Children and Education
by Tony Samara
The question is: The new ways of dealing with education, such as home-schooling and alternative schools; are these new methods, or other different methods that help children to be educated, better than the old system of schooling?
This is very difficult to answer in a general way simply because each child is different, just as each human being is different. Some children learn under certain circumstances much better than others; other children, if you try the same alternative or free method, simply just lose interest because there is not enough challenge or they don’t comprehend that way of learning in the same way as a more direct and more thorough way of teaching.
So, the quick answer to this question is that there is no perfect method, there is no perfect system, as in the end it really depends on the child and it depends on the person teaching. The character of the person teaching will influence the method and the way it’s being taught. I would say though, if there is one very important thing to remember, it is that inactivity or a lack of stimulation for children, in any sense, in an educational sense or also in an emotional sense, or in a more general sense, only creates boredom, which then creates frustration and that allows for the child to, not only not learn, but to get into a space where there is a sense of apathy. With apathy they lose that sense of awe that happens when children are totally fascinated by what is going on.
Children have a natural and innate ability to want to know and understand things all the time in every way, but that is lost if it’s not fed, just like anything else – if there is no interaction in any emotional way or social way then something is lost. So for me, the first thing when it comes to education is that learning is important and never to lose the feeling that learning has value.
Also not to learn simply because it’s important to get a qualification, that it is important for your child to pass an exam, or learn certain things at a certain age, but to stimulate the learning process so that the value of education is seen as, not only important for the child, but as part of growing up in every sense; and that everything is education; that education is not just learning mathematics for half an hour or learning to read for one hour at school, but every activity is education and then you create that sense of challenge.
