Tuesday 20 October 2009

The perils and pitfalls of informal learning

Many home educators in this country favour a method known as "informal learning". Alan Thomas, the famous educationalist, has written a great deal about this. The idea is that learning takes place quite naturally during the course of ordinary life, often just through the medium of conversations between the child and her parents. There are advantages and disadvantages to this method of learning.

When our children are small, we all of us probably do this sort of thing quite naturally. Our child might ask what some animal is and we tell them. As they grow older, children might begin to ask more complex questions such as, "Why do people fight wars?" or "Why is the Earth getting hotter?" or even perhaps, "Why are some people born blind?" These are all marvellous and unforced learning opportunities. As a personal example, I remember my daughter at the age of two or three pointing to a rat in the local park and saying interrogatively, "Squirrel?" What a brilliant chance that was to explain about mammals and rodents, herbivores and omnivores, arboreal and ground living animals and so on. Until the age of perhaps nine or ten, this is a fantastically effective and perfectly natural way of educating a child. As they grow a little older, a problem presents itself.

The minds of most adults are a jumble of half understood facts, vague ideas, popular misconceptions, prejudices and a ragbag of facts which we have picked up over the years and are often hopelessly out of date. Very few of us are able to be objective, even about the simplest subject. Of course, if we are just explaining how birds build their nests, it isn't that important if we get it a bit wrong. It is when we attempt to move on to more complex issues that the trouble can begin.

Take for instance the matter of nuclear power. Most people have opinions about this and I am guessing that many people reading this are more or less opposed to it; a common enough view. We muddle it up in our head with nuclear weapons, the CND, Hiroshima, dangerous radioactive waste and a whole lot of other stuff, much of it completely irrelevant to the generation of electricity by using a nuclear reactor. Very few of us have at our fingertips the facts about the proportions of the different isotopes of U238 and U235, the significance of these different isotopes, the actual mechanism of a reactor, the fuel cycle, the methods for storing and disposing of waste, the amount of radioactive exposure that we get from the background as opposed to other sources. The almost inevitable result is that if we are asked about nuclear power in the course of a casual conversation with our child, we will be unable to supply the facts. We are far more likely to trot out our own prejudices and misinformation.

I plead guilty at once to doing this myself and in fact it was noticing that I was doing so which made me realise that it was time for my daughter to study the writings of people who actually knew about these things, rather than be satisfied with some garbled and more or less inaccurate version served up by me.

Most of us have opinions which we have held for many years, often without re-examining them regularly in the light of new evidence. When my daughter actually began studying physics in earnest, I was shocked at the number of things which had changed since I last looked hard at the business. Even the fundamental particles were different! In fact much of what I had transmitted to her in the course of "informal learning" was at least thirty or forty years out of date! The only thing that she had been learning from me about many subjects was a lot of wrong headed nonsense that any sixteen year old would be able easily to refute. This was a sobering realisation.

The problem was, that if I simply left it for my daughter to ask questions or for various topics to be raised spontaneously in the course of ordinary conversation, then I would not be able to tell her the elementary facts that she needed to know. I had to know in advance what she would be "informally" learning, so that I could be sure of giving her the facts rather than misleading her with a lot of nonsense. It was for this reason that I began working out ahead of time what sort of things she might ask about, what she might want or need to know. This gave me a chance to acquire the books that she would need and for me to gen up on the subject myself. I dare say that many home educating parents do exactly the same as this. In effect, this is what a curriculum is; deciding roughly what sort of knowledge will be necessary or desirable and planning to be able to provide accurate information when the time comes.

The alternative is not attractive. It can entail children being limited by our own educational background and general knowledge, influenced by our own prejudices, handicapped by our own lack of understanding of certain aspects of the world. Unless we are keenly aware of this possibility and work to combat it, we risk ending up with children growing up to share our political views, tastes in literature, failure to grasp certain ideas, even our preferences in food and hairstyle! I cannot imagine a worse fate for any child than to be moulded like this in his parents' image.

14 comments:

  1. I think most parents who educate autonomously do so in the spirit of "I don't know either. I wonder how we can both find out?" I don't know any parents of autonomous HEing children who see their role as being that of providing definitive answers to their children's questions. As someone said earlier, it's a way of preserving the child's interest and empowering/enabling him/her to find answers for themselves within the plethora of information available.

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  2. I agree with Anonymous. I can't see how it would be possible or desirable to learn in advance everything my children will need to know, or to predict what that will be. My job is to enable them to be independent, lifelong learners. The world is changing so fast that if I was to choose what body of knowledge to impart to them, much of it would be out of date before they reach adulthood. I wouldn't be doing them any favours if I taught them that Mum has all the answers. My answer to many of their questions is "I don't know. Let's find out." My son understood this at the age of 3 when he asked me a question to which I didn't know the answer, and then said, "I know; we could look in a book." At the age of 17 he has 9 GCSE's, knows much more than I do about many subjects and is planning to study parasitology or genetics at university. He has also considered joining the army. He devises computer games, makes dance music mash-ups and is a keen athlete. As a pacifist with an arts degree who dislikes sport and dance music, I can safely say that I have not moulded him in my image.

