Developing a Love for Learning
Introduction
When you think about your child at school, what do you picture?
Most sane parents picture their child smiling, engaging with their teacher and peers, lightbulbs always going off as they learn new things, connecting with old and new friends, getting opportunities to learn important life skills, working on creative projects, getting opportunities for hands on learning, exciting explorative field trips, and more. Ultimately, when most parents picture their child at school, they have a picture of their child absolutely loving being there, and loving the learning process.
Here at Tall Oaks, we are committed to developing a love of learning in children, and there are many practical ways that we will work to accomplish that large task. The purpose of this article is to explain the practicality of accomplishing this aim for the sake of awareness, but also so that parents can continue to be partners who can employ these practical methods as well!
Disclaimer: It is so important to understand just how complex topics of education can be. Sometimes we can overly simplify the process of educating children, when the reality is that we are dealing with the most complex living being that God created! It is amazing how many things we still don’t know about how the brain works and develops. On top of this ignorance, children develop differently from each other, there are an infinite number of environmental factors at work in children which change as children get older, there are physiological factors that constantly change, there are spiritual factors at work that sometimes manifest in obvious ways but sometimes remain hidden for long periods of time. Surely this not an exhaustive list of the complexities, but you get the idea. Educating children is difficult, challenging, complicated, messy, and will always have moments that don’t look “picture perfect.” This is true for any educational environment, whether at home or at school. The rest of this article is to lay out practical methods that we believe help all children develop love for learning, but is by no means exhaustive or a silver bullet.
5 Practical Methods for Developing a Love of learning
Cut with the grain of child development
The first thing we must understand is that all children are on a developmental trajectory that is generally common to all children. There are exceptions of course, but we don’t want to make the mistake of creating rules on the exceptions. Generally, it can be said that children go through three stages of child development that Dorothy Sayers coined as the poll-parrot, pert, and poetic stages. These stages have different implications for what children are more postured to be able to do. When we line up our methods and content with these stages of child development, we are teaching in line with the frame of our children. They are naturally good at what they are being asked to do, so learning becomes simplified and easier for children. When learning is simplified and easy, children begin to develop love for it. As we all know, we tend to love the things we are good at, so this just makes sense!
For example, in the classical tradition, we understand that children in the poll-parrot stage (Grades PK-5) tend to memorize at incredibly effective rates. It is common to hear children at this age compared to sponges, and it’s true! Because children are so good at memorizing, this is the prime opportunity to go with the flow of that stage of development and have kids memorize as much as they can and build up a foundation of knowledge, which they will pull from later on. Then, children at the pert stage (Grades 6-8) tend to want to argue and want to understand the “why” behind things. Many parents like to roll their eyes at this stage as children approach the early teenage years. However, instead of rolling our eyes, the classical tradition says, “Let’s roll with it!” If they are going to argue and want to understand things on a deeper level, let’s train them to do it well. At this stage, children will be formally trained in logic and will learn how to put arguments together using the foundational knowledge that they had already built up in the poll-parrot stage. Lastly, children then enter the poetic stage (Grades 9-12) and tend to have an increased desire to be respected and they become more aware of their self-image. It’s at this stage, then, that we begin to train children to be eloquent in how they write, speak, and present themselves. Training in all subject areas will have an emphasis not just on producing content, but in producing clear, articulate, and eloquent content.
One important nuance to these stages of child development is that the right use of these stages in educating children is somewhat blurred. It’s not black and white, but are rather stages where certain things are emphasized over others. For example, what happens when a child in 3rd grade who is at the poll-parrot stage begins to ask deeper questions about the logical reasoning behind certain things which would fall more in the realm of the pert stage? Should we shut them down and tell them that they will learn about that when they’re older? Of course not! So the nuance that must be understood with these three stages of development is that the skills of all stages are taught at all ages, but certain skills are more emphasized at the proper stages. So a child at the poll parrot stage will have an education that emphasizes building up a foundation of knowledge, but they will also have moments of logical discussions and dip their toes in communicating their ideas well at proper times.
Provide rich food to feed on
One of the most important things we can do for our children in developing a love for learning is giving them the best and most beautiful things in this world to feed on. This is an area where modern education tends to fail our children dramatically. In a system that focuses so much on test scores, hitting bench marks, and reaching standards, the content we are providing our children is pathetic. Or, as Charlotte Mason put it, “Twaddle.” The result is a student population that isn’t interested in learning, that must be coerced to accomplish any educational task through bribery, and who seeks to entertain themselves in other ways like blowing things up in the bathroom…
On the contrary, we want to engage the minds of students by feeding them the best. It’s the difference between egg whites versus egg yolks. The density of the yolk has many nutrients our bodies need, whereas the whites have some macronutrients, but have limited resources in terms of packing a nutrient punch. So as not to devolve into commenting too much on dietary recommendations, just know that our children need a rich, dense diet with lots of nutrients that grow and feed the mind.
One way in which Mason advocated for this in the realm of language arts is her concept of, “Living books.” This means that when we are choosing books that our children engage with, the books should be written well, spark curiosity and hold the child’s interest. Books should not be too easy or simply written so as to tell the reader exactly what they should be thinking. The best books and stories lead us to ask questions and spark ideas that can be discussed and talked about. It is in this sense that they are “living.” As children engage with living books, their ideas and thoughts come to life and guide discussion and lessons which may take a drastically different turn than originally planned by the teacher, and that’s just fine! Not only do living books spark curiosity and wonder in children, they give children a picture into what is good and beautiful and they begin developing a desire to seek out more of it. Once you know the taste of something that is truly beautiful, you can’t help but have an appetite for more and you certainly can’t go back to the slum!
