As someone who took zero education courses in college and has no experience parenting a child older than sixteen months, I deem myself to be pretty well qualified to write intelligently about childhood learning.
Ha ha ha!
Clearly, I'm not academically or even experientially qualified to do so. But I think I'm common-sense and generally-educated qualified. And hey, I spent a year and a half teaching adults, so kids can't be
that different, right?
Ahem.
Last week, I received an email from a sweet girl in England whom I've never met in my life. She attached an essay she'd written for a university assignment and asked me for some editing advice. Well, really, she wasn't asking me; she was asking another lady who has the same name I do (had to be in the UK!), and she got our email addresses mixed up. I ended up giving her some advice on the paper anyway, because I thought it would be a good thing to do, and because I miss school like crazy. (My ultimate pipe dream would be to just be a professional student forever and get degrees in almost everything.) Her essay was describing the influence of the Italian educational system on the newly revised education system in Northern Ireland, a topic about which I knew -- of course! -- absolutely nothing.
Through reading her paper, I learned about the
Reggio Emilia approach, an educational philosophy centered around self-guided learning. Now, I'm far from an expert on this approach after having read one college essay and a Wikipedia page, so I won't speak to it
specifically. Rather, I'd like to focus on a general trend I've noticed.
I'm not comfortable with what I've perceived to be a pretty strong push toward "child-led" education. And it's not that I think early childhood education should be like the military or that kids shouldn't have time to just be kids -- far from it! But whenever I read things like "children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves" or "the teacher is considered a co-learner and collaborator with the child and not just an instructor," I can't help but roll my eyes and shake my head. I'm sorry if this is the heart and soul of what you espouse, but I ain't buyin' it.
Children absolutely need time to be children, time that is unstructured, when they aren't doing school or sports or music lessons, time when they can tap into their unlimited creativity (how I envy them that!) and explore the world on their own terms. And I think there is even a place for that within an instructional setting, sure. But I don't think that should be the focus in school. It's true, we're not trying to train-up our kids to fit into a nice vocational role and contribute their fair share to some oppressive Marxist society. But we are certainly
training them to be adults. And I don't know about you, but I can't tell you the last day I had "endless ways and opportunities to express" myself. Or, you know, was able to indulge my outrageously expensive dream of being a professional student, which would require me to neglect my duties as a wife and mother. That's not how life is,
and I think that's okay!
When I was teaching, I often had a hard time wrapping my brain around the vertical relationship I had with my students, because many of them were almost as old as or older than I. Regardless, it was still there, and for good reason: within the realm of what we were doing, I was more knowledgeable and more experienced. As well I should have been; what a pitiful education it would have been otherwise! With children, I have no trouble whatsoever recognizing this vertical relationship.
And neither should they.
Children are wonderful and beautiful and innocent and smart, and when we're with them, we often see the world anew. But we know more than they do. We are capable of more than they are. We have years of accumulated wisdom, and they have nearly none. This is a
good thing! They need us to lead them. They need to feel safe. They need to know that their mom and their dad and their teachers are in positions of authority because they deserve to be, because they will help them and guide them so that they can one day be mature and responsible adults, too.
I can't help but feel like the child-driven model is largely a reaction to the shortcomings of traditional schooling -- the one-size-fits-all approach that relies on rules, rigid curricula, and testing testing testing. I'm glad we're aware of the pitfalls of this system, because it's true: all children learn differently and have unique needs. This was beyond obvious to me growing up, as my brother and I had completely different learning styles and needs. Mine were addressed adequately enough by traditional schooling; thank God there were special education programs available to him, because a "regular" classroom would have failed him completely.
My thinking is that it doesn't make sense to try to fix the problems with a rigid traditional schooling system by jumping all the way to the other end of the spectrum and letting kids do whatever happens to strike their fancy. I realize that most Reggio Emilia enthusiasts and the like would probably be pretty peeved by that statement and would say that it is a gross mischaracterization. Honestly, I hope that it is.
I guess it boils down to this:
I believe children need structure and rules, and I believe children need to understand that their relationship with adults is a vertical one in which the adults are in charge and deserving of their respect.
What do you think? Am I being an ignorant, um, witch? Should I wait until my kid is school-aged before I go spouting off about educational philosophies? Is this just my
ultimate square personality rearing its ugly head? Or did I possibly make a point here?
