Brenton
Kids Want To Learn
January 21st 2008 13:23
When you play your Nintendo DS and you’re working on an awesome game, and you get past level one, the game rewards you with a second level that is harder than the first. Your reward for completing a challenge is a harder challenge.
Think about small children. You see them poking, prodding, moving things around, experimenting. This is playing. It is also learning. To a point, the two things are, and should be, essentially linked.
A lot of children are initially exited to begin school. By the time you get up a few years though, this has changed. Kids are no longer enjoying learning in a school context, and even basic things like libraries and educational websites are beginning to be regarded as bad things.
Mark Twain is often quoted as saying ‘Never let your Education interfere with your learning.’ It’s great that we can keep this sentiment in mind, but it’d be even nicer to put it into practice. Essentially because this is the great paradox of learning.
We send students to school to learn. They want to learn. However, the institutionalisation of learning – schooling – is not always wanted. Often it is resented.
Why is this? To understand this we first have to accept that learning and schooling are ultimately separate concepts.
LEARNING – Extending personal ability.
- Gaining information and ability.
- Adoption of knowledge in theoretical and practical contexts.
- Developing an understanding of everyday things and concepts.
SCHOOLING – Systematic processes of social control
- Development of skill directed towards enabling students to gain employment through set processes.
- Process of social control.
- Disciplinarian structure with an emphasis on interpersonal competition.
The first and arguably most important thing we can take from this is that learning and schooling are two separate concepts. To further extend this idea, we may also suggest that a student good at school is not by that token definitely a good learner, or that a student who is a good learner will definitely be a good student.
When we think back to the baby in the dirt, playing, LEARNING, it becomes a worry that through 12 years of schooling we manage to destroy so many students love of learning.
I do not think our school or education system is essentially broken or any such. What I do believe is that there are different ways to do things – and our duty as parents, teachers, facilitators of lifelong learning and life long learners ourselves, is to pursue these different methods of teaching and caring to ensure we never, ever, let the joy of learning whither up and die.
Image by Jurvetson, Licensed Under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Think about small children. You see them poking, prodding, moving things around, experimenting. This is playing. It is also learning. To a point, the two things are, and should be, essentially linked.
A lot of children are initially exited to begin school. By the time you get up a few years though, this has changed. Kids are no longer enjoying learning in a school context, and even basic things like libraries and educational websites are beginning to be regarded as bad things.
Mark Twain is often quoted as saying ‘Never let your Education interfere with your learning.’ It’s great that we can keep this sentiment in mind, but it’d be even nicer to put it into practice. Essentially because this is the great paradox of learning.
We send students to school to learn. They want to learn. However, the institutionalisation of learning – schooling – is not always wanted. Often it is resented.
Why is this? To understand this we first have to accept that learning and schooling are ultimately separate concepts.
LEARNING – Extending personal ability.
- Gaining information and ability.
- Adoption of knowledge in theoretical and practical contexts.
- Developing an understanding of everyday things and concepts.
SCHOOLING – Systematic processes of social control
- Development of skill directed towards enabling students to gain employment through set processes.
- Process of social control.
- Disciplinarian structure with an emphasis on interpersonal competition.
Is this kind of thing acceptable in learning? In schooing? Organisation? Chaos? How should it all be done?
The first and arguably most important thing we can take from this is that learning and schooling are two separate concepts. To further extend this idea, we may also suggest that a student good at school is not by that token definitely a good learner, or that a student who is a good learner will definitely be a good student.
When we think back to the baby in the dirt, playing, LEARNING, it becomes a worry that through 12 years of schooling we manage to destroy so many students love of learning.
I do not think our school or education system is essentially broken or any such. What I do believe is that there are different ways to do things – and our duty as parents, teachers, facilitators of lifelong learning and life long learners ourselves, is to pursue these different methods of teaching and caring to ensure we never, ever, let the joy of learning whither up and die.
Image by Jurvetson, Licensed Under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
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