An Alternative Approach to Education--Imagine if...

First written in March 2015--

Yesterday was the 12th day off from school on PEI this school year due to inclement weather and/ or unsafe road conditions. There's been considerable media attention given to missed instructional time for students and teachers. There has also been media attention given to the Vision Initiative, a local, non-partisan group of Islanders looking towards new ways of living for Prince Edward Islander's, including a new way of educating Island children.

As a parent of three school aged children, and a mother who was involved in her children's formal education (as a parent volunteer from preschool days to sixth grade) and a current practitioner of homeschooling, I am given to the belief that the current education system is highly disrespectful of our children's innate curiosity and natural energies and enthusiasms.

In North America far too many children are suffering from inactivity, disconnection from the natural world and boredom. I am inclined to see a strong correlation between children being forced to sit indoors and learn in ways that are not designed to suit each student and the problems modern children face.

Every child has the ability to shine in something but our current model of education stifles and squeezes much of what is innate to childhood out of our kids by highly emphasizing academic achievement based on a time focused, linear model that simply doesn't match the myriad of ways in which children's minds develop. (Children in mainstream schooling must learn according to grade level expectations based on age and not on individual needs of each child...and the children's abilities to keep pace are accordingly graded). Ouch! We no longer measure a child's intelligence by the age they say their first word or take their first steps...we know that these things can successfully occur within a window of time, so why are we forcing this model on our school aged children?

I continue to be grateful for the many wonderful teachers our kids came in contact with as well as the caring and  sensitivity they showed to  the children they worked with, but I remain troubled by the tremendous pressures classroom teachers face due to increased class size and the high needs of many of their students.

Two years ago my family and I made the choice to live a lifestyle that allows one parent to be at home facilitating the education of our three kids. That said, it has taken me the better part of the past two years to sort out the learning styles best suited to each of our three children, and I am their parent! How on earth could a classroom teacher be expected to discern and cater to the individual styles of twenty to thirty young people along with teach and manage a busy classroom?

Any person who studies early childhood development recognizes that small children are little sponges well designed to learn through manipulation of and immersion in their environment. New studies in neural plasticity demonstrate that our brains are hard wired to continue to grow and learn throughout life. The most challenging thing I've faced as a homeschooling parent is knowing when to just step back and let my kids natural curiosity lead their learning. Yet every time I do, we've all been deeply rewarded by the results. Perhaps I've been the slow learner?

Yesterday was a great example. We decided that even though the mainstream kids were not in school that we would, as we do on many " mainstream days off", still get in some structured school time. Canadian curriculum reading comprehension and math workbooks were in order. This was both preceded and followed by several kid led activities: shoveling out the neighbour's condos (a paid gig for our two older children) helping with a major clean out of our house, gym time with my youngest at our local town center--  In addition to this, our youngest also took up hand stitching a little flower to celebrate spring (inspired by her grandmother) as well as spending some much needed time outdoors playing in the snow which inspired her to compose a moving ode to the sunset on a wintry night.   There was also piano playing by our oldest, as well as working on a piece of short fiction she plans to submit to our local literary awards. Our middle child practiced painting snow laden evergreens in his sketchbook and translated this to a large canvas. He also took part in online correspondence with a group of Island bird watchers and  went for a midday walk in the woods. I asked the kids to do essentially none of these things. They just did them because they wanted to. Well, I might have reminded about the shoveling and encouraged our youngest to play in the snow but that was basically it.

If I had asked them to do the fiction and poetry writing or to figure out how to mix paints to find the right green for beneath the snow on evergreen trees I would have been met with groans and disinterest (as I was with the workbooks). This is contrasted with anything that the kids do that is interest led. Their interest led learning absorbs them to such an extent that hours can pass and they can forget to eat and drink. They work with an intensity rarely matched by any school children in a classroom because they are provided with a learning environment which both encourages and allows this.

I do not fault  teachers for dreary faced kids. As a homeschool parent I've seen my share of my own children's dreary faces. And them, mine. Rather, I fault a system that fails to understand and respect the many, varied ways that children learn. Children require long periods of uninterrupted time to explore and discover what might interest them. This allows for the specific type of brain development that engages the innovative and creative elements of children's minds. Researchers have discovered a link between this kind of playful uninterrupted learning and the ability to innovate in adulthood (as we've witnessed through watching our kids engage in endless hours of creating a lego town fueled by an ongoing storyline and the later creation of comic book writing, art and music). This type of creative learning is not possible in any type of institutional environment. At the end of play time in early childhood centers the instruments of play must be cleaned up. And play is not encouraged much past kindergarten classes in mainstream school. Elements of this type of play still develop on the playground where kids, when left to their own devices string together ongoing dramatic story lines and engage in role playing because it is innate in kids to do this.  Any child who from a young age has been given the daytime and evening hours to pursue their own interests will seem precocious when compared to those children forced to follow the drill of mainstream school.

I seriously doubt that children would be faced with the dilemma of what to do with their lives if they have been allowed from an early age to explore and consider both the natural and constructed environments around them. Imagine the innovations, imagine the possibilities, imagine the learning that could happen. Imagine how we adults would learn from the children. Just imagine if!


Check out this article written by a classroom teacher after spending two days as a student. It was sent to me this morning and prompted me to revisit this post which was in my draft folder:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/24/teacher-spends-two-days-as-a-student-and-is-shocked-at-what-she-learned/


Jill MacCormack