A HEART FOR LEARNING
by David Parkerson
INTRODUCTION
THE ART OF
TEMPORARY MEMORIZATION
THE SCHOOL
OF ROTE MEMORY
THE SUCTION
PRINCIPLE
THE COMPULSORY-SHOPPING
LAW
FORCED SCHOOLING
CAME FROM PRUSSIA
BACK TO THE
BEGINNING
CREATING
A CONNECTED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
DO NOT LET
SMART KIDS GET BORED
THE FREEDOM
TO EXPLORE
CONCLUSION
Let me say up front, the following is in no way intended
as a criticism of teachers. I have taught high school math courses for a couple
of years and know the challenges. There are thousands of wonderful teachers working
incredibly hard because they love kids and want to make a difference. What follows
are merely some honest reflections on the traditional ways of doing things. It is
no secret that America's public education system is not doing well. Statistically,
we are last place among the seventeen industrialized countries, many of which have
fewer years of school than we do. In Switzerland only 23 percent of the student
population goes to high school though it has the highest per capita income in the
world. The curriculum in America has been dumbed down so far in the last four decades
that we have forgotten where we started. Calculus, for example, used to be a standard
high school course, but no more. Geometry and Trigonometry were taught to children
as young as eleven.
The system has problems that more money, teachers, taxes and buildings will not
fix. The root problem is much deeper; it is the philosophy of education. In other
words, we must rethink some things. Maybe it's not normal for kids to hate "school"
and for "school" to be so unsuccessful.
Before beginning I have to thank Greg Stablein, Mark Wade, and many other home educators
whom have gone before me. Many of the ideas below are ones I've heard them share
with others. Also, thank you to my wife, April, and Mark Wade for editing this for
me, several times.
THE ART OF TEMPORARY MEMORIZATION
The main thing I learned in school was what I call the "art of temporary memorization."
Whether it was a list of presidents, chemicals, or vocabulary words, there was always
something to memorize, to cram in long enough to pass Friday's test. To add to this
pressure, we all knew that the culmination of all those quizzes, tests, and final
exams would be a grade point average that very well could determine the courses
of our lives. "So this is it," I thought in seventh grade. "I know the plan, the
goal, and the method of getting there. Just one problem. I hate school! I hate memorizing
because I have to labor so long at it. I'm tired of memory schemes. I would rather
get out and explore the woods around my house, play for hours with the CD-ROM encyclopedia,
find things, build things, fix things, and read real books! Wouldn't that be learning?But
I can't. I have too much to memorize before Friday's test!"
What else could I do? I did the memorizing, but I never liked it. There are some
people who love a good list to memorize. My wife's brain works more that way than
mine. She can hear a song from Veggie Tales three times and she's got it. I would
have to listen to it over and over, type up the words, outline it, highlight the
key phrases, and develop some acronym before it stuck to anything in my head.
School was frustrating for me. To add insult to synaptic injury, I was further discouraged
when I began to realize (somewhere around ninth grade) all that once-memorized information
was gone. I couldn't remember much of anything from those countless exams. Wouldn't
it be great if I could impress my friends with a list of presidents, or chemicals,
or vocabulary at any given moment? But I couldn't. I knew I learned it because I
had passed! But, where did it go? Down the hole of Rote Memory.
THE SCHOOL OF ROTE MEMORY
"rote (rot) noun 1. A memorizing process using routine or repetition, often without
full attention or comprehension: learn by rote. 2. Mechanical routine."
I still remember when I first learned about rote memory, our shortest-term capacity
for storing bits of info. It was in Mrs. Harwell's 9th grade biology class. "There
are three types of memory," she would tell us. "Long term is forever. Short term
is for months or years. But rote memory is only for days. ' In one ear and out the
other.' That's rote memory." This was just the ammo I needed! I could not wait to
get home that day with proof, proof that all this data I was being forced to swallow
was useless because I would soon forget most of it. Surely my parents would recognize
the futility of it all and dismiss school from my life.
On the bus, I thought of all those tests that I had taken, and all that remained
to take; tests on capitals and significant dates, elements and parts of speech.
