The inherent value of Obsessiveness

Unschooling is based on the premise that children are programmed to learn, and that by letting go and letting them “do their thing”, they can and will gain an education about the world around them. And they’ll do this using innate, instinctual behaviours rather than having to be “taught” how to learn.

I’ve found that one of the ways young children learn is by being obsessive. When DD is on to some topic of interest, she immerses herself in it. When she’s interested in ladybugs, she picks out books from the library on them, draws them, plays at being them, and makes them out of clay or crafting supplies or even food! It’s “All Ladybugs, All the time” for a while. Then it’s on to the next obsession. She may cycle through a group of three topics of obsession for some time, with new ones coming up to replace older ones every so often.

Kids in school don’t usually get to obsess this way; they are generally not allowed to focus on just one topic and explore that through different mediums. Rather they are thrown a series of topics that someone else has decided they need to know, they are taught these in ways that someone else has decided is the best way to learn it, and they are not given any say in how long, or how much time per day, is devoted to that topic. When I look at learning in this context, it really hits home for me how traditional schooling goes so much against our Nature, and how nature has programmed us to learn and accumulate useful information. It’s no wonder there are so many kids who don’t “do well” in school, or are diagnosed as “learning disabled”.

An example of “learning by obsessiveness” is being played out as I type this. DH has subscribed us to a number of wonderful podcasts, such as the Ask an Astronomer series. When the kids sit down to watch these short episodes (of which we currently have five) they play them over, and over, and over again (which they are doing right now). It’s funny to see just how many times they can view them without getting sick of them. And even then, when they’ve watched them a dozen times or more, give it a day or so and they’ll be back watching the same five episodes over and over.

It seems so obvious to me that their desire for repitition is part of their innate learning instinct. For what better way to learn something than to experience it over and over again.

These video podcasts are great, by the way. We are also enjoying the DiveFilm series, and the National Geographic ones as well. I’m sure there are video podcasts out there for any subject of interest, and having them stored on your computer (or, as in our case, your AppleTV) is a great way to allow your child to “obsess”, too!

And as for DS…

He apparently, needs nothing other than Dora the Explorer to facilitate his learning.

My little speech-delayed genius is counting to ten in Spanish, refers to a backpack as “mochila”, and says “por favor” when asking for more milk.

He also bit off one corner of a triangular tortilla chip yesterday and announced that it was a Manta Ray. Damn if it didn’t look like one, too.

(the rest is the sound of my heart swelling with pride)

Learning Days

We went to the library yesterday and actually got some books that weren’t about dinosaurs or the history of the earth or even deep ocean biology. We got a book called “Did a dinosaur drink this water?”. Okay, there is that word in there. And I’ll admit it’s what got DD to yank it off the shelf – “Look mama, a dinosaur book we haven’t read before!”. But actually, I figured out from the title that it was a book about the Water Cycle. We also got another book called “A Drop of Water”. It is, on the surface, a photography book with lovely shots of water dripping and splashing, bubbles frozen in time, and amazing photos of snowflakes. It was these images that captured DD’s interests but when we started reading it I discovered it was all about water – surface tension, the various phases of water, etc.

We sat and read them last night which prompted a discussion of the water cycle and the ice, liquid, vapour cycle. We’d talked about the phases of water before, so this was just building on that nicely. I was also pleased to hear her say, when we got to a page about hydroelectricity, that it was “just like that Magic School Bus book we bought” (at a kids fair for 50 cents, gotta love it). That book, about electricity, featured a coal-burning electricity plant. So I was able to explain that what turns the turbines can vary. In some places they burn coal. Here on the Wet Coast we use hydroelectricity. DD asked if the sun made electricity too, and I explained that via solar panels, it can. Wind, too. It was one of those discussions you wish you could have on tape to show people…THIS is learning, THIS is how it happens, Right. Here.

Earlier that day at the playground DD found a long stick and discovered that the sandy footing had just the right amount of moisture that day to make it perfect for drawing on. It took me a while to realize the significance of what I was seeing when she drew her name, while facing me, so that the words were upright to ME. Yes, she wrote her name upside down.

