If kids can do whatever they want, won’t they just bum around, spend their time chatting or play video games all day? How will they ever learn anything?
This seems like a simple question but it is loaded with an underlying assumption that I would like to challenge.
The assumption here is that kids don’t learn anything when they are bumming around or chatting or playing video games or doing whatever it is that kids do. We have been programmed to think of “learning” primarily as academic learning. This is not surprising since most of us were brought up in the school system.
However, common sense and practical experience tells us that children, even before they go into school, are already tremendous learners. Think about a baby learning to crawl, then to stand, then to walk. Think of how much brain power goes into just coordinating the limbs, the large muscle groups, then the finer muscle groups like the fingers and toes.
Think of how they learn to understand what we are saying to them, and then later to talk and communicate with us. Here in the Philippines, they even pick up two or three languages all at once. Think of how they learn the names of things, how they can read your expressions, to understand your moods just by the tone of your voice, to know what makes you happy and what makes you sad or angry.
They do all this and more before they even step inside a classroom.
People (and yes, children ARE people) are natural learning creatures. We are always learning something even when we are bumming around, or just talking to friends. In fact, a lot of us adults learn primarily through talking to others, through conversation, and even when we are just joking around and having fun, we are still learning.
And how about video games? Let me tell you something, I’ve been playing video games before I was 10 and I will probably play them up to the day I die. Video games have taught me many things — how to think out of the box, how to strategize, hand-eye coordination, how to type fast, how to find solutions, even how to communicate and coordinate with others (with multiplayer games). Won’t you say these are useful life skills?
The point here is not really whether the kids are learning anything because they obviously are. It’s whether the adults or parents think they are learning anything. That is another thing I would like to challenge. Being a parent myself, I would like to tell my fellow parents, it’s not always about you and what you want for your child.
Yes, I get that we want the best for our children, but sometimes that means leaving them alone to figure out their own path, to find their own voice, to forge their own strength. It means loving them enough to trust them, trust their marvelous capability to adapt to and understand the world around them in their own unique way, which may not necessarily be your way, and that should be fine.
You see, when you put your children in traditional schools, you are teaching them to conform to others. They always have to follow someone else’s standard of excellence or someone else’s view of what they ought to be doing with their time and even their lives. And we put them through this for more than a decade. No wonder so many graduate from school and have no clue what to do — they have become so accustomed to hearing other voices that they have forgotten their own.
In the Freedom Academy, we leave the kids alone to find their own direction, to find out who they really are, and to lead lives that they themselves find meaningful, all in their own time.
Don’t you think that’s the best preparation we can give them for adulthood?
Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.