I thought of how it was all routine and repetition, often without full attention
or comprehension in order to accomplish one goal, pass the test so I could keep
everyone happy. "Who cares if I know it forever or even for a few years? It's the
test on Friday that counts for or against me." I pled my case to the highest court
in the house, but there was no reduction in my sentence. I had to go back to the
old grindstone the very next day, back to memorizing the definitions of those words
in bold, because that was what "learning" was all about.
That was before my parents became home educators. Soon my brother would be rescued
from a downward spiral. Born with a learning disability (so the label read) the
one-size-fits-all school of rote memory did not work. He was nearly suicidal...at
twelve! As my parents ventured into the world of home education, I watched Tyler
take part in a whole new (or old?) way to learn: The Suction Principle.
THE SUCTION PRINCIPLE
There is a neat experiment that my good friend, Greg Stablein, uses in his workshops.
He takes a hard boiled egg (peeled), and an old glass milk bottle (with the opening
slightly smaller than the egg). After taking a young volunteer or two, he asks them
to try to get the egg into the glass jar without damaging the egg. They never can.
The egg squeezes in a little and pops back out. Greg then pulls out a book of matches,
lights them, and drops the tiny flames into the milk bottle. He places the egg on
the opening of the bottle, and, (because the flames quickly create a vacuum by using
up the oxygen in the jar) THMMMPP! In it goes. "This is the suction principle,"
he proclaims, "and it works with education. If you try to force it in it will often
pop back out. But if you can create suction...ahhh! Your work is done."
Interest and appetite are essential to true education. Get a kid excited about something
and you'll have to tell them to go to bed and finish reading about it tomorrow.
The key is to use books, resources, and links you will not have to force in, but
that your kids can't get enough of. Use really good books and you may have to make
your kids share. (Have your kids ever fought over who had the text book last?) It
is not too difficult to nurture the desire to learn when good books are used. When
our children are young they have the "suction principle" built right in. It is as
if God hardwired their little brains in such a way that, as soon as they can utter
intelligible words, they start asking questions. "Why's that so tall? Why's that
fluffy? Where does that come from?" And God's favorite, "Who is God?" Part of being
a parent is answering all these questions. Every parent is a home schooler in this
sense. Most children love to learn with their parents in the first few years. But
in the traditional system, somewhere down the corridor of tests, bells, and hours
of homework, kids who started out curious start complaining. What appealed at five
appalls at fifteen. The hunger for understanding is replaced by a hundred ways to
skip school. Why, though? Why do most kids hate going to school? Have you met many
high school students who just cannot wait to get to class and get their next homework
assignment? Could the reason for this situation be that something which is supposed
to be natural, spontaneous and fun has been forced, and it never needed to be forced?
Think about the Gospel, the Good News of salvation by grace through faith (Ephesians
2:8). God never forces it on us; it is free for our choosing. Accept Jesus as Lord
and you will be saved. "For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified,
and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved." (Romans 10:9). Good news
does not need forcing, just telling. This is the suction principle in the message
of Christ. Freedom and love compel good works. Never the other way around. If accepting
the good news were compulsory it would suck the life out of it. God knew this. That
is why he gives us the choice but begs us with blood to choose Him. If you told
your kids, "I demand your love and affection!" they would not give it to you. And
if they did it wouldn't be real. Choice is essential to many things. Learning is
one of them. When it is forced something goes wrong. We value the things that we
get to choose.
Picture this: What if there was a compulsory shopping law passed?
THE COMPULSORY SHOPPING LAW
What if there was a compulsory shopping law that demanded that everyone must shop
at Wal-Mart? If you don't show up at Wal-Mart for mandatory shopping five consecutive
days you will be charged with truancy. If you miss thirty days you will be hauled
into jail. Due to zoning you must go to the same Wal-Mart every single day. Attendance
is taken each morning at the door. You are required to be in only one department
for 50 minutes, memorizing all the products and prices on each shelf, then a bell
rings and you switch to the next department (even if you find something useful).
Also, you have to shop with only those in your age group, regardless of whether
you have more or less purchasing expertise than the others. There might be pop shopping
quizzes at any time, so stay alert. Advanced placement is given to the exceptional
patrons. While the slower customers would go to special sessions to overcome shopping
deficiencies (though for some reason these sessions would seldom help with the problem).
Finally, there is no talking, no bargaining, no bartering, and very few questions
allowed because there is only one department manager for every 35 to 40 shoppers.
