Kids Learn Best When They are Young

That’s the excuse for younger and younger compulsory attendence laws in public school. And it’s also a comment that irritates the hell out of me.

For starters, children are natural learners. They learn to crawl, walk, play all without help. They even undergo the complicated task of learning to speak an entire language without lessons, simply by doing it one sound, one word, one sentence at a time. We don’t go around correcting a 1 year olds grammar but they inevitably learn proper grammar, simply through practice and hearing others speak. We don’t sit an 18 month old down and drill into them what is an apple and what is a chair. They hear it once, then they hear it again, then they start to see that every time you hold up that red, round, yummy thing you say “apple”. Kids are natural learners. Period.

So does anyone stop and wonder why it seems kids stop learning so well around the age of 7-10? Why is it they stop asking those relentless and interesting questions about the sky or the bugs or the people or the world around them?

Not sure? Let me enlighten you: Because that is when we try to intervene in their learning! We send them to school to “smarten them up” and instead end up creating drones. We interupt the natural process of learning and inject our version of what we think learning is or should look like. We get in their way! The very process of “teaching” stops a child from really learning. Kids aren’t learning anymore; they are “memorizing” and “appeasing” their parents/teachers/principal. Thus, natural learning begins to wane and is eventually lost. Private, public, or homeschools all work on the basis that kids need to learn how to learn.

But look at unschoolers, kids that are never formally “taught” anything in the conventional sense of “teaching”. Kids that are allowed to come to a subject when ready, are introduced to new things but never forced into them, kids that have the freedom to spend hours upon days upon weeks upon years on one subject and a mere five minutes on the next.

Unschoolers (generally) do not lose that “natural learning” ability. Not only do they always love learning but they are quicker learners too. Why? Because kids (people) are natural learners, until we screw it up! Some unschoolers may not learn to read or do math or some other subjects until 10 or 12 or 14 years old, but when they decide to do it, it is often easy and fast. They pick it up like second nature, because learning still is second nature. When learning just remains a by-product of a happy, productive life, the learning never ends.

It’s sort of like the phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen”. Basically, you need to stay the hell out of your child’s kitchen or else you risk messing up their stew.

So what does a child (person) need to learn? First, they need love and encouragement (not to be confused with pressure or nagging). They need to feel safe in their environment and have access to new things and money to afford them. They need help when they request it and space otherwise. They need acceptance when they choose to pass on your favorite childhood book. They probably also need an internet connection.

That’s about it folks. Love, encouragement, opportunity and internet. And you could probably do without the internet (although I wouldn’t suggest it).