Comments (0)

By admin, January 1, 2010 7:51 pm

Although I do not claim to be an expert in child educational psychology, I have spent a great deal of time teaching children and creating courses using alternative strategies. You can ask twenty different teachers the question, “Why isn’t my kid learning?” and you will get twenty different answers. I cannot speak for the other nineteen individuals specifically, but there are a few points on which a lot of us do agree.

The biggest problem is that the systems are designed to be implemented ‘cookie-cutter’ fashion which is fine in theory, but it doesn’t actually take into account that children are quite different. They do not all learn in the same way. I will address this further in a moment, but first allow me to outline some more general issues. The expectations themselves for what a child should learn are not quite working anymore. Here are some real problems:

• Teaching to the Tests. You’ve all heard of this lately. While we struggle with methods to rate and score our children’s performance the focus of our teaching narrows to accommodate the tests rather than to accommodate the child.

• This narrowed focus eliminates whole areas of ‘education’. The overly-burdened, busy parent is expected to fill in the gaps. Is this even a reasonable expectation in modern times with both parents working full-time to make ends meet? Unfortunately the educational systems are even more stressed!

• The expectation that the child should conform to the structured methods and timetable of the school system, no matter what is going on in the child’s life.

• Lack of balance in subject matter and methods. Abandonment of holistic learning models (which, granted, need work) for focus on areas where America is reportedly lagging behind. Not everyone is cut out to excel at math and science. In fact many studies have found that students who have the opportunity to study humanities (art, music, history, literature, philosophy) excel well past those without the opportunity in science and math. One of the main reasons for this is because the more widely educated student has developed higher emotional intelligence and more advanced critical thinking skills.

So where did it all go wrong? The answer to that will also vary depending upon who you ask. I have worked for some districts that believe there is “just too much ‘froo-froo’ these days… too much emphasis on the silly stuff like self-esteem, discussion, character development… After all, it worked in my day… back to basics… the three ‘R’s…’ yada-yada-yada! Again, nice in theory, but what they don’t see is that children themselves have changed! Life is so much more complicated than ‘back in the day’. Technology rules the world and knowledge has increased exponentially over the years. There is, simply-put, more to know! This requires new methods of delivering an education.

How do we cram all this information into these young, malleable minds? By teaching them to learn. You might be thinking, “Well, that’s easier said than done!” Actually, it’s not all that difficult, but first you must identify what kind of thinker they are – how they learn. Obviously, one can begin with some personality classification system like Myers/Briggs http://www.myersbriggs.org/ but even more useful, pay attention to how your child likes to do things.

• Does he/she like to touch? To listen? To draw? To run around and spread things out while learning? Does he/she like to list and organize?

• Ask your school’s guidance department to test and identify what learning strategies work best for him/her. They have access to many different testing models to identify this.

• Do a little of your own research on the internet. You will be amazed at what is available to help your child succeed.

• If they don’t have time to do it at school make sure YOU find the time to have conversations with your children. Besides talking about their day’s events ask them lots of questions about the things they are most interested in, even if you are not at all interested in the subject. Ask them questions like, “what would you do if…?” to encourage critical thinking, but use subjects that interest them!

• If they are having difficulty ‘getting into’ a school subject or subject section, ask the teacher if he/she will accept some extra-credit project to boost the child’s score. In doing a project using the child’s skill and interest he/she will learn without even realize it is happening.

• Try some ‘holistic learning’: watch a video on the subject, read aloud, make a model, write and illustrate, go to a museum, do some internet research, find pictures. You get the idea – anything to expand the process and re-focus away from what the child is NOT learning about the subject to what he is enjoying about the subject.

The most important thing to know is that even though your child may not be learning everything, he/she IS learning something! There is nothing wrong with your child; perhaps it is just that the system doesn’t fit your child. The solution might be to merely adjust the system to allow your child to flourish.

Originally posted 2009/03/22