And that night, perhaps inspired by the learning of the day, I came up with some wonderful experiments we can do together. Putting a drop of food colouring in a glass of water at room temperature and measuring how much time it takes for the moving water molecules to mix the colour in; timing it again in hot water. Boiling water with salt and without.

I thought about how simple it is to make a circuit with a battery, some wire, a light and a switch. Thanks again to Magic School Bus DD is learning about flowing electrons. We can use this simple circuit and then break it at one point to introduce different substances and see how well they can conduct electricity. Like all good scientists we’ll keep notes of our observations. I get off on this shit and I’m excited that, if she continues along the path she’s showing, she will too.

This is what made me realize that I don’t need no stinking program. I can do this. We can do this. And it is going to be more and more fun as the kids get older and better able to focus. In the meantime, we’ll relax and enjoy this free time of life when there isn’t (shouldn’t be) pressure to “start learning” (as if they haven’t been doing so since they popped out of the womb) and I won’t be Mom’s Taxi shuttling kids between activities.

More of the Same

As I wrote in my last post, with our planned homelearning program now out of the question I’ve been thinking about which other such program will substitute, and I’ve decided we are going to do none of them.

I’ve thought about what sort of classes to do with her, but the truth is I am not sure she really needs to do much, even though this is the “kindergarten year”, the year everybody seems to think that school really begins (even though it’s just a way to suck the kids into thinking school really is Fun, just like they said on Blue’s Clues).

DD is not the type to sit through a class and be lectured to for very long. She doesn’t actually find that interesting. DD does not like to be taught, she likes to teach herself and then play at teaching others. One of her favorite games is to read to people (or stuffed animals) by holding the book in her lap facing outwards, librarian style. She also likes to make museum displays and invite people to come for her “tour”. And she likes to play “teacher” and lecture her students about the dinosaurs and other things.

I’m sure as she gets older she will want to persue her interests more fully and deeply, and we’ll find courses and camps and day programs that will do just that. But for now, it’s not really what turns her crank. I keep reminding myself that she is only 5, and that even if she gets “behind” in some things over the next year or 2, when she’s ready for whatever those subjects are she will eat them up and master them quickly, because she’ll be driven and ready to do so.

She enjoyed the classes at the local Ecology Centre last fall and winter. We’ll likely do those again and hope that DS has matured enough by then to be present without being a distraction. We’ll keep up with gym class because she loves it and the exercise is good for her. That is the only class she takes without me present and unless she specifically asks to go to another such class I can’t see it happening any time soon. So anything that me and DS can’t be at with her isn’t going to be an option. Which doesn’t mean there is nothing, because there certainly are things we can all do together (DS’s maturity-level notwithstanding).

In short, I don’t see any need to start anything, other than to pacify the family members who will be concerned that she will now officially be “behind” because every other five year old is “in school” (yeah, right) and she’s not. Insert major eye roll here. We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing until DS is at the age where he can come too and not be a whirlwind tasmanian devil to contend with, and until DD is at the point where her desire to participate in a class will win over her belief that she can’t do it without me there. I will, however, attempt to keep a portfolio, because I think it’s good for all of us to be able to visualize our progress. And yes, I confess, it gives something to show the doubting masses.

Flying Free

I’ve talked before about the program that DD will be starting this fall, make that was supposed to be starting. Seems things are going to be changing there, and it no longer holds appeal for me.

As it is right now, parents keep portfolios to document their children’s learning through their interests, projects, writings, photos, etc. Teachers evaluate the portfolios three times per year. If you do this through to Grade 12 you will get your high school diploma. It seemed a pretty good compromise for unschooling-minded parents who needed some money (the program provides generous cash allowances for learning resources), wanted access to programs geared for homelearners, and wanted the outside push to generate the portfolios regularly. There were some conflicts between what teachers considered “evidence of learning” and what unschooling parents think about that, but for the most part those who were blazing this trail ahead of me (the program is fairly new) seemed to be doing alright with it.

Well, the buzz is that the program was subjected to an audit by the provincial school board and deemed “problematic”. Apparently there will be an announcement any day now that the teachers will make the portfolios based on assignments that the children must complete every two weeks. Needless to say, that’s all most of us needed to hear to say “thanks, but no thanks!”.

