Love Your Work

YESTERDAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Using Tongs
• Dusting
• Transferring
• Fabric Basket
• Mystery Bag
• Pouring
• Rough and Smooth Boards
• Graduated Blocks

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Bead Stringing
• Transferring
• Sweeping
• Mystery Bag

I listened to this great Radiolab podcast while I was out walking yesterday. The program, in which renowned author Malcolm Gladwell discusses the subject of success with Radiolab host Robert Krulwich, was both thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud funny. (I sometimes wonder how many St. Johnians have concluded that I am certifiable upon observing me guffawing while out walking. I bet they'd be laughing, too, if I could only share my earbuds with them. Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!, Car Talk, Fresh Air, Radiolab and This American Life all produce some seriously funny podcasts. I'll never go back to listening to boring old music while exercising again.) Gladwell argued that while talent is good and all, what really ensures success isn't natural ability but intrinsic motivation. In other words, a person has to love what they do--pretty much to the point of fanaticism--and want to keep doing it regardless of whether it yields any kind of measurable return. Gladwell used the examples of Wayne Gretzky (who, as a two-year-old, would burst into tears whenever a hockey game he'd been watching on TV ended), The Beatles (who, before they achieved any measure of success, worked a gig in a strip club in Hamburg, Germany, playing 8-hour sets, 7 days a week, for months at a time) and Bill Gates (who, as a 15-year-old, wrote computer programs in the wee small hours of the morning instead of, you know, sleeping). If he hadn't been so passionate about computer programming (I know it's hard to fathom such an odd passion, but stay with me here) Bill Gates would have turned out to be just some smart guy from Seattle. Probably, because he is very intelligent, he'd have been a fairly wealthy and accomplished smart guy from Seattle, but there are a lot of fairly wealthy and accomplished smart guys in Seattle (not to mention around the world). He's world-famous (and fabulously wealthy, of course) because something inside him just couldn't stop programming; something intrinsic to Bill told him that computer programming was better than sleep, better than food, better than anything else imaginable. And he listened to that inner voice; more to the point, his parents and teachers allowed him to listen to that inner voice.

After I published the previous post (in which I expressed my frustration over my son refusing to do any of the new sensorial activities I'd prepared), it occurred to me that some of you may be wondering why I don't assume more of a traditional "teacher" role during our homeschooling sessions; that is to say, why I don't structure each session according to a premeditated lesson plan. In most American classrooms--from pre-K to college-level--the educator decides what the students will be taught (notice I didn't say what the students will learn), and enforces a strict schedule of lectures and/or activities pertinent to the subject matter. If the student complies with the teacher's lesson plan (sits quietly while the teacher talks, completes the corresponding activities correctly), he/she gets a gold star or an "A"--basically he/she is rewarded. If the student doesn't comply, he/she is deemed ill-behaved or unintelligent or sent to the principal's office or what have you. If the student continually refuses to comply with the teacher's expectations, punishments or parent-teacher conferences or diagnoses of ADHD (or all of the above) ensue. This method of education is entirely focused on the teacher. The student learns that it is the teacher's interests (i.e., lesson plans) that are most important; that compliance ("good behavior") is valued above curiosity, independence, initiative. Any intrinsic motivation the student may have regarding learning is slowly but surely squelched at the hands of a teacher-centric education based upon punishment and reward.

Learning is supposed to be fun, right? But how can it be when the teacher controls everything from what the student learns to how the student behaves (where to sit, when to talk, when to pee)? In Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn (an author who studied and wrote about education long before he started writing about parenting) says, "Students tend not to think as deeply, or to be as interested, if they have little to say about what they're learning or about the circumstances in which they're learning it." Call me crazy, but I don't want to raise a well-behaved child who listens quietly while the teacher talks, who completes worksheets correctly and gets "A"s on all his quizzes. I want to raise a child who is curious about the world around him, who quests after knowledge, who is intrinsically motivated to learn new things. (They're not necessarily mutually exclusive; I wouldn't mind if he ends up being well-behaved and getting "A"s, too, of course.) When we do school each day, I want him to be focused on the activities available to him, and to feel free to approach them with curiosity and independence and initiative. I do NOT want him to be focused on whether or not he's doing what I want him to do, on trying to please me.

I brought up the Radiolab podcast because it seemed salient to the undeniably unconventional way I'm educating my son. Gladwell seemed to be saying that the secret to success is the ability to be intrinsically motivated--to want to do something just because you love it, regardless of any potential external reward (praise, money, et cetera). If I want my son to be successful in school--that is to say, to be successful at learning--I need to allow him to approach it without any external motivating factors. If I'd forced him to do the sensorial activities on Tuesday, he'd have been doing them to make me happy or out of some compulsion to comply with my wishes; in other words, he'd have been externally motivated to do them. The most I can do--the most I should do--as his educator is prepare the appropriate activities, make them available to him during our homeschooling sessions and give him help and/or guidance when he needs it. Like Galileo Galilei said, "You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself."

Matching Squares

(Fabric Basket)

Postscript: We did end up doing sensorial activities yesterday and today. The fabric basket activity is basically a matching game: using fabrics of various textures (ideally all the same color), you cut two squares of each fabric and then mix them up and put them into a basket. The child has to use his sense of touch to find the matching squares. The mystery bag activity is another tactile one: you collect a variety of small everyday objects, put them on a tray and show them to the child. Then you cover them up with a dish towel, ask the child to close his eyes and put one of the objects into a bag. The child reaches into the bag and uses his sense of touch to try to figure out which object it is. (You can do this one different ways; put all the objects in the bag at the same time and/or neglect to show the child the objects on the tray before you start the activity.)

Small Everyday Objects on a Tray

(Mystery Bag)

The Reveal

(Mystery Bag)

The Crown Royal Bag in Action

(Rough and Smooth Boards)