Sunday 12 September 2010

A possible motive for not teaching a child

For many of us, what we call the 'motives' for our actions are often nothing of the sort. Rather, we make a decision subconsciously, often based upon primitive and irrational impulses, and then afterwards justify our resulting actions by constructing an elaborate intellectual explanation which makes no reference at all to our initial gut feelings. We might for example find the taste and even the texture of meat is disgusting to us and makes us feel sick. This is the instinct. Later, after we have decided not to eat it, we construct an intellectual basis for this instinctive disgust based upon the ethics of the thing and call it an ideology such as vegetarianism. Many belief systems arise in this way, beginning as a simple desire or dislike and then becoming codified and provided with an apparently logical foundation.

When my daughter was seven, I used to enjoy her company enormously. I still do enjoy being with her, but when she was little it was an absolute delight. I cheerfully spent days with her, roaming the countryside, visiting London, playing games, simply revelling in her company. I disliked telling her what to do or imposing any discipline upon her, because then that tended to alter the simple, joyful relationship. I would much sooner have been her playmate than her teacher. This is what I mean by an instinctive, primitive feeling. This desire simply to take pleasure in her company and be damned to the consequences was very powerful. It was an essentially selfish craving though. I was gaining great pleasure from being with her and just doing the things that she liked. True, she was happy too and it sometimes seemed that the best thing for her was to allow her to enjoy this fleeting and ephemeral present happiness and not fret about what would happen when she was fifteen or twenty.

Of course, being a middle aged man, I knew perfectly well that an entire lifestyle for my child based upon nothing more than her childish wishes would not necessarily be an good for her when she was older. Days spent wandering round the countryside having picnics and making bows and arrows certainly have their place in a happy childhood, but if that is all there is too it then the adolescent who results from this way of life might be an ignorant one who is ill equipped for life in a modern, industrial society. True, I taught my daughter a skill passed down to me by my father on these expeditions; how to make a bow and arrow from young branches, but that's not likely to be much use in today's world!

Now there were plenty of ideological grounds upon which I could have continued this lifestyle every day. She was certainly learning about different kinds of tree and animal. I told her about farming and the water cycle, all kinds of useful things in fact. To continue living and raising my daughter like this every day would have been dishonest though. The real reason that I wanted to carry on all the time in that way had nothing to do with her education and everything to do with my own wishes, especially my wish to be her companion and not her adult teacher. Besides, we got on much better when I wasn't telling her what she should be doing and allowed her to set the pace.

Had I allowed my daughter's life to develop in that way, it would have been a purely selfish choice, because I wished to have a certain kind of relationship with her and follow a particular lifestyle. I don't doubt that I could have used sophistry to justify such a course, but it would have been intellectually dishonest.

Now that my daughter is seventeen, both she and I have very happy memories of the afternoons and entire days that we spent simply doing stuff for the sake of it. Because of the path which she is currently pursuing though, she is even more glad that I trained her to sit down quietly at a table for an hour at a time and study one subject rigorously. That skill will stand her in good stead, no matter what she chooses to do with her future life. The ability to distinguish different toadstools has not proved to be as useful in her life today; about as useful in fact as the ability to make a bow and arrow! The desire to be friends and companions to our children, rather than parents and teachers, is a very seductive one. It is a desire though which, for our children's sake, we must resist. The child of a paleolithic hunter gatherer might be able to acquire by means of casual conversation while roaming through the forest and fields, all that is necessary to equip her for her future life; a twenty first century child in modern Europe will almost certainly not.

20 comments:

  1. Do you ever wonder what choices Simone might have made, or be making now, if you hadn't imposed that teaching on her?

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  2. Is anyone actually claiming that a child acquires all that is necessary to equip her for her future life by means of casual conversation while roaming through the forest and fields?

    Paleolithic hunters were skilled toolmakers; perfecting the technique to make a good flint arrowhead or axe would have taken hundreds, if thousands of hours of practice. If one was a paleolithic hunter, one would have had considerable incentive to learn to make good tools because without them one would be likely to starve/not have any clothes to wear.

    It doesn't follow that casual conversation while roaming through the forest and fields doesn't have a place in education. Many ideas that have changed the world have been formulated in exactly those circumstances. But in my experience, left to their own devices, most children's curiosity gets the better of them, and they end up spending hours on the internet or with their heads stuck in books looking for answers, or asking endless questions during the casual conversation while roaming through the forest and fields that require some pretty robust research when one gets home.

    You cannot conclude, because you trained your daughter to sit down quietly at a table for an hour at a time and study one subject rigorously, that she wouldn't have done so of her own accord eventually, nor that she had to do that to learn what she did. As CS Lewis reminds us, we will never know what might have happened.

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  3. Do you think people are incapable of rigorous study unless they've been 'trained' in it from early childhood? Do you believe that rigorous study is the most important skill for children to learn? And are you suggesting that it is impossible to educate children properly without making them do things things they don't want to do?

    I was trained rigorously in academic study and in music. My parents' expectation was that I would either pursue a career which required a high level of academic qualifications, or become a professional musician. I enjoyed playing music and studying certain subjects, but the rigorous training put me off completely. I was an extremely rebellious teenager. I have not played music for 30 years, and I have never used my qualifications. I had a successful career in the creative arts, for which I was completely unqualified beyond barely scraping a pass in O level Art.

    I know a couple of people who did very badly at school and left as soon as they could (or much sooner, in one case!) who are doing OU degrees and getting around 90% for every assignment.

    I know some young people who were autonomously home educated, never 'trained' to study rigorously, and are now doing university degrees.

