What Should Children Do All Day?

They should learn. 


How and what should they learn? 

What have I learned from all this? That children love learning and are extremely good at it. On this matter I have no more doubts. . . . When they are following their own noses, learning what they are curious about, children go faster, cover more territory than we would ever think of trying to mark out for them, or make them cover. ~ John Holt, How Children Learn

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to rack and ruin without fail... ...It is a very grave mistake to think that the engagement of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. ~ Albert Einstein 

According to John Holt and Albert Einstein, curiosity should be the guiding factor in how Learning happens. 

The keys to [learning] are study environment, study habits, course of study, and high quality books. The goal of our home schools should be to teach our children to think - and to think faster and better than we, ourselves do. The student who masters a subject on his own learns more. ~ Dr. Art Robinson

According to Dr. Robinson, training for independent thinking should be the guiding factor in how Learning happens.

Unschooling is a range of educational philosophies and practices centered on allowing children to learn through their natural life experiences, including play, game play, household responsibilities, work experience, and social interaction, rather than through a more traditional school curriculum. Wikipedia 

According to the Unschooling philosophy, learning should happen by the child's choice in everyday experiences such as games, work, and social interactions. 


What other definitions are there for what and how children should learn?


What do you believe are the guiding factors in what and how children learn? 


How are they different for adults? 


~vbb

But what about . . .

But what about their socialization?

Maybe what someone is really asking when they ask this unavoidable question about home schooling is, “What on earth do you do all day?”

What do children do all day? What should they do?

Sit at a desk? Attend lessons and clubs? Dig? Make grocery lists? Read? Talk to neighbors? Build? Work with dad? Write? Play sports? Color? Act? Compose? Practice? Complete worksheets?

And how does a parent decide what their children should be doing? How does a child participate in this decision? What role does society and community play in how this question is answered?

~vbb

FOUND: What’s up with ‘Schooling’?

Lincoln's schooling was so slight as to be almost nil. He did not grow up in a literary atmosphere. But in the matter of his official utterances he must be compared with the ablest geniuses and most cultured scholars that have preceded him, and not merely with his early associates.

Henry Ketcham, The Life of Abraham Lincoln

How does someone become a genius without ‘schooling’? And do we have a word that describes the kind of education Lincoln went through that made him as great as he was?

Through close observation and student interviews, we found that students failed to engage in the coursework and spent little to no time studying. Students were disengaged from their learning responsibilities and the derailing of their studying began as early as elementary school.

David Castillo and Peter McIntosh, Khan Academy: Learning Habits vs. Content Delivery in STEM Education

How do students become disengaged at school? And how is society changing this trend?

According to Castillo and McIntosh, “Improving content delivery helped, but not enough” and “Poor learning habits revealed the core problem”. “When we stopped worrying about whether Khan Academy videos were better than our own lectures or whether the exercises had the appropriate mix of concept vs. drill, we recognized that we had found a powerful tool that reached students and changed their habits in ways we had never even considered possible.”

It sounds like they have found principles that will help Learners Drive their Education. So, how are Khan Academy videos changing learning habits? The authors list the following aspects of Khan videos that influenced this change:

• “Most exercises are not multiple-choice, which eliminates guessing.
• Questions are randomly generated, which eliminates copying
• The short video clips engaged students and allowed them to replay the material until they understood it; and
• The online environment and Khan Academy’s overall design appeals to the students, resulting in significant engagement time.”

I’ve known about Khan Academy for a while, but I haven’t taken the time to really investigate it for Learner Driven Education principles. What else in our society is changing ‘schooling’ into something that is Learner Driven? And how are they doing it? How do we let go of worrying about 'content delivery' in order to find what really helps students succeed? What helps the student rise above his environment to greatness like that of Lincoln?

~vbb