What if there were truly opportunities to learn? For its own sake, for the sheer joy of it, for something other than for earning a score, a win, or for performing or promoting something. What if you could send your daughter to learn ballet for its own glorious sake? The arabesques, pliés, grande jetés—all danced in a simple black leotard with others who marvel that their arms and legs can take on such exquisite lives of their own. What if you could send your son to learn football for the joy of playing it? Running, kicking, carrying the ball—or not—all amidst teammates who fall into breathless, spent heaps at the end of each play.
What if your daughter didn’t have to buy multiple (expensive) costumes for the end-of-year recital, the recital which is the driving force behind every practice from the very first day, the recital which is the be-all- and-end-all? What if your son didn’t have to worry about the game in which some would show off what they’d learned and could do, while others (many others) would sit the bench, their hands in their laps, their dreams on hold?
Don’t get me wrong: there is surely a time and place for performance and competition. And clearly there are those who take lessons or attend practices because they want to take the stage or the field. But there are also those who do not. They would like nothing more than to learn for the sake of learning. To revel in the process. To purely enjoy the experience and the people sharing it.
When I was in elementary school, I wanted to learn to play the piano, so that I could sit by myself and play the songs I loved. I could think of nothing better than holing up in our music/sewing room where I could sing and play the entire Sound of Music repertoire to my heart’s end. When I learned that there would be a recital—gasp—at the end of the school year, my dream began to wither. During weeks to come, I agonized over every practice piece as if it could be the piece, the recital piece. At night, I had previously imagined my fingers floating over the keys as if they knew instinctively where to go to make beautiful music. But now, I could only see visions of recital disasters to come: I would trip as I made my way to the piano; I would forget the very first note and would sit in dumb fear as the audience awkwardly looked on; I would fly through my piece, my fingers congealing in a tangled, sweaty mess of disharmony. When I realized that performance was the end goal, things sadly changed for me.
As I watch my grandchildren navigate their way through childhood, I am even more painfully aware that there are few—if any—opportunities to learn for the sake of learning. The performance is the thing. The game is the real goal. I have found myself thinking about where a child could go to learn to dance, to play music or sports without the expectation of performing or competing? Is there such a place? Are there such people who offer these opportunities? Perhaps not. Sadly, most parents want to see the finished product, to get something for their time and money. They want a public showing with costumes and uniforms, accolades and talk of artistic and athletic futures. Many want to live vicariously through their children who may or may not want what their parents so desperately want for them.
If someone were to advertise lessons or practices during which kids could learn new skills, practice them for an hour with other like-minded peers, then pack up and go home, would this “sell”? Or would people scoff and declare these people crazy for thinking such programs would actually succeed?
And what about academic learning? It, too, is largely geared with the end in mind: the test, the final paper or project. After all, educators must measure student learning, must evaluate who has learned what and when. If I had a dollar for every student who said, “will this be on the test?” I would be a very, very rich woman today. Because in their eyes, the test is all that matters. For the most part, learning is superfluous. And they have come by this belief naturally, for to a great degree, we have instilled it into them since they first entered the school doors.
Consider the eager kindergartener who has nervously but excitedly anticipated the start of school. During the second week, she is tested and found “behind” already. The phone call goes home offering (actually requesting permission for) special services for a child who has been determined at-risk. Before she could even begin to learn how to read, she has been tested and found wanting. She performed poorly, and the test verifies this. And so it begins: years of learning measured by tests.
Again, I understand the necessity of measuring learning. Having taught for 41 years, I spent more hours than I care to remember with a red pen in hand, head bent over a stack of student essays. There were so many occasions, however, when I desperately wished that I could put down the pen, push the writing rubric aside, and simply read for the sake of reading what another had written. I couldn’t help but wondering how my student writers felt. Were their essays truly the products of all they had learned or were they merely attempts to produce what they believed was expected? I knew the answer, but it wasn’t the one I wanted it to be.
In my years as an educator, I read and heard professionals and peers mourn the passing of curiosity, the death of any genuine desire to learn. Truthfully, most of my students had held funeral services for such things long before they left elementary school. Since then, they were merely complying. Learning for its own sake was a luxury they simply couldn’t afford. They set their sights, as they must, on accruing credits, maintaining or raising GPAs, and making acceptable (or in some cases, exceptional) scores on standardized tests.
Years ago when one of my daughters was a preschooler, I stood behind a one-way mirror and watched her learning in her Montessori classroom. For days when I quizzed her about what she had learned at preschool, she answered matter-of-factly, “I washed the baby.” Really, I thought. No tracing letters on worksheets? No counting to 20? But there in front of me was living proof of her claims. She walked to a shelf and removed a tray that held a small plastic tub, a baby doll, a pitcher, and a sponge. As other children chose their own activities, she carried the tray to a table, took the pitcher to a small sink, filled it to the designated line, carried it back to the table, poured it into the tub, and submerged the baby into the water. Then she proceeded to wash the baby. I stood amazed as she washed and washed and washed, fully intent upon scrubbing until she was satisfied that the baby was clean. Wholly absorbed in her work, she took no notice of her peers who were busily sorting colored beads, building towers, and pouring navy beans from one container to another. And then she was done. She carried the tub to the sink, poured out the bath water, placed the tub on the tray, and returned everything to its rightful spot on the shelf.
Dr. Maria Montessori, an Italian physician, opened her first school, Casa dei Bambini (Children’s House) in 1907. She was a passionate advocate of child-led, hands-on learning, much of which took place during long, uninterrupted periods of time. This “freedom within limits” is a trademark of the Montessori method. Dr. Montessori argued that children could sustain their focus on learning and practicing a task if they were given choices, relevant tasks, and time. Even as I write this, I cringe as I think of many teachers and coaches who are now rolling their eyes and muttering, “Yeah, right. If your kid washes the baby for days, this will really teach her how to read and do math. And get into a good college? Forget it.”
I am acutely aware that our current educational systems, as well as our athletic and artistic programs, are designed to reflect what we believe is most efficient, practical, and necessary for success in today’s world. Kids must get a leg-up before kindergarten, so they enter with an early skill set, so they’ve mastered letter and number recognition, can write their name, sit and listen without disrupting others, and generally function as good classmates. If they are interested in sports or the arts, they must learn to practice and perform, to take criticism early, to be selected—or not. And all of this training, testing, and performing on stages, athletic fields, and tests goes on and on and on. A seemingly endless progression of proving oneself before a jury of their peers, their teachers and coaches.
We do it this way because we believe it works. We believe that it produces the best dancers and football players, the best readers and problem-solvers. What if we were to seriously rethink our systems? What if there were ways to authentically differentiate learning by offering better and more choices? What if competition and performance were choices, not expectations for all? I understand that most teachers and coaches are doing their very best within the systems and programs they’ve inherited and are expected to use. But common-sense dictates that no one—and I mean NO ONE—can meet the intellectual, emotional, and physical needs of every child in a one-size-fits-all system with one-size-fits-all expectations. Almost every school or program has a mission statement that reads something like, Meeting the needs of every child, every day. Nice words that are often sadly nothing more than lipstick on a pig.
I wish that I lived in a world in which 6-year-olds could choose to participate in a flag football program that allows them to learn the skills and rules of the game without expecting them to already know them and without expecting them to compete. These types of programs would not be for everybody, I know. Still, they would be wonderful alternatives for those who dream of learning to play for its own sake. And if their parents wanted to see if they were getting their money’s worth? Well then, they could sit on the sidelines with a good cup of coffee and watch their kids learn–running and falling and giggling as they go.
