How Do Kids Learn?

This article is SO GREAT! I was homeschooling and now I'm sending kids to school (for now) and considering it a loose basic skeleton for what they need to know since I can't homeschool this year..but it's absolutely a reminder to keep life rich OUTSIDE of school and never bank too much on what school is doing, even though I'm not anti-school at all. Some of the world's greatest minds did attend very stringent traditional schools and I think there is value in a scholastic institution to an extent. But these were all amazing points. Thanks for posting!

I mostly agree with this article.

However, I have two objections: One, I like phonics, and I think you can do everything the article mentions as well as teach phonics. You can make phonics fun and effortless, without making the child feel inept and like a failure.

The sounds of letters are at the core of how our written language works, so I don't understand avoiding them. I have often coached children to sound out words, and I do it in a way that makes them proud of their achievement when they figure out the word. Is that any different, really, than having a child figure out the answer to a math problem? It feels good to figure out a math problem, and it's fun, when taught properly. And I have never noticed a kid feel bad when they were able to sound out a word. I have also never had a kid not be able to sound out a word, when coached properly.

My second objection is that this article presumes a very active and present parent or community. Example: The author writes, "In many other societies adults expect children to observe their elders closely and follow their example voluntarily." However, I have worked with and taught many children who obviously have little interaction with their parents or other adults, who do not have access to just about anything educational in their homes -- books, computers, games, art, you name it -- and who are not taken many places or exposed to many academic or other experiences. And for them, our flawed educational system is at least able to fill in some of the gaps.

Can an educated, involved parent teach his or her child or provide an environment in which a child can thrive and learn more than at a traditional school? Absolutely. But I believe there are vast numbers of young people who would fall through the cracks and become completely ignorant, unemployable adults were it not for the availability of this free, flawed public school system of ours.

So, my question to the writer of this article would be, how do you propose to change the system, short of dismantling it, which imo would be disastrous? It is a very different world now than when public education came into being. We do not live the same way the Maoris did, so examples of the holistic and contextual learning of traditional indigenous cultures, as mentioned in the article, seem to me to be mostly irrelevant.

But as I said at the beginning, I agree in theory with most of the premise of this article.

Okay, so my answer was eaten-- in a nutshell, I skimmed the article and loved what I read- a real respect for each child as an individual person.

We know that for our family, the neighborhood school is the way to go. That said, we try hard to balance that sort of instructive learning with a lot of open-ended play. Kiddo has an affinity for legos, found object constructions, art and creative play, so we offer a lot of opportunities for this. In fact, although he's a highly social kid, I've observed that if he doesn't get enough of this sort of 'down time' to play, he's less happy overall. I have to balance all of this as we plan our activities. We've got a kid who is happy to have some dirt to dig in and odds and ends for 'treasure' or just to be out in nature, toodling around.

It's hard to create pockets of time where there is no agenda so that kids can do their own, self-led learning through play and experimentation. As a parent of a kid who isn't feeling strangled at school, I feel like we have a good balance. That said, I know that there are other kids who would thrive in alternative learning environments compared to what public school offers. Sadly, because there is a profound lack of public knowledge regarding education, and because people are more likely to believe 'experts' and vote with their pocketbooks in mind (school taxes?), I'm not hopeful that education is going to change as a whole anytime soon. So, we enrich.

S., I love this article and completely agree with you. I'm a Waldorf homeschooler - I believe that kids learn best when they're allowed to be kids. As Plutarch said, "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." Learning does not have to be done while sitting in a desk, doing worksheet after worksheet, not making a sound. In our house, math lessons are often accompanied by watercolor paints or sculpting clay. Reading comprehension sometimes happens in the form of a play, complete with costumes. Science happens outdoors. History happens in song, and may occasionally include period-appropriate crafts or art. And we have a LOT of recess. My kids are happy and love to learn. If they have a question about something, we will often times abandon the day's lessons and go in search of answers to the question.

If the way children are traditionally taught in our culture isn't working (and there's a fair amount of evidence to show that it's not), then perhaps the answer is to teach them the way they learn, right?

Thanks for posting this! It was a long read but definitely worth it. One of the parts that really resonated with me was the following.

"Any wildlife biologist knows that an animal in a zoo will not develop normally if the environment is incompatible with the evolved social needs of its species. But we no longer know this about ourselves. We have radically altered our own evolved species behavior by segregating children artificially in same-age peer groups instead of mixed-age communities, by compelling them to be indoors and sedentary for most of the day, by asking them to learn from text-based artificial materials instead of contextualized real-world activities, by dictating arbitrary timetables for learning rather than following the unfolding of a child’s developmental readiness. Common sense should tell us that all of this will have complex and unpredictable results. In fact, it does. While some children seem able to function in this completely artificial environment, really significant numbers of them cannot. Around the world, every day, millions and millions and millions of normal bright healthy children are labelled as failures in ways that damage them for life. And increasingly, those who cannot adapt to the artificial environment of school are diagnosed as brain-disordered and drugged. "

Again, S., thanks for sharing!

Wow S. T - I'm skimming the article now and it is FANTASTIC. It is very consistent with what I've come to believe after 7+ years of homeschooling, and before that having my kids in traditional school for years.

Thank you - saving this one.

Very interesting article! It makes me wonder if we should approach learning differently?

My grandson is struggling with reading now...... however, I've seen that more is expected and encouraged in Kindergarten, where when I was in K, it was more to learn how to get along in a school environment. I do know that kids mature in different stages, and with him, it may very well just click at a later point. I hope he doesn't get too discouraged by that early on, though. I'm not sure where his strengths lie.

Thanks for posting!

Sometimes I get annoyed with the structure of school and testing that is so high stakes. But then again, when I graduated high school, those tests determined what college I went to (good grades were necessary but not sufficient; they hardly mattered if the tests scores were not top notch). And, the college degree determines the job.

So I'm a bit torn. I want them to be kids and learn as kids do, but I also know that their future depends on the high stakes tests and conformity expected in the school structure.

S., thanks for sharing this article; it is very interesting!
I agree with you.

A. :)