible without forcing any thinking down their throat.
I'm the kind of person who likes to ask questions, so I'll probably do more than my fair share of asking questions when my children explore -- even if it means asking a question in exchange of a question.
Thanks for putting my thoughts into words for me -- I just hadn't gotten around to it.
Then comes the challenge of balancing questions with kids who demand answers and concrete guidence. I can tell when my son gets seriously exasperated with me because he doesn't really want an in-depth answer, what he wants is reassurance that the world isn't going to fall off its axis. Kids ingest this stuff in stages and sometimes the struggle is identifying the stage any particular kid is at at any particular moment. My son skipped a major step when he figured out (in the middle of a play date) that he is going to die someday. I guess no one is particularly ready for that information but it made him afraid for weeks and for him the laws of physics brought no comfort. That is what I had to give him. My own religious questioning just brought him more anxiety and his understanding of the mysteries of physics is just not advanced enough to make what, for me, is a comforting leap. He needed heaven, and I just couldn't give it to him. There's not much harder to hear than a four year old screaming, "Mommy, I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die!"
I had to break out as many modes of religious thought as I could to help him imagine what vision of death was comfortable for him. I gave him options from stark nothingness to reincarnation to life everlasting and told him that it was okay not to know. It took a few weeks to scrape him off the ceiling but he's functioning well now and processing it through play.
Anyway, shaping another human mind is a scary thing, but you do the best you can and remember that it is all process and if you fuck up, you can always say "I'm sorry".
Thanks for joining the discussion.
Thanks for having me.
Don't suppose that it worked to bring out the whole "everything dies, that's what make life more menaingful" helped at all.
No. 'Spose it didn't. I don't know how I'll approach that particular conundrum, as I've never really been all that fearful of death. That'll be one for the wife, I expect.
On the other hand, sex, religion, drugs, and the things that go bump in the night.... That I can handle.
As far as fucking up -- meh.
I think that as soon as they are old enough one should always say something along the lines of: "You are an experiment. I have no meaningful training. I will screw up. Deal with it. Daddy did. Now go play with you stone buddha."
Again, thanks for the insight. I should read more blogs than the few I do -- I frequently learn something.
Post a Comment
<< Home