I suppose if they are going to hand out diplomas it has to seem “fair” to those poor schleps stuck in school for most of their lives. To the outsider, unschooling seems equivalent to “not doing anything except have fun” (which, of course, is entirely the point). I can see why the powers that be feel the way they do – they don’t get unschooling, they don’t believe that children can be trusted to learn without being coerced into doing so, and they don’t believe that parents can recognize when their children are learning. They absolutely don’t know how to deal with individuality. The child who expresses her knowledge through art and poetry, whose mother submits her portfolio as a high quality DVD videography, doesn’t fit into the mold. Neither does the child who takes out books from the library each week and devours them, the same books over and over again, but who has no desire to regurgitate what she’s learned in writing for no other purpose than to convince someone else that they have, in fact, learned from reading said books.

What it really boils down to is how do you quantify Learning? Well, you can’t, really. Each child is so different in their learning style; perhaps you can quantify it within one subject, but comparing thousands of six year olds to determine who is “behind”, who is “ahead”, and who is “average”…? I don’t think it works.

So anyways, I’m not fuming about this. I’m not raging with indignation or determined to write to my MLA and protest this decision. I’m not interested in becoming an unschooling activist. Our province still allows for homeschooling of all kinds, I do not need to even register my child, and nothing I’m doing is considered illegal. Instead, I’m going to “vote with my feet” and not bother enrolling in that program after all.

What we will do, I’m not entirely sure, but fortunately there is a great homeschooling community here with loads of information and resources. There are actually several other sources of programs geared towards homelearning families, and I’m sure we’ll find many ways to fill our days. I’m sort of excited about it, actually, because I think that all along I’ve wanted to just go full out and unschool all on our own, but maybe was a bit timid. Now here’s our opportunity to fly free.

What we’re up to these days

DS is obsessed with the alphabet, has been for months now. He recently moved on to numbers – he can count to twenty, although 13 through 18 gets garbled a bit, and has begun counting objects. He just turned 2.5 on April 8, so is he a genius or what? Now he’s singing songs. I did “Twinkle, Twinkle” with him last night and he beat me to the “world so high” part – I didn’t even know he knew the song. At our homelearner dropin today he discovered the table with action figures and castles. I am not up on toys for kids, so I don’t know what they were called, but it was sort of like Playmobil on steroids – chunky figurines of pirates and knights that squatted about 3 or 4 inches off the ground. DS was using the figures and making them walk, perform tasks, etc. It was fun to watch him getting into this imaginative play. He just started it recently when we got a hand-me-down plastic dollhouse. It has furniture but no dolls, so the kids use a couple of Playmobil guys who lost their hair ages ago, and some Lucky Trolls (my childhood collection).

DD is still obsessed with dinosaurs. I thought she knew everything about them but I guess there is lots to know. Her latest thing is to set up all her “squishy dinosaurs” (cheap, rubber models about 2 inches tall that we get at the dollar store) and make a “museum” where she then gives tours to paying customers (she charges only 1 dollar, lol). The tour includes the order in which animals appeared on earth (that’s according to Darwin, not Genesis, though the two do overlap, don’t they?), why dinosaurs became extinct, etc. She’s reading more words but I have yet to see her sit down and read a book to herself. She prefers to get books for older kids, usually textbook type stuff from the library, and she doesn’t usually want me to read those to her, but rather she will read them to us. She makes up most of it as she goes along, but speaks in the tone of a lecturer which is rather amusing. I’m constantly amazed at how much she learns without openly asking questions. She doesn’t often ask me questions directly, it’s like she absorbs information by osmosis. I recall reading on a website describing what differentiates gifted children from “bright” kids is that the latter ask questions but the former “just know”. Now I don’t think DD counts as gifted, but I have noticed that she does appear to work this way.

I am getting tired of reading Dr. Seuss at bedtime and am looking forward to doing some chapter books. So far when we try this we’ll read the first chapter one night, but when I go to read the second chapter the next night she freaks out and insists that I have to start at the beginning. I have to control my frustration: she’s not ready yet and she will be one day so chill, mama!