This is from the collection of my reflections on three selected phrases from each chapter of John Holt’s book; Learning all the time. An online version of the book could be found here.
Book: Learning All the Time
Author: Holt, John Cardwell, 1923-1985
Length: 169 pages
Published by: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
Year of Publication: 1989
Edition: Eight, August 1995
ISBN: 0-201-55091-1
Chapter 5: What Parents Can Do
Phrase 1:
Some would say, "We do not help if we do nothing or say nothing to facilitate Learning." But that is the point. Just by our using the language ourselves, we give the child all the help she needs. Because other people called some of these animals "horses" or "sheep" instead of "cows," this little child learned, and very quickly, that this is what they were called. In short, we do not need to "teach" or "correct" in order to help a child learn. [para 2, page 138]
My younger son at 18-months of age, used to call every bird “chia” in Urdu. Then with time, he started distinguishing crows and pigeons. Later on, though pigeons still remained “chia”, the crow became “kuwa”.
I believe we all know and accept that children learn their native language without being made to learn. However, we probably think that it is a lengthy process and we could make the learning fast if we correct them and make them learn new words through a guided process. In this effort, we overlook at the other side of the picture where the self interest, curiosity, and willingness of knowing on their own dies in the child.
Phrase 2:
It is always, without exception, better for a child to figure out something on his own than to be told... In the first place, what he figures out, he remembers better. In the second place, and far more important, every time he figures something out, he gains confidence in his ability to figure things out. [para 3, page 138]
The confidence a child gains through his observation, hypothesis, experiment, and evaluating his hypothesis through results of experiments is a valuable thing to shape his personality. People lacking confidence, no matter how skillful and knowledgeable they are, remain hesitant, cautious and low risk taking in their later life. The right time for sowing the seed of confidence in a child starts from his early childhood and it is done by giving freehand, opportunities of expression, absence of coercion and some recognition to what the child loves to do.
Phrase 3:
What children want and need from us is thoughtful attention. They want us to notice them and pay some kind of attention to what they do, to take them seriously, to trust and respect them as human beings. They want courtesy and politeness, but they don't need much praise. [para 4, page 140]
In our schools, it is probably the exact inverse which is done. Children are never given time and opportunity to do what they love to do, their resulting products are hardly taken seriously. Many of them are disrespectfully treated without paying any attention to what the child feels about when he is treated like that. Courtesy and politeness are only shown with good graders. Those not being ranked high in evaluation receive disgrace, shame and distrust both from their teachers and parents. And the only thing which the schools are keen about is giving so many praises. Even in giving praise, schools overlook the matter that a child getting praise in everything he does, actually starts having a fear of failure as he may not be praised then.
Too much praise unintentionally sets high expectations from the child. This creates undue performance pressure on the child which prevents him from devising creative alternate ways of doing things.
As parents, we need to take interest in interests of our children. In fact, there are so many lessons for the adults to take from the nature and attitude of a young non-school going kid. Children are born with talents and qualities at finest levels but the adults around them make them impure.
Children are remarkably creative by nature. They are self-directed, self-motivated, risk taking learners. They have interest in everything new to them. They learn through imitation, which is the best way of learning without books, lectures and tools. They are energetic, never shy to experiment, learn from their own practicals and keep challenging them with more harder situation next time. My elder kid at 5, used to have self-play with a tennis ball throwing it up in the air and catching it. Once he had few successful catches, he started throwing the ball 3-4 feet higher - thus making the challenge tough. Kids polish their skills by making challenges harder for themselves. Whereas, most of the adults keep staying inside their comfort zones, they are resistant to change, they are slow learners of new technologies, they mostly need to be motivated by others before they taking risks. Sadly, we make our naturally creative and confident children a creature identical to us.
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