How does natural learning take place? By imitating, by doing. The important point then becomes who is being imitated and what are they doing? Sad to say, the doers, the imitatees, the models of behavior for the vast majority of our children are media idols, the television and each other.
How does one learn to be a good father, a loving husband, an industrious breadwinner? By being in close and steady contact with someone who is all these things during their formative years. How does one learn to be a good mother, a loving wife, an industrious financial partner in a marriage? By being in close and steady contact with someone who is all these things during their formative years. How does one learn to be polite, socially gracious, honest, kind, just, and tolerant. By being in close and steady contact with someone who is all these things during their formative years.
With whom are our children in close and steady contact? Rock stars, sports heroes, actors in multiple, contradictory roles, and -- each other.
Where do human beings nowadays spend the majority of their formative years?
Nearly every single one, at this point in our history, started compulsory education at age five or six.
That thought alone should give us pause.
The Tender young child is torn form his family and sent to an institution with hundreds of other distraught young children to begin the process of education. All the natural impulses of the child are then formally categorized, limited, suppressed, mandated, organized and even drugged into oblivion. On top of this, the child is expected to learn to be an adult with primarily immature and ignorant peers (including psychopaths) for role models.
You cannot take a child, from an early age, for the major portion of his waking hours each day, for the major portion of a year, for the most of his formative years, tell him to stand up, sit down, get in line, be quiet, read this, read that, do this and do that, and then expect him to function on his own and make decisions on his own as an adult.
Thus, we institutionalize our children, expecting them to grow up and behave like adults, when in fact, they grow up to be exactly what we have made them -- institutional children in adult bodies. Some of them adjust to this, after a fashion, and live mediocre, frustrated lives. Many do not. Many, unable to act like adults, abuse their wives, husbands, children, lie, cheat, steal, kill, maim etc.-- all effects of an immature emotional nature. We have imparted the essence of education -- facts and figures -- and have neglected to fulfill the function of education: to enable the individual to live productively, happily and peaceably in his chosen field of endeavor.
Unfortunately, at this point in time, the preponderance of time spent in this "social institution of learning" cannot be balanced by parental example since most parents are products of exactly the same system.
We need to examine our priorities and establish some new guidelines and end the waste of both minds and funds.
We need to face some cold hard facts here. We are not all created equal in talent and ability. We are, supposedly, equal in the sight of the law in terms of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" but in a system set up to perpetuate the rule of the wealthy, even that isn't realistically possible for most Americans though it is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. What's more, we are not allowed fulfillment of this legal freedom if we spend twelve years in a learning environment which does not provide us with the skills to live a free and happy life.
Some children have the natural capabilities and interest to become scientists, or social workers, or landscapers or architects. Others have the talents to cook, paint, write poetry or care for the sick. Still others find joy in cleaning and organizing the environment or working with machinery and tools. It is patently obvious that twelve years spent in a compulsory standardized educational system - standardized to the lowest common denominator - is a great waste of time, money and talents.
First, everyone educable should be able to read and write. How else can they know what is going on in the world, which often is essential to their well being, or whether or not some subject interests them sufficiently to desire to pursue it as a career or hobby for their personal fulfillment and happiness?
Second, everyone should be able to add and subtract, multiply and divide. These skills are obviously necessary to function in society, to manage finances, to know if you are getting a good deal or are being cheated, etc.
It is absurd to think that it takes twelve years to accomplish this.
And since many respected studies indicate that abstract thinking develops in a child at about the age of nine, why spend six to eight hours a day for four years prior to that time using the rote method of learning?
For children ages four to eight it would be better to spend two to three hours per day simply becoming familiar with the fundamentals of reading and numbers as play and then allowing their own natural curiosity to direct their imitative activities in an environment where there is someone and something worthy of imitation. For a child, play is learning and the importance of presenting education in this context is tragically underestimated. When a child is tired of a certain game, they should be permitted to initiate a different one. They know when their brain has maximized the experience at hand. It is crucial to their curiosity, the fundamental element of genius, that their attention be allowed to flow naturally from one subject to the next which draws their interest.
The next level of education, from nine to twelve or thirteen should involve use of a more formalized setting. This is where our current system more naturally fits, though it would require some significant modification. Every branch of learning should be available in short course segments of about a month in length. The introductory courses should be about a half hour to forty-five minutes in duration and should consist of the basics in terms of that subject as well as exposure to what can be done with full knowledge of the subject particularly in relation to life and career matters.
At the end of each learning segment each child should be evaluated as to whether he has either the capacity or the desire or both, to pursue that particular discipline further. If he has neither, he should not be required to wilt in a learning environment that is neither of his choosing nor within his ability.
At the age of thirteen the child should be ready for apprenticeship in that field for which he has shown both ability and inclination or, if the child wishes to pursue an academic career and has the ability, he's old enough for university style education to begin.
Children whose parents understand the narrow parameters of personal growth and achievement inherent in the public school system, and who opt for alternative methods of education until such time as the system, itself, can be drastically altered -- be it private school or home school -- should be encouraged and supported. There are plenty of reliable statistics showing that children educated by their parents are, in most cases, superior to those in public schools. Parents who are motivated, responsible and loving enough to want the best for their children, and have thereby rejected public schools are the kind of role models needed to produce those superior individuals humanity needs to reverse the trend toward total mediocrity if not, in fact, ultimate dissolution. (On the other hand, religious home-schoolers are fanatics and generally produce very disturbed children.)
Case after case can be cited of persons with unusual and innovative educations who have gone on to become the pathfinders, the geniuses of our race. I believe that our lack in this regard is due to the fact that we have come to think that freedom and democracy equal legislative mandating of equal education.
All persons should be equal in rights, but all are not identiical in ability and motivation and it is fruitless and wasteful to assume otherwise.
How much time and money is wasted on pouring equal amounts of identical information into millions of minds, most of which neither care nor, worst of all, will ever use it again once the final exam is over. How much better to invest the time and money in those who are sufficiently motivated to seek out information and work to acquire it? Once the child can read and write and do basic math, if they are neither ready nor desirous of further factual information, let their education consist of an apprenticeship in something that suits their abilities and personality with perhaps additional instruction in social matters such as courting, marriage, parenting.
Left to their own devices, with intensive role modeling, (this is the sort of activity they naturally engage in anyway), the natural curiosity and motivation to seek fuller educational experience will blossom in those in whom it is inherent. And when it does, encourage and reward it with satisfaction of the thirst for knowledge. If an individual sits at a table and is not hungry or does not like the fare, must we cram it down his throat? Provide them with a steady flow of appropriate role models in the form of films depicting life's ideals. Provide them with books of the same ideal ilk. Involve the parents. Teach the parents. Forget the cramming for exams. Educate children to be adult and responsible humans.
Educating is a lot like gardening. No amount of pruning, fertilizer or water will turn a lily into a rose or a rose into an oak. Some plants thrive in full sun, some partial, some like the shade. The unfruitfulness of our education system is indicative of a lack of knowledge and skill on the part of the gardeners. We need to talk serious reform and give each and every individual child the education which will enable him to be productive, happy and peaceable within himself and our society. "Equal opportunity" is contradicted and made equal mediocrity by the American Public school system as it exists today.
How many Lockes, Rousseaus, Jeffersons, Shelleys and Lincolns have we molded into John Q. Public or twisted into psychopathic misfits?