What do you think would happen to the natural enjoyment of shopping? The first thing
to go is the curiosity, the excitement, and the desire to be there. Customers would
very soon start moping around, dragging through the day, trying to complete the
remaining one-hundred and eighty; praying for snow or manager inservice or holidays
to come; thinking, "I can't wait until summer so I won't have to shop for three
months. And I really can't wait util my twelve years is up so I'll never have to
shop again!" Second, the quality of the product would inevitably decrease. Wal-Mart
no longer has to rely on excellent products, marketing, or customer service to lure
you in. You have to shop there. It is the law. And it is enforced by the police.
It is not hard to imagine that something fun and interesting would turn into a bore
and a chore. People would quickly start thinking of ways to skip. They would complain
to their friends, sneak out the back, fake sick to their parents, and view Wal-Mart's
employees as their arch enemies. (Especially because they assign two to three hours
of shopping homework each evening.) Finally, in a desperate attempt to rescue the
failing mandatory model, millions upon millions of dollars in tax money would be
allocated to the already huge monopoly, with very little consideration of alternative
shopping franchises. And zero consideration would be given to going back to the
very successful free-shopping model that existed before the compulsory-shopping
laws were ever passed.
No analogy is perfect, of course. I hope you can agree, however, that education
is meant to be free. Most things are best when we are excited about learning them
and are free to choose. Otherwise, we end up saying, "I can't wait until summer
so I won't have to learn for three months. And I really can't wait util my twelve
years is up so I'll never have to learn again!" So how and why did we end up with
a forced school system? There is a great deal on the subject if you are interested.
It is important to mention that "school" came from Prussia.
FORCED SCHOOLING CAME FROM PRUSSIA
The modern classroom school model was introduced to Americans full-force in the
mid-eighteen hundreds by J. D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, and Andrew
Carnegie. They spent their own money to bring it to the new land because it was
successful in training the masses of a region called Prussia. Prussia "was instrumental
in the unification of Germany, and in 1871 its king was declared Emperor William
I of Germany. The state became a republic in 1918 and was formally abolished after
World War II" (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd ed.).
America's industrial giants "borrowed the structure, style, and intention of those
Germans for our own first compulsion schools" (John Tylor Gatto, The Underground
History of American Education, pp. 133-134). Thus, when they added a grade before
first grade they called it "Kindergarten," a German word meaning "Garden of Children."
Their goals were order, submission, and group over individual. "Traditional American
school purposes--piety, good manners, basic intellectual tools, self-reliance, etc.--was
scrapped to make way for something different. Our historical destination of personal
independence gave way slowly to Prussian-purpose schooling, not because the American
way lost any competition of ideas, but because for the new commercial and manufacturing
hierarchs, such a course made better economic sense" (Gatto, Underground History,
p. 134).
In a few decades we went from being an agricultural society where parents were primarily
responsible for educating their children to an urbanized society where parents delegated
that responsibility to the government; ironically, one of the very things we fought
the Revolutionary War to break free from. Not to mention that the heralds of the
public school system (Columbia's teacher-trainer, John Dewey, for example) were
and are, for the most part, atheist and humanists. Many of them believed the implementation
of the German school in America would usher in the next stage of human evolution,
i.e. utopia without God. It has taken a hundred years, perhaps because of America's
foundations, i.e. "In God We Trust," but God was finally banned from the public
school system. The Prussian system's goals which America adopted were never academic
and intellectual excellence. Its goals were to create the working class of obedient,
non-pioneers they needed to grow a competitive industrialized nation, i.e. "In Man
We Trust." And it has succeeded. Industrially we are very strong. But academically
and spiritually we are very, very weak.
What should we do then? Do we spend more money, time, and energy on the educational
establishment of forced schooling? It is already ten times bigger than any business
in America (yes, much bigger than Wal-Mart). I suggest we get back to the beginning.
BACK TO THE BEGINNING
I suggest we get back to the days when it was commonplace for kids to learn their
lessons in the classroom of real life; back to the days when boys like George Washington
and Benjamin Franklin became leaders not because they were "schooled" to think like
everyone else but because they were educated in meaningful ways and relevant contexts.
They were thinkers, visionaries and wise leaders. They were refined, cultured, and
faithful to God in a time when the curriculum had not been dumbed down. George Washington
learned Geometry and Trigonometry at age eleven (which was common until the mid-1900s).
