Episode-739- Changing The Way We Help Children Learn [ 1:16:52 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadI was originally going to call this “changing the way we teach our children”, but when I went to type that, I realized it missed the entire point. To me this is one of the biggest problems of the modern education system we teach instead of encouraging learning.
When you teach you “push” information when you encourage a person to learn you are “pulled” by them to learn more. Have you ever wondered about this fact…
No person asks questions that start with why, what and how more than a child.
Now given that is the case why do kids always end up bored in school, how do they get from wanting to know the why of everything to bored apathetic teens in just a few years of school? Can we really blame them when the results of our system are so uniform?
Today’s episode was inspired by a comment in response to the segment I did yesterday on “unschooling”. Unschooling is where children are largely self directed in their learning and study what they are most interested in. Most of the feedback was great but one commenter left the following comment…
“Dear Jack,
Your remarks on ”One step beyond homeschooling – unschooling” are completely wrong and disturbing, not that expected you to be perfect.
Let the ”children discover what they like” is nothing more than parents skipping their parenting responsibility to educate their children and a petty excuse.
Parents have the responsibility to orientate their children because they do have life experience, in contrast the Children have almost no experience and lots of romanticism … how does the child discover what he wants? By analyzing his own ignorance ?
Another problem is that it opens the door for children to escape reality by studying ”cool”, but ultimately irrelevant subjects, in order to escape their petty lives. This going to create a lot of little Nicolo Machiavelli, who become philosophers because their lives sucked.
In short : Unschooling is a petty excuse for parents to escape their responsibility, children do not have not enough life experience or stability to make important life decisions and this will certainly result in children escaping reality in BS studies, just like the example of your article studying ”exo-geology”.”
I find this view very myopic and very limiting, today’s show explains why and expands on the concept of putting people (kids are PEOPLE) in charge of their own learning.
Resources for Today’s Show
- Members Support Brigade
- TSP Gear Shop
- Join Our Forum
- Sawtooth Tactical – (sponsor of the day)
- Knife Kits – (sponsor of the day)
- Lifehacker’s Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education
- UnSchoolers.com
- Counter Point to Main Stream Media’s View of UnSchooling
- UnSchooling The Movie
- Video – Changing Education Paradigms
Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.
