The pressure of doing well in school can cause a lot of stress not only for the student himself but also for his or her family. When I visited Spain, I had the chance to talk to my aunt about my nine year-old cousin Jose Angel. My aunt was telling me about how Jose Angel is really smart and skilled in maths, and reading, yet he has such a hard time concentrating in class and while doing the homework given to him every day. She has been called in for several talks with his teachers about how he can't sit still in class and how they know he has potential but doesn't concentrate. He was even taken to the psychiatrist where they diagnosed him as a slight case of ADHD. Hearing all this information while I had been reading "Free to Learn" shocked me. It was horrible to hear that my little cousin was being put through all this when I knew that it wasn't his fault or his lack of concentration, but rather the school system he was being forced into.
Peter Grey explained this: "Some children are naturally more active and impulsive than others and this gets them into trouble at school. It is even harder for them than for the typical child to sit still for hours every day to attend to assignments that don't interest them and to tolerate tedium. In today's world of high-pressure schooling, those kids get labeled as having a mental disorder, ADHD." Student's whose personalities don't fit in schools are seen as failures or as suffering from a "mental disorder." Schools try to make all their students' personalities fit the school often using drugs instead of adjusting the school to mold into different personalities. After hearing about the Sudbury Valley school Peter Grey had talked about, I could literally envision my cousin studying there and doing well. In "Free to Learn" several examples of scientific experiments regarding creativity and play have shown the importance of a playful mindset when solving problems and coming up with clever ideas. A positive mood improves creative and insightful reasoning not only in children but also in adults. Play can be identified in the way a person performs a task rather than what task they are performing. Grey described it as a self-chosen and self-directed activity in which the means are more valued than ends and it has a structure of rules that are not dictated by physical necessity but are born from the minds of the players. He explained that play involves "an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind...play might not always be accompanied by smiles or laughter, but play is always accompanied by a feeling of Yes, this is what I want to do right now." The problem with school nowadays is the fact that we have turned learning into work rather than play. These experiments show that learning, problem solving, and creativity are all enhanced by a playful attitude, while schools turn learning into work by evaluation in test-form, praising with rewards such as good grades, etc. When my aunt told me that all that my little cousin wanted to do all day was to play, I wasn't surprised at all. It's in children's nature to play and explore, and schools should understand that not only is it natural for a kid to play for enjoyment but it is also the best of conditions for successful learning to take place. Children learn important life lessons through their play and adult's underestimation of their own children by depriving them from the freedom they deserve takes away the opportunities they need in order to learn to control their behavior and emotions. Peter Gray doesn't only bring up the topic of play, but more specifically he refers to free-age mixing during play. Our current education system holds on to the idea that children learn best when working with children at their own level. However, schools like Sudbury Valley proves it wrong. In the hunter-gatherer societies age-mixing was very common due to the fact that there was a smaller amount of children and therefore it was harder to find someone the same age. Just like in the Sudbury Valley school, children played with other kids older and younger than them. Free age mixing didn't only benefit the younger children by allowing them to learn from their older friends, but it also benefited the older ones by giving them the skills necessary to be good parents and care for the younger ones.
0 Comments
Free to Learn Entry #1:
The other day I went up to my mom and asked her "What do you think about school?". She replied something along the lines of "I think school is a centre of education and instruction that serves for generating the ties between kids. It allows kids to interact amongst themselves. It's a place of reference for education and is the first place to generate responsibility for students regarding others. It shows them their role in society and their rights and allows them to learn how to tolerate and negotiate with each other." Then I asked her what she thought about education. She said, "Education is something that goes beyond the school. It's the human process of learning and growing as human beings and people. It's the learning of culture and where we acquire the skills and the possibility to know how to make important choices and how we can contribute to society." I must say that if I hadn't read "Free to Learn" by Peter Grey I wouldn't have even questioned her replies, yet now I was only partially satisfied with her answers. The knowledge and amount of questioning that this book portrays is absolutely spectacular. It changes the way you think about not only school but education itself. This is why I think my mother's answers didn't seem completely accurate to me anymore. Peter Grey had made me aware about issues that our modern education system has of which I had thought of as the norm. What my mother had previously described as school, didn't seem accurate to the actual place most students find themselves going to every day. The modern school system has several flaws which make it not an advantage for some learners, but more like a disadvantage. The system is competitive, and it makes children who are good even better and students who struggle even worse. It creates anxiety, fosters shame which may lead to cheating, it promotes bullying and eradicates cooperation amongst students. It also is shown to cut off critical thinking in students because they are taught to do what the teacher wants and not question it in order to obtain the highest grade. These are some of the several flaws that have been built into today's way of educating children. Of course, schools are beneficial for some students who do well in the system and end up going into great colleges and doing well, yet for the other half, school is like going through a nightmare. I can't argue with Peter Grey's analysis of the school system, for I can witness his points in my day to day life at school. I'm not a bad student or struggle continuously as others might, yet I can connect to most of the ideas he mentions in his text. School should be a place where there is freedom to explore things that interest you. It should be a non-competitive environment where children and young teens feel empowered and motivated to learn with their peers and where they are challenged to think critically and branch out into different learning paths that aren't written down on a certain yearly curriculum. In "Free to Learn" Grey refers to the hunter-gatherer way of life as a model of what education looks like when a school is not in between. He talks about the importance of play in the process of learning and children-led education. These communities allowed children to play without restrictions and explore the world on their own. It was fascinating to read about how these children could successfully learn all the skills necessary in order to be successful adults in their cultures and how they took responsibility of their own learning. The lack of competitiveness in the hunter-gatherer bands was also something that I would describe as admirable. It made me realize how one doesn't have to be competitive in order to give their 100% effort towards something and obtain it. Of course it's much harder for parents who raise their kids in certain cultures nowadays to give their children the same amount of freedom than the hunter-gatherer bands did depending on the place in which they live and the dangers they could be exposed to. Yet what cuts into the time kids have for play the most is school. School hours have been extending themselves more and more throughout the years and the amount of homework has been rising too. School principals, staff and the government don't seem to realize the importance of play in children's development and this is what is harming education the most. If children aren't given the freedom to play and interact with other children, how are they going to learn such important life lessons? Peter Grey stated "The things that children learn through their own initiatives, in free play, cannot be taught in other ways." Schools can never replace the experience of playing, therefore students should be provided with play time in school since if they can't obtain it outside school hours due to homework or parent's insecurities about their safety. |