He had only two years of formal schooling. He became an apprentice in Virginia and
at nineteen was appointed chief land surveyor, making a staggering $100,000 a year
in modern purchasing power. He was a self-learner with a free mind. Later he led
a volunteer army of rag-tag farmers to defeat the British and secure our freedoms.
When grateful people offered to make him King of America, he adamantly refused.
He knew the nation would thrive on a decrease, not increase, in government compulsions.
Washington loved to learn. Do you think he would have hated school? It is no wonder
the majority of today's kids hate school--"school," a word first applied to fish,
whose eyes and fins move in dutiful sequence. Perhaps it is normal to hate "school."
It is certainly not the most natural way to learn. The problem is, kids not only
learn to hate school but they learn to hate learning. The once-curious child too
often becomes the discouraged or bored teenager. Is it the only way? Once, not too
many decades ago, there was no such thing as compulsory attendance laws. When they
were first implemented there was great resistance. Perhaps we need to get back to
the beginning. The first step is to create a learning environment.
CREATING A CONNECTED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
The first step is to create an environment in which our children maintain that childhood
appetite for learning all the way to adulthood. Help nurture their appetite for
understanding and their soul-searching for God. Be their guide and friend in discovering
the world around them. Create an environment where curiosity and the desire for
further understanding is part of everyday family life. For example, put a dictionary
in every room and make it a policy to look things up. Announce, "Family rule #7:
We do not read past words we do not know." Maybe your kids will repeat with salutes,
"We do not read past words we do not know." Study the roots of words not just the
definitions. Where did the word come from? What other words sound the same? Put
up a big marker board and make it a game. "Who can think of words with J-E-C-T in
them?" Object, reject, deject, eject, and adjective all have "j-e-c-t" in common.
It's a Latin root which means "to throw." Adjective literally means "to throw something
in" the same way that eject means "to throw something out." If I had been taught
that way in school--taught the connections of words--I would have remembered the
eight parts of speech!
Let your household be a place of discovery: microscope in the corner, telescope
on the porch, books everywhere. Take on the attitude of learning and kids will naturally
follow. You should say, "I don't know. Let's look it up" at least a million times
before your kids graduate. Do not worry that you "might miss something" or "might
not cover it all." God will provide. Remember, kids are not empty containers into
which you simply pour information. Every child is a creative genius just waiting
to be inspired. It's not difficult to surpass the dumbed-down curriculum of the
educational establishment. The average home-educated student is now four grade levels
ahead of public-school students by eighth grade, scoring consistently near the eightieth
percentile on standardized achievement tests, thirty percent higher than the traditional
school system's fifty percent (Bob Jones Univeristy, Homeschooling Works , p. 3-4).
The learning environment, where connectedness fosters retention and appetite, is
perhaps the most important contributor to this success.
Second, don't let smart kids get bored.
DO NOT LET SMART KIDS GET BORED
Another side of the compulsory-school problem is boredom. I asked an eleven-year-old
recently if she liked school. She said, "No. I used to but not anymore." She couldn't
tell me why at first, but as she thought about it she decided it was because she
was bored. "Bored?" I repeated. (She is an extremely bright girl.) "Yeah," she continued,
"the teachers just lecture most of the time."
Large classrooms lack flexibility. And a lack of flexibility means bored students.
When I was a teacher, in every class I had students who asked to go faster and students
who asked to go slower. But my hands were tied, I had twenty-eight to thirty students.
Every day I wished that I could mentor and tutor just two or three kids for four
hours a day. So much more could be accomplished. What if the school system could
have that kind of teacher-student ratio, one tutor for every two or three kids?
More teachers and smaller classrooms are at the top of the school-reform list. Campaign
trails are being paved with this promise. But what if we all paid more tax, spent
an extra billion dollars, and got the teacher-student ratio down to, say, one teacher
for every fifteen students? Even in a classroom of fifteen, the slower kids would
be frustrated and the faster kids bored. Home educators would still have a better
ratio. Home schooling works because parents all over the country, now in the millions,
are first and foremost tutors. They are tutoring their own kids without teaching
degrees and their kids are winning national spelling and geography bees, getting
full scholarships and generally out performing kids in public schools.
