Why school isn't working
School takes children away from the real world and places them behind a desk . It breaks the unfathomable magic of life down into things called subjects. Math, Science, English, history, geography and so on, It labels ,it grades, and it dismisses curiosity.
School operates under the assumption that each subject is a puzzle piece. Each year the teachers hand out various pieces to the puzzle, and the students collect them. If you put all the pieces together you have knowledge in its entirety, and you are then so called "educated"- your puzzle is complete and you have LEARNED that subject! But how can children really learn about life through puzzle pieces they have been given, instead of living these subjects for what they really are ? LIFE.
Yes school can teach a child a vast variety of knowledge, but is it even useful in todays ever changing world? NO. Will the child who spent hours and hours of their life's putting these jigsaw pieces together , even remember or need them in adulthood? UNLIKELY.
In most schools, memorization is mistaken for learning. Most of what is remembered is remembered only for a short time, spewed out for an exam and then quickly forgotten.
Most of the time spent throughout the week at school is focused on content , content with a capital C, with little connection to why it matters,what it will be used for in the child's future and the likelihood of that content ever even needing to be used in the new ever changing world.The school system is stuck in a past,teaching age old lessons and failing to accommodate change.
Instead of learning together, many of the children spend hours filling in worksheets or copying down class notes that they could google in 30 seconds.Too often those lessons they listen to are boring and will be irrelevant to their adult lives. The advance of new technologies and new science is the new way to teach this generation of children which the school system will never respect. Rather they will continue to bore children out of the love of learning, taking away their natural curiosity for things -in exchange for completed workbooks,good grade marks and unnecessary long hour lessons for things that will not be needed for their generations future.
on the other hand,we have Natural learning
Natural curiosity or better know as natural learning works so well at teaching children , instead of being taught these so called subjects through jigsaw pieces- natural learning teaches these subjects for what they really are LIFE- through living and embracing everyday LIFE. Natural learning allows a child to truly learn and remember this information as it is something they are interested in- they will learn what they need to at their own pace and when they require.They will continue to learn with the ever changing world as they are actually immersed in it- and not stuck behind a desk ,learning age old teachings.
Natural learning allows for exploration, it allows for real hands on opportunities and it allows for curiosity
Curiosity is the natural instinct that implies wanting to know more about something through research and interaction .Curiosity is the key to knowledge
An example of curiosity is the key to knowledge-
Lets say your child is curious about dinosaurs, because they have started playing with their toy or watched something about it recently ? - they begin to ask you questions , when were dinosaurs alive? how did they die? what did they eat? They begin to research in their own time ,using google/ youtube videos-where they begin to learn the names of dinosaurs , their characteristics- they start to learn about carnivorous and herbivores and reptiles- and this begins them learning about other animals that are reptiles and carnivores- reptiles are cold bloodied ,carnivores eat meat- what animals are cold blooded ,and so on so on... Curiosity leads to exploration - does all this happen at once? NO ,does this happen all the time? YES. Natural learning is about your child learning in the spare of the moment , when they see fit.Without being required to complete hours of worksheets about dinosaurs or reading notebooks on reptiles.They learn exactly what the want , when they want and how they want, they learn things they feel will benefit them for the now.
school loses hope in children
Young children who start school do not understand why they cant eat when they are hungry they are confused why they cant learn about the things that they are interested in. They can not make sense of why they have to sit still and be quite most of the day, Why the fun of singing and playing in preschool has suddenly ended in exchange for a pen and paper, and why getting good marks,high grades and stickers for good performance has became a top priority that they can not fail at.
All of this change leads to the disappearance of natural curiosity . It takes away the love of learning , by the time children hit high school they are mentally exhausted,they have lost a childhood of exploration , of fun and of discovery.
Since we can't know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.- John Holt
John holt was a famous American homeschool pioneer and has written a amazing book
How children fail, it explains how children investigate the world, He explains the problems of classroom learning, grading, testing, and into the role of the trust and authority in every learning situation in his book
