Lesson 3: Catching Up and Moving On
Rediscovering the Joy of Learning
Do you remember when your children were young and they got so excited about new facts? They could spend hours staring at a butterfly and then listen happily as you read a book on the subject to them. They would seek out videos, talk about their observations and draw pictures of their discovery. They loved learning!
Too often, children lose that joy of learning when they start school. They get grades and stickers and candy for learning, and this gives them the idea that learning must be dull—why else would someone pay you to do it? Children with special needs face additional challenges to their joy. When learning becomes structured, the child with challenges often cannot do the work. No longer is learning done in whatever way works best. Now the child must conform. A child who cannot see may find limited Braille materials, a child who cannot hear may not have the vocabulary yet for structured learning. A child with reading challenges can’t read a book that is hard enough to meet his intellectual needs. A child who can’t write is ordered to write a report, and when the grade is low, the learning stops being fun.
It took me over a year to help my children regain the joy of learning. We started by doing away with tangible rewards. This was a shock to my children. When they completed their first assignment, they brought it to me eagerly and said, “You’re supposed to give us candy for doing this.” When I refused they were furious. Then they looked over the papers I returned to them, which had comments and corrections, but no grade. “Where’s our grade?” Imagine their reaction to being told there would be no grade. They should simply correct their work and decide whether or not they had learned the material well. They asked why they should bother to do the work if there would be no candy and no grade. I suggested they do it for the sheer joy of learning. They were second and third graders, and were sure their mother was simply too old to remember how school was supposed to work. However I stood my ground.
Little by little the doctrine of learning for joy began to grow within them. When they no longer had to fear bad grades, they began to take risks, reading books that were a little too hard, tackling problems they weren’t quite ready for, and trying odd projects that might not work. They began to do extra research, instead of figuring out how little they had to do to get the grade. Now they were learning just to learn.
Spend much of your first year rediscovering joy. Naturally, you will focus on catching up and getting your child educated, but you will find yourself with a great deal of time in which to just explore. It is best to begin with subjects the children are interested. We were studying prehistory at first, so we learned about dinosaurs. The children had a huge collection of dinosaur books and we made a chart for each dinosaur. My intention was actually to prepare them to write reports; however, we discovered something fascinating as we worked. We went through each book, listing the facts about the dinosaur on the chart. Beside each fact, we placed a number, which we had assigned to the book. When duplicate facts arose, we added a second number to the existing fact. If a fact conflicted with a fact we already had, we put both versions and cross-referenced them. Eventually, the children noticed that one book conflicted with all the others. We looked at some expert resources and saw that the book was filled with errors. The children threw away the book and erased everything that came from it. They had become curious and excited by the odd events of this project, and they learned something about research—both skills and excitement.
When children are excited about a subject, return to the preschool method of learning. Simply explore the topic in any way the child wants to explore, using every available resource. Ignore worksheets unless the child likes them. Wander through a school supply store and see if anything captures your child’s imagination. As he begins to think of research as fun, he will begin to regain what the schools stole from him. He will be on his way to becoming an independent scholar and lifelong learner.
