Kids have to own learning. To hold on to it, to connect it, to love it and launch from it – they do. Learning without love isn’t learning; it’s production. It’s not freedom; it’s indenture. It’s not an awakening; it’s a sedation.
Why, I wonder, do we stop seeing kids as creatures who were born to learn and, instead, start seeing them as born to be taught?
Especially now when access provides kids with opportunities to learn so much more than schools could ever hope to deliver, when kids now have a freedom to learn that schools are more and more going to be competing against, how do we stem that shift?
How about this: find one interest, one passion in each child and, regardless of the subject, let them learn. Engage them. Encourage them. Nudge them into places the curriculum can’t follow and, as Chad suggests, make room for the perhaps unexpected learning that may well sustain them much more than the teaching we’ve prepared for them.
Just one thing.