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Picture in your mind a boy, a little boy, say seven or eight years old. He can be any color, any race, from any culture. Ask yourself the question, what does this boy need? Let’s assume we have already listed the basic physical needs, though we could argue that many kids—and indeed many adults around the world—may lack at least some of these things.
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There are endless things that this little boy could need: a cello, a best friend, a hug, a hula hoop. But there is one thing that this little boy does not need, that little boys everywhere do not need . . . and that is to sit still for most of six hours every day in a quiet classroom, forced to do work that he cannot possibly do.
Today, this is our paradigm of a good education:
- Sitting still
- Using a quiet voice
- Obeying rules
- Excelling at fine motor skills (like writing)
- Absorbing and delivering facts
- Achieving high scores on standardized tests
- Getting high grades
Picture in your mind our original little boy. What does he need? I realize that most of us will come up with a different set of priorities, so let me suggest that we go back to Piaget, that early psychologist whose theory of childhood development is still fundamental to the way we see learning stages today. Well, at least, it should be fundamental. Basic to this universally-accepted theory was the idea “…that young children think in strikingly different ways compared to adults” (www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html). His research established the ways that human brains develop, how we grow mentally. He noted that all humans go through these developmental stages:
Please don’t let your eyes glaze over when you look at this chart. Please don’t say to yourself, “Oh, I already know that. Moving on.”
Instead, let’s think about the second stage. This would correspond to the time when most kids go to kindergarten and first grade. At this age, most kids can understand the world in basic ways, but “their thinking is based on intuition and still not completely logical. They cannot yet grasp more complex concepts such as cause and effect, time, and comparison” (Source). In simple terms, they cannot work out basic ideas of why things happen in the world, what causes what, how things happen in relation to other things, how things are basically alike and different.
Now think of today’s first-grade curriculum. It is laden with the very concepts that first-graders cannot grasp. Here’s an example I grabbed from a typical school website:
(Source)
Let’s say our little boy is a first-grader (of course, this applies to girls too, but here our conversation is about boys). Let’s say his day his filled with these experiences. If you want a sobering experience, print out that chart and, based on Piaget, mark the activities that a first grader, that our little boy, cannot do. It’s not because he’s dumb. It’s not because he has ADHD. It’s because his mind and body are not capable of it yet.
What does our little boy feel as he sits in his classroom, consistently unable to really understand a steady deluge of work he cannot understand because his brain hasn’t yet grown into it? Put yourself into his little mind and body for a moment. Feel how terrible this feels. Or better yet, think back to your own small self in your first-grade classroom, and you may remember.
Now let’s consider the next age group, seven to 11, which usually means elementary school through the first year of junior high (or middle school, depending on where you live). Kids this age can associate ideas with things, but what they cannot do is abstract thinking. Just to be sure we’re on the same page (an abstract notion itself, a metaphor), let’s review what abstraction is:
“Abstract thinking: The final, most complex stage in the development of cognitive thinking, in which thought is characterized by adaptability, flexibility, and use of concepts and generalizations. Problem-solving is accomplished by drawing logical conclusions from a set of observations, for example, making hypotheses and testing them. This type of thinking is developed by 12 to 15 years of age, usually after some degree of education” (abstract thinking. (n.d.) Mosby’s Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. (2009). Retrieved March 5 2018 from Medical Dictionary).
Let’s break this down simply. Abstraction means being able to take concepts, combine them, figure out how they relate to one another, test them, see if one’s ideas hold together, use the new combinations of ideas, and so on.
Perhaps the most important part of this is the age at which abstract thinking is possible for human beings: ages 12 (at the earliest) to 15.
Now let’s look at a typical bit of curriculum that (again) I randomly pulled off the web. I chose third grade, when a child is typically about ten years old, and I chose math because I feel this is the most egregious example of how we burden our kids with abstract work that they cannot do.
(Source)
What happens to our little boy, sitting in this classroom all day long, laden with such work that he cannot possibly do (because his brain and body are not ready for it)? I won’t even ask what happens when he takes home a mediocre or terrible report card. I only want us to think about our little boy, what he feels in his mind and body.
