Forcing a junior high child to sit chained to a desk eight hours a day, doing inane and pointless busy work, dribbling stuff they don't care about onto a piece of paper, is, in my mind, child abuse.
What a 12-year-old child wants to do, with all of his or her heart, is to explore the world in which they live. A child wants to make things, to work with his hands, to experience things. A child wants to fix a car, build a go-cart, cut mommy's hair, make a dress, build a dog house, grow some funny looking gourds, plant some flowers, ride a horse, spend a day deep-sea fishing, work a sail-boat, build a canoe, go fishing with Grandpa, show a steer at the fair.
In today's ridiculous mentality, a boy helping his dad build a go-cart is not "in school," but a child, dribbling pointless C-grade work onto a piece of paper is "getting an education."
Go figure!
Yes, disciplined academic learning is important to education. But academic learning separated from purpose does not really exist. Sure, the kid scrawled something on the paper. But the next day he forgot all of it.
Project-led learning is weaving the disciplined academic stuff around projects valuable to life. Valuable to life is critical. When I was in school, I hated the "projects" we were given in the classroom. Why? They were fake. It's not the same for all kids, but for me, a fake project was worse then listening to a dull lecture.
For example, a small garden plot could serve as an educational project, worked for the value of the family eating good homegrown food. All of the academic elements can be woven into that project, botany, soil science, business planning, even marketing the extra tomatoes, writing a journal, design and layout, math, the list goes on.
Don't overdo the academic stuff, though, or else it all becomes "fake." But when the work has value and purpose, especially that twenty bucks from selling the extra tomatoes, the learning is real and it stays.
But there should always be a variety of projects, especially at the junior high level. A project that is too large can consume all a child's time with the repetition - of weeding, or sanding, or whatever. A child needs to experience the world, intimately, with purpose and value, and with constant variety.
That is education. The stuff in the desk? Sad to say, a large part of it is simply a waste of a child's life.
Author Info:
A different model of education is at the core of what http://www.yguide.org is about. If you want to learn more about Project-Led Learning, visit us at http://www.yguide.org and click on "The Home School" to the left. Please sign up for The Home School Newsletter or take the surveys, I would love to hear of your experience with learning projects that are valued and that teach.
Copyright 2008 by YGuide. Freely use without changes, including links.
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