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  3. Yes, I thought that many home educating parents would feel this way and actually do things in much the same way that I did. I suppose that my question really is this. If we as parents are constantly helping our children to find the relevant information in answer to their questions, and I assume that we all do, what objection can there be to directing their attention towards matters which they might not yet have considered? I am not talking here about some massively detailed body of knowledge which must be painstakingly stuffed in the kid's head. I am talking about having a general idea of what it would be desirable for a young person to know, maybe basic science, mathematics, current affairs and so on nad then directing the child's attention towards that end.

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  4. I've no objection to directing my children's attention towards areas of study. I also direct their attention towards toothbrushes, healthy food, physical exercise etc. But I'm not sure what this has to do with formal as opposed to informal learning. It is not a characteristic of "informal" learning that children are without guidance or direction.

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  5. I was thinking more about the contrast between those who reject the idea of a curriculum and those who feel it is wise to have at least some idea of what they hope to see their children learn.

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  6. Sorry, I'm losing track here. What is the connection between having an idea of what I want my children to learn and choosing formal or informal methods for them to learn it? Obviously I hope my kids will be literate and numerate, and able to direct their own learning. That doesn't mean that I have to give them formal literacy and numeracy lessons; rather the reverse, in fact.

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  7. The connection is that a key proposal of the Badman Report was that those educating their own children should submit a plan showing what they hoped that their children might be learning or achieving over the next twelve months. Many home educators have denounced this as tending to damage the whole idea of child led education and informal learning generally. I was just leading, admittedly in a roundabout and perhaps overly circuitous way, round to the point that most parents of home educated children do actually do this. I don't think that we disagree on this point.

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  8. Just a brief visit to point out this article, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6388655/They-wanted-to-take-away-our-child.html This is they sort of problem I foresee for home educators as a result of false positives through visits.

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  9. I'm afraid I do disagree with you. I have no idea what my kids will learn in the next year. To impose a curruculum on them would as you say be incompatible with their self-directed learning. (I must point out though that child led and informal are not the same. My kids have sometimes chosen to learn in a formal way, my older son's GCSE course being a good example.) And it would be impossible to predict with any accuracy at all what they are likely to learn. The only plan I could offer Mr Badman would say that my children plan to continue their self-directed education, and I plan to continue to facilitate them.

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  10. "The problem was, that if I simply left it for my daughter to ask questions or for various topics to be raised spontaneously in the course of ordinary conversation, then I would not be able to tell her the elementary facts that she needed to know."

    Why? Would she not be patient enough to wait whilst you looked things up in a book or on the internet? Encyclopaedias cover most topics in enough detail for younger children who may not want to wait long. Never found this to be a problem myself and learnt loads in the process.

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  11. When we started HE'ing 14 years ago, we read something by Roland Meighan where he talked about the old model of teaching (schools) being suited to an 'information-poor' society, where a few people knew a lot of stuff which they then taught to others. (Ideal for the Victorians.) But we now live in an information-rich era, don't we? Children need to be taught how to access the information they need.

    We used a curriculum, but as a servant, not a master. It gave us ideas which we used as springboards. I preferred to have a path from which to deviate, rather than no path, but that's just my personality.

    Things changed when we got to GCSE stage. It's frustrating to watch my kids learn stuff only in order to pass an exam and then do a very effective memory dump the next day, where they seem to lose everything they've learned because they no longer need it.

    Skills are retained if practiced. Information doesn't seem to be retained unless it's perceived as being useful.

    Mrs Anon

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  12. >>>>>>>>>>Unless we are keenly aware of this possibility and work to combat it, we risk ending up with children growing up to share our political views, tastes in literature, failure to grasp certain ideas, even our preferences in food and hairstyle! I cannot imagine a worse fate for any child than to be moulded like this in his parents' image. <<<<<<<<<<<

    Sorry, I just thought that was funny. Most teens I know are desperate to construct an identity which is distinct from their parents! It seems to be a primal urge.

    My husband has a background in the rock music industry. By the time my son was 7 he was asking for a tie for Christmas. {g}

    Mrs Anon

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  13. Well of course, as usual Mrs. Anon there is a good deal in what you say. Simone had to learn calculus for the IGCSE mathematics, a system that nobody bt an engineer or rocket scientist is likely to need after school! It is true that teenagers tend to rebel, but on the other hand I know many who vote labour simply because that's what their parents have always voted. Spending a great deal of your childhood with your parents as home educated children do, is bound to have an effect. I think this will extend to both what the children want to learn and also how they develop. I don't say it is a bad thing, simply that it happens.

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  14. >>>>>>>>>Spending a great deal of your childhood with your parents as home educated children do, is bound to have an effect. I think this will extend to both what the children want to learn and also how they develop. I don't say it is a bad thing, simply that it happens.<<<<<<<<<

    I wish it did work like that.

    Whilst there are some shared interests our family has (music for eg seems to be a family 'charism' passed on through many generations) and our shared Faith, neither of my kids have ANY interest in MY favourite/special interests: Literature and History.

    I tried as hard as I could to pass on a love of these subjects, but their interests lay elsewhere and I finally had to 'suck it up'. As my teens would say. LOL!

    Mrs Anon

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