This is horrible, yes? Now add to it another idea, one so basic that we should never forget it, yet we always seem to do it—and that is the nature of a growing human boy-body.
This little body is not built to sit still. It is not built to be quiet. This body is meant to move! It is meant to build coordination and muscle. It is meant to defuse stress and anxiety by strong movement. Of course, this great need for movement applies to all of us, not just little boys. However, I submit that little boys are the best examples of it.
Last week, my husband and I went for a walk in our local bird preserve, and behind us, we heard a couple talking. The woman was just beginning her student teaching, and she and her partner were discussing Spark¸ a book that I wish every educator everywhere would read. This book tells the story of adding a rigorous exercise program to the school day of kids in failing secondary schools. Without changing instruction or curriculum, but simply by adding robust exercise, the schools achieved startling increases in test scores and grades. This beginning teacher was trying to figure out ways to use physical activity in her everyday classroom instruction without getting in trouble with school administrators. How could she get away with it, without getting in trouble, this effort to get her students moving?
My husband and I had to join in that conversation, not only about P.E. but also its essential siblings, art and music. We all lamented the loss of these programs in schools everywhere, not only because of budget issues but also because of the ignorant efforts of legislators (who provide the budgets) to assess learning—which they think is only possible by ever-increasing standardized testing.
When I was raising my own children (a large brood, mostly boys), I asked myself the question, “What is childhood for?” It seemed to me that even though the moments of baby care and child care seemed endlessly long, the period for childhood was relatively short. I studied Piaget; I read Gatto, Steiner, Moore. I absorbed John Holt wholesale. I decided to homeschool my kids because it seemed to me that school contradicted the very essence of being a child.
I realize that we need a discussion about the pros and cons of homeschooling; that will have to wait for another day. But you will be interested in how I designed my homeschool—and, since my kids are now grown up—how they turned out.
With Piaget in one hand and Cuisenaire rods in another, I provided learning activities more or less custom-designed for each kid at each age, realizing that Piaget is a wonderful standard but that kids are infinitely variable. For example, one of my boys taught himself to read at age four while another wasn’t ready till he was about nine. I decided that we only needed about two hours of academic work each day, if that work was age-appropriate and well-designed.
This was also based on my observations, as a teacher, about learning patterns. School learning theory today seems to posit that learning is like filling a bucket full of water. You keep adding things and kids become educated. During the summer vacation, they develop holes in the bucket and lose their learning, so we need to keep filling the bucket all the time, every day, relentlessly. However, as a teacher and as a learner, I observed that people learn in peaks and pauses. We make fast progress and then we plateau. (What are the reasons for this? This too is probably a discussion best saved for another day.)
So, in our homeschool, we read, wrote, did math, learned science, studied social studies, and covered everybody’s academics in two hours a day. For the rest of the time, I provided endless books, outdoor equipment and limitless play, a workbench, art materials, and—though it is controversial—no TV or other media (except books on tape). I arranged playdates, team sports, and music lessons, too.
What happened? When the boys turned about 14 or 15, they spontaneously requested school attendance and off they went. They wanted a social life, though they had already gone far beyond the high-school curriculum. Some of them went to college, while others pursued entrepreneurship. All of these homeschooled kids are at the top of their games in the fields they’ve chosen. They sailed through college. As one, now a mechanical engineer working at Tesla, points out, “This work is just like art [which we did a great deal in our homeschool]. You see and feel what’s going on and you figure out the answer.” Do they regret being homeschooled? When I ask them, they say no. They are grateful they had the chance to grow up this way. They wouldn’t trade it.
I realize that comparatively few families can homeschool. And while there are certain schools, like Waldorf, where long walks, running, wrestling, building, music-making, art-making, dance, and sports fill the school day, they are often private schools, which means that most of us cannot afford them. The public charter Waldorf schools are pitifully few.
Thus we are stuck with an educational system that ignores the basic long-established research on childhood development. We ignore how children learn. We don’t ask the simple question, “What is childhood for?”
At least we can ask the question. I’m a retired teacher; I understand the enormity of changing a heavy-laden educational system so deeply established in our culture. I don’t have any answers, but I think that, by asking the questions, by reading the literature, we can begin to discuss and design solutions for ourselves and our children.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
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