Stop Learning Children, It's Time To Go Back To School

At the end of Christmas break, my son, a Freshman in High School, said something profound.  He told me that he was "sad that school's starting because learning's going to stop now."  Ouch! As an educator, that one stings. But, I immediately knew there was something to this.  I knew generally what he was talking about because he had been putting together some spreadsheets and spending a lot of time on iTalki taking Spanish lessons with one teacher from Mexico and another from Venezuela during his Christmas break.

Now a month later, I asked him a couple follow up questions about this.

1) What did you mean when you said now that school is starting, learning has to stop.  What is "school" and what is "learning?"

His answer:

• School is learning about stuff other people want you to learn.
• Learning is about what you want to learn and what you like.

2) Do you think "school" has value?

Yes, school is important when you are learning to think critically.

3) So, what specifically is not valuable about school?

Just memorizing stuff. Like I had to memorize the spelling of a word or chemicals on the periodic table but I don't remember that later.  When they talk about what the periodic table means and how to use it, that is useful.

Short-term memorization has the least value.  If they tell you, "we are having a quiz in two days," and I have to memorize for it, I'm not going to remember that stuff.

If you have to know things in order to do other things, then "school" is important.  In Spanish class, if I learn a word for a test, it doesn't stick, however, if I have to remember it for a story or a conversation, it is more useful and I'm going to remember it.

My Takeaway

Facts are not learning and kids see right through it when we try to have them memorize seemingly unconnected discrete facts. Connecting facts in a way that allows for the transfer of facts into "understandings" (as defined by Wiggin and McTighe in their 2005 book "Understanding By Design") is the essence of what education is supposed to be.  Designing our schools, and the classes inside those schools, around bigger questions that transfer into other content areas, and into life, will lead to better student engagement and deeper understandings that matter to our students.