Treat each child like a person
Fundamentally, Christians believe that each child is made in the image of God. They are created to be unique from anyone else around them and God has designed them with purpose. They are an individual with a personality and gifting all of their own, as intended by God to be used for His purpose. Because of this fundamental truth, we must not initially view children as something which needs to to be immediately molded or shaped. Certainly all of us have things within our fallen nature that must be pruned and removed out of love, but that’s not what we’re saying here. Children are gifts to us who are living persons that have been intentionally designed uniquely to accomplish God’s will. Therefore, when we look at children, we must have a sense of awe in the miracle of it all, that we are not here to shape and mold them into what we think they ought to become and do, but we are here to guide them into the things that God has uniquely intended for their life.
A part of seeing children as persons is trusting that they are naturally curious about the world. When we endeavor to educate them, we don’t need to be concerned with entertaining them as if they weren’t already curious about the world. How often it is in modern education trends to hear discussions about how to engage students. To accomplish this, we are turning to technology which is turning out to be the equivalent of death row for curiosity. Instead, we simply have to provide them with the right environment and tools to be able to allow their curiosity to run its course. Jack Beckman says, “The teachers desire is to so feed her students and whet their appetites that they will naturally value books and come to feed themselves.”
To clarify, we are not advocating for individualism which we don’t believe is biblical also believe leads to many mental health issues. The aim within this foundational belief is always fundamentally individualism under the lordship of Christ. Instead of letting children be whatever they want to be without limits, it is our responsibility to guide children to find their uniqueness in how God created them and to live under the authority of His purpose for them.
Discipline
Scripture shows us that discipline is done by those that love their children. We see this as true of our Father in heaven (Revelation 3:19), and this is also true of earthly parents (Proverbs 13:24). Discipline can, of course, take the shape of what we can commonly think of as corporal punishment or spanking which we believe is the role of the parent/guardian. However, it also takes the role of consequences for students that result from various choices they might make during a school day. Discipline also involves training and guiding, or correcting. The positions of Tall Oaks in regards to discipline is that we must be faithful to scripture, and disciplining out of love for a child is clearly a command. However, rather than wagging our finger from a position of moral authority, our motivation for discipline must come from a place of knowing what certain habits or sins leads to. When we see children caught in bad habits or sin, we grieve because we want all children to experience abundant life and not destruction. We don’t wag fingers. We believe that when discipline is done correctly, children will not necessarily “like” it, but they will understand it, and all studies show that children thrive when there are limits.
This leads us to the second consideration in regards to discipline, which is this, “…discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11). If you think back to your own education, there are times when you were required to do something or read something that, in the moment, was difficult and you didn’t necessarily like it, but later on you were immensely thankful for because of the fruit that it produced in you. Discipline and education is not always butterflies and roses. Sometimes it’s hard, challenging, strenuous, and it stretches us beyond what we may think we’re capable of. However, it is in these moments of challenge and difficulty that we come alongside our students and assure them that they can get through it, accomplish more than they think, and motivate them to not give up! This cheering on is the job of the teacher, administrator, and parent. This is an important point because sometimes when we think of developing a love of learning in children, we think that means that they always have to come home and say that they loved learning that day. While this will doubtlessly happen often, there are going to be periods of time when children are challenged and it doesn’t necessarily feel good in the moment. It is crucial in these moments that we don’t immediately conclude that something is wrong with the teacher or the school, but rather that the child needs to be supported in their time of stretching. There is something truly magical that happens when a child pushes through something that was immensely difficult for them, they succeed, and they taste the fruit of it. These are the moments in education that we live for!
“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” -Aristotle
Provide the right atmosphere
When we think about education, we don’t understand it as the process of passing on information from one person to the next. It is not the process of packing as much information in a brain as possible. While information is a part of education, it is shortsighted to understand education in its entirety. Rather, we understand that children don’t just receive information, but they absorb everything around them. In other words, they absorb or take on the atmosphere around them.
In thinking about this, the atmosphere we provide for our kids must look as close to what positive healthy life looks like. Images we can often have in our minds of schools look more like prisons than actual places to live and experience life. Unfortunately, these images are not just limited to our minds and often are reality in some schools or classrooms. This is not to say that there isn’t a time and place for desk work or for students to be orderly and proper. This is absolutely necessary at times. However, a school should be a living place and look like such. This also goes for the relationships that are built at the school. At Tall Oaks, we understand that relationships play a massive role in the development of a love of the learning process. We believe it is important to create time and space for positive relationships to grow and continually be watered throughout the school year. In fact, we don’t believe that real learning that lasts can happen outside the context of positive relationships with teachers and peers.
While there are many other considerations for things that can be done to develop a love of learning in children, these are five major pillars that we will be implementing at Tall Oaks for our students. As you can probably notice, there are so many nuances and complexities to these things, but the overall aim is always to develop a love for learning in our students. Because of how complex this can be, we always advocate for clear communication and partnership with parents. This is why our mission statement begins with, “Partnering with Christian parents…” It takes a village to support our children and raise a generation well!