    I could conclude from my personal experience that training in rigorous study will almost certainly put a child off for life, and that persistent truanting from the age of 12 is better preparation for future academic success.

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  4. ' imposed that teaching on her?'

    Excellent expression! The difference really is not between 'imposing' and not 'imposing' teaching, but between planned and effective teaching and haphazard and random teaching.

    My daughter did not ask at the age of five or six to be taught the difference between an oak leaf and a beech. This is just the sort of information which adults often dispense gratuitously. Nor did she ask me to teach her how to make a bow and arrow or explain about ploughing and crop rotation. Throughout all our exploration of the countryside, there was just as much teaching taking place as if she had been sitting staring at a blackboard. This is what some refer to as 'purposive conversation'. It is actually teaching. As far as I am able to apprehend, it is fine to teach a child by voluntering inforamtion in this way, but to sit her down at a table and tell her stuff is a different ball game entirely. I have no idea what the difference is between these two activities, other than the fact that one can be tricked out as not teaching.

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  5. 'Is anyone actually claiming that a child acquires all that is necessary to equip her for her future life by means of casual conversation while roaming through the forest and fields?'

    You should read about what Alan Thomas calls the 'informal curriculum'! This is precisely how he thinks children can learn.

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  6. 'Do you think people are incapable of rigorous study unless they've been 'trained' in it from early childhood? Do you believe that rigorous study is the most important skill for children to learn? And are you suggesting that it is impossible to educate children properly without making them do things things they don't want to do? '

    No, no and yes, probably.

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  7. 'You should read about what Alan Thomas calls the 'informal curriculum'! This is precisely how he thinks children can learn.'

    Of course children can learn this way. I don't recall Alan Thomas claiming that they can learn *everything* they need to equip them for future life, though.

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  8. "This is just the sort of information which adults often dispense gratuitously. Nor did she ask me to teach her how to make a bow and arrow or explain about ploughing and crop rotation."

    But did you ask her what she wanted to learn, ever? Did you ever say: "Do you want to know more about this?" and allow her to say no, and did you stop "dispensing information gratuitously" if she did?

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  9. God forbid that anyone should value the building of happy relationships and mutual respect over the acquisition of a set sequence of facts!

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  10. "'You should read about what Alan Thomas calls the 'informal curriculum'! This is precisely how he thinks children can learn.'

    Of course children can learn this way. I don't recall Alan Thomas claiming that they can learn *everything* they need to equip them for future life, though."

    I have Thomas' books in front of me. Looking at his most recent, How Children Learn at Home, 2007, he says on page 141;

    'How do those whose learning is informal acquire an education on a par with that provided by schools but with very little of the structure associated with learning at school.'

    He goes on to claim that conversation with parents over the course of everyday life can, without 'curriculum, planned teaching, structured lessons or even clear goals' allow children to learn as much as those who have been to school. In other words, the claim here is that simple conversation with parents and others, unplanned and haphazard, can give a child a perfectly well rounded education at least as good as that furnished by school.

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  11. 'God forbid that anyone should value the building of happy relationships and mutual respect over the acquisition of a set sequence of facts!'

    I am far from convinced that these are mutually exclusive goals!

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  12. "The difference really is not between 'imposing' and not 'imposing' teaching, but between planned and effective teaching and haphazard and random teaching."

    Ruling out "effective", for that is surely what we are meant to be talking about here and is therefore a circular argument, is the difference between "planned" and "haphazard" really more important than imposed (coerced) or unimposed (autonomous) learning?

    If so, upon what argument or evidence do you base this assertion?

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  13. I said: 'God forbid that anyone should value the building of happy relationships and mutual respect over the acquisition of a set sequence of facts!'

    Simon replied: 'I am far from convinced that these are mutually exclusive goals!'

    Indeed. But, you know what, I reckon it's perfectly possible to be a 'friend and companion' as well as a 'parent and teacher'. Perhaps the difference between us is that I don't see the need for the teacher role to exclude that of friend and companion.

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  14. which is better a state school education or a private education Webb? yea or no will do my guess is you wont say

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  15. 'the claim here is that simple conversation with parents and others, unplanned and haphazard, can give a child a perfectly well rounded education at least as good as that furnished by school.'

    You're confusing purposive education with unstructured education; that's a bit like confusing a set of wheels with a whole car. The claim is that unstructured education can do this, not purposive conversation alone.

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  16. Re Alan Thomas, I think if you read the intro, you'll discover that he says he can only comment on children up to 11 or 12, i.e. primary-level education. I would agree with him that informal learning is perfectly serviceable until then.

    Most of our education continued informally after that, including learning some Russian and Japanese and robotics. The main formal teaching involved in our home education has been via the OU. As the parent, I have been the facilitator of that study, not the teacher.

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  17. I should have said, you're confusing purposive *conversation* with unstructured education.

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  18. Or even informal learning, as Thomas calls it. Sorry, typing this while informally helping child learn French!

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  19. ' you'll discover that he says he can only comment on children up to 11 or 12, i.e. primary-level education. I would agree with him that informal learning is perfectly serviceable until then.'

    I can't see anything like that. Which page is this on? I have to say that Thomas does not seem to offer muh evidence for the benefits of this style of education beyond the age of three or four. He mentions Tizzard and Hughes, which is good evidence for the advantages of conversation with small children. He then goes on to say;

    ' Little is known about how far conversation might continue to offer the same benfits afetr reaching school age'. this sums it up!

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  20. 'which is better a state school education or a private education Webb? yea or no will do my guess is you wont say'

    I am in favour of home education and not at all keen on schools. I understood that you were educating your son at home and cannot see what private education has to do with the case.

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