Most bored students just need to be more challenged. They do not need more drugs.
Many "hyper" kids do not have attention deficits. They have questions. They are
curious. They need a guide. It grieves me to think how many brilliant minds we may
have lost to ritalin. Hyper kids whose minds aren't destroyed by school administered
drugs grow up to run businesses, invent things, build magnificent buildings, and
preach all over the world. And they'll do it on four to six hours of sleep a night!
God made the energetic extrovert the same as he made the quiet introvert (who also
does amazing things). But believe me, even though I am adamantly opposed to drugging
children there were times as a teacher that the idea crossed my mind. Why? Because
I had so many to deal with and so much I had to accomplish (or cover, that is).
The traditional system needs the medicinal help to maintain order and keep its teachers
from quitting. And still, the faster learners are bored and the slower learners
frustrated. Recognize the personality of your child and hang in there if you've
got a wonderful little hyper one (or more).
Third, give kids the freedom to explore.
THE FREEDOM TO EXPLORE
The freedom to explore is essential to inspired learning. Of course there are certain
things you will want to be sure your kids learn. But let them follow some of their
own interests and the trail of education will take you to great heights. Of course
there are educational plans to be made and the parent must be in charge, but do
not hesitate to take advantage of the teachable moments God provides each day, moments
you had not planned for. You might get off the subject and away from your plan but
that is exactly what you want! You want to allow them to chase rabbits. Let them
chase 'em till they catch 'em!
If you take a trip to an historical site and end up studying Civil War history for
three weeks because your kids got excited about it, let it happen. That is the best
sort of learning. Do not be trapped by curriculum or the thought of keeping up with
the system. Kids will learn. I have heard the question hundreds of times, "But what
does my fifth-grader need to know?" To start with, he or she needs to know that
learning is fun. It's not having your head buried in a text-book laboriously memorizing
for a test. It's exploring! Fifth-graders need to know whatever they are ready to
learn. Afterall, who decided that, out of the millions of things a ten-year-old
could possibly read, there was a certain set of facts that needed to go into every
standardized curriculum? Go to the library. How many books are available for your
child's age? Walk out with an arm-load every month and you won't go too far wrong.
But be careful to surround yourself with good books. I've never seen a kid climb
under the covers with a flashlight and her favorite school textbook. Textbooks are
written under contract by achievement test companies and committees. They are designed
for fifty minute lessons and homework assignments, a sure formula for boredom. Real
books are written by authors. Someone loved the topic so much they wrote a book
about it. That's the sort of book you'll have to take away from your kid so he'll
turn out the light and go to sleep. The real educational magic is not the facts
in your child's brain, it's the appetite in your child's heart. Give your kids the
freedom to explore.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I hope you can agree education is meant to be free and not forced.
God built in a natural burning desire to learn that the compulsory school model
seems to dampen and in many cases squelch. Likewise, parents have a built in desire
and ability to teach their own children. It's instinctive. Parents can teach their
children without government control the same way in which they can feed their children
without government control. You are trusted to give your child a healthy diet for
growth and development. No one dictates your menu or steps in to feed them for you.
Of course there are those who do not supply their children with healthy foods. However,
that is no reason to take the responsibility away from all parents. There are no
compulsory meal laws. If there were, it may gaurentee that every child is fed but
they would all be fed the same thing, in mass quantity.
God created a natural desire to learn which resides in every human being. This desire
can either increase or decrease over time. Children need guides in finding out how
things work, where things come from, and how to find their place in the Kingdom
of God. They need tutors to help them discover their strengths and weaknesses. As
guides and tutors your students can master a great many things. In home education
there is never a reason to give an "F" for anything because you have the luxury
of working with them until they succeed. Once they do, there is no better motivator
to succeed than success.
A parent once told me that her 16 year-old son came down for breakfast one morning
and asked, "Mom, are we doing school right?" She didn't know where the question
came from. He'd always been home educated. She thought a minute about her answer
and decided to ask him a question instead. "Well tell me. What did you do last night?"
He replied, "Oh, I finished that novel I've been reading, worked on my poems, played
the piano some, added a couple things to my web page, and fell asleep reading."
She just smiled and quietly said, "Yes, son. We are deffinitely doing school right."
May the Lord bless you and your family. In Christ, David.
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