Is he playing? Or is he learning?
The buzz word in today's education is "research-based." That means that If an idea about learning has not been proven by controlled "research," it should not be followed. Now, proving whether something works or not is a good idea. There has been plenty of nonsense passed off as "teaching."
But there is a huge problem with all educational research I am aware of. The research takes place in only one context - a controlled classroom with a teacher directing a large group of students to do simulated activities. In other words, all research is based on pretending to do something you're not really doing inside an unnatural environment that has no parallels in the real world.
Much of what is given the home school family as methods and curriculum comes out of that fictitious environment.
I may have been in 9th grade when I built that go-cart. If so, I was taking Physical Science and Algebra in "school." I remember nothing from Physical Science (except being sent to the office for foolishness once), and I know I learned nothing in Algebra, even though I partly enjoyed it and got good grades. I know I learned none of it because when I took the same thing in college some 15 years later, it was all brand new.
But I remember every part of building that go-cart. I know exactly why it rolled on me, and I can tell you the physics involved in the failure of my braking design.
But what if that go-cart project had been my "schooling"? What if my dad had come along and said, "Okay, son, whatever you need to make this thing work right, I will provide. You need to do some research. Here are some books. Find out what went wrong and why. Then we'll find an "expert" who can check over your plans for re-building the go-cart. Oh, and I need a sketch drawn of what you plan to do before you start. But you have to promise me one thing - that you'll write a report on your project, what went wrong, and how you fixed it, when you're done."
What if?
Fictional learning is based on two principles. One is a controlled flow of information. The textbook is “all you need to know” on the subject, and contains nothing that is “not true” or useless. The second is the spiral curve, that is, each year you learn the same thing all over again, only at a little deeper level than before. Everything is fed to the child in a controlled spiral. The child remains a mostly passive recipient of “learning.”
But real world learning has no relationship to that model. When you are thrust into a new job, you are not given a controlled spiral in which to learn. No, you must produce value right from the start. Everything comes at you at once. You grab just enough of what you need to know to accomplish the present task, but it’s up to you to sort out everything and put it into a pattern that makes sense. More than that, in the real world, there is a chaotic mass of information, some of it useful to varying degrees, some of it useless, and some of it wrong or dangerous. You must make the decisions to grab the useful and weed out the false.
Much of real learning is Random Chaotic, not controlled spiral. But the biggest difference is Active Purpose versus passive reaction. It’s a matter of heart. For me, as a middle school child, sitting in the classroom was heartless; building my own go-cart was filled with heart.
Project-led learning requires a shift in the philosophy of learning. A child is not “playing” when he or she is involved in doing something real that is important to the heart. Get your child engaged in doing something active and real - something big and long term, like training a dog or growing pumpkins. Put a show or contest out in front for them to work towards. Provide resources for learning that are helpful, but not “controlled.” Allow the opportunity to sift through competing ideas and opposing directions. Pay for some of the things the project needs, but require a full accounting of costs and time.
When you give your middle school child an active project that he or she has chosen instead of simulated bookwork, you will be giving the keys that turn the lights on and providing learning that will last a life-time.
Daniel Yordy has worked with teenagers for over thirty years, both on the job, doing a wide range of activities with young men and women from construction to woodworking to gardening to milking cows, and in school, public, private, and home school. While obtaining his Masters Degree, he pondered the difference between the dictates of “modern education” and the practical reality he already knew produced far superior learning results than anything contrived in the modern (pretend) classroom. The result is Project-Led Learning, a weaving of the objectives of education into the actions of real-life, personal projects that contribute to a young person’s life and family.
