Tag: brain

How do I make sure there are no gaps in my child’s learning?

Posted on by Suki

Give up. There will be gaps.

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What, you want me to explain?

The world is too big to learn it all

This is a given. Maybe in the distant past some men of letters believed that they knew all of humanity’s learning. They were wrong. Even then, it was impossible to know and understand it all.

Now, it’s even harder because we know how much we don’t know. It’s easy to feel unlettered if your metric of being educated is “knowing everything.”

Kids today have enormous amounts of knowledge that you didn’t have. Adults watch in awe as a child navigates a new electronic device, finds what they’re looking for in their first web search, and explains the limitless, arcane knowledge they have about a fandom.

Yet adults are worried that their children will graduate from school with these ill-defined “gaps in learning.” Recently the newspapers have teemed with articles about how children who distance-schooled this past semester will be “behind.”

We have the world of knowledge in our pocket

The reality is that what we need to know has changed. We used to commit a certain amount of information to memory because it was simply too arduous to go find that information when we’d need it. That’s no longer true. Kids see no purpose in learning in a 19th century mode when they live in the 21st century world.

It’s true that memorization is a good skill to have, and exercising our memory is like exercising a muscle—it’s good for us. But it’s no longer true that there is one specific body of knowledge that must be memorized. If kids choose to memorize arcane fandom knowledge instead of a 19th century poem, it really doesn’t matter. In either case, when they need information that they didn’t commit to memory they can access it immediately.

“Important” is a cultural designation

Maybe you think that there is a body of information that is important for every person to master. That body of information used to be chosen by certain men in power throughout the ages.

But how would you go about deciding it now? One person’s important knowledge is another person’s irrelevant information.

I actually do think that there is a body of knowledge that every educated person should be familiar with, but frankly, I think that it’s an ever-changing body of knowledge, and it’s too large for any one person to master.

Create lifelong learners

If we take what I’ve written as true:

  • There’s too much information
  • We have immediate access to information
  • There is no set body of knowledge that we can agree on

…what do we do?

I like this quote: “A brain is a river, not a rock!”

Our job as educators has changed. We won’t succeed just by implanting a body of knowledge into our students’ brains. As soon as we do, there will certainly be changes to that body of knowledge and our students will be out of date again.

Our job as educators and parents is to nurture lifelong learners. How do we do that?

Click here to read some thoughts on how to raise a lifelong learner.

Related:

Curriculum is the vehicle; learning is the destination

Posted on by Suki

The #1 most common question I get from new homeschoolers is, “What curriculum should I use?” This is an understandable question: there’s a lot of focus on curriculum in schools, and an implication that good curriculum is the end-goal.

In homeschooling, however, it is clear that a well-educated child is the end-goal. And it occurred to me that if learning is the goal, then curriculum is a vehicle. Just like we can get to the store by driving, walking, biking, or perhaps taking public transit, there are many ways to get to learning.

Life is like walking toward learning

Right from the beginning, our children are learning. Babies show through eye movement that they are learning every second that they are awake. The world is their curriculum.

As children grow, play becomes their curriculum. We give them blocks and they learn about geometry, gravity, and cause and effect. They climb a tree and learn about the importance of secure footing, fear, and exhilaration. They play with friends and learn social-emotional skills, bartering skills, and the strength of community.

Learning vehicles can take us to new places

If we constrained our lives to only visiting places we could walk to, that would be like learning in the world directly surrounding us. It works well for hunter-gatherer societies, but not so great when you need to attain certain skills to succeed in our society and in a career.

The curriculum we choose is simply a different learning vehicle. Maybe it can take us places further in our community—that’s “car curriculum.” Maybe it can take us to faraway places very unlike our everyday life—that’s “airplane curriculum” Or maybe it can rocket us to a new plane of existence by giving us insights we never would have discovered on our own.

The destination never changes

But no matter what curriculum you use, the destination is the same. We want our kids to learn. So does it really matter which curriculum you use? It can, but I can assure you that countless homeschoolers have found that a free video they happened upon in the library sparked more learning than the beautifully packaged curriculum they purchased for hundreds of dollars.

Yes, I do appreciate well-written curriculum. I love it when teachers are able to package up their approach in a way that inspires others to try new techniques. I have great respect for the skill it takes to break down concepts and skills into a well-scaffolded structure.

But remember: curriculum is the vehicle. Sure, sometimes it’s nice to get a smooth ride in a limo. But it can be just as fun to go over bumps on a one-speed Schwinn.

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.

Dr. Seuss

Further thoughts:

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