I LOVE learning. I was going to say almost anything, but that isn't technically true... so I'll say I have a hugely diverse array of subjects I love to learn. Gemini sun with ADHD over here. I play with math the way most people play with fidget spinners, just for something to do. I've been called a walking dictionary since I learned to read. I can check the spelling of spell check and usually the grammar of the corrections most programs suggest. Etymology and linguistics are fascinations of mine. I love making corsets and costuming, not because I particularly enjoy sewing, but because I enjoy the geometry of drafting patterns from scratch, and of course creating beautiful things. I consume books like popcorn, usually reading several at once, and am currently working out of 9 notebooks, three of which i use daily and the rest of which I am hoping to get copied over to this here blog or into my course offerings or onto social media ASAP. 

You know what I hate? A cage. I despise taking orders. I rebel instinctively against expectations. In classic Questioning Rebel fashion, I can't even tell myself what to do, unless I actually want to do it or can convince myself its truly necessary. (If you haven't read The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin, I highly recommend it. It's a quick and super insightful read.) If I write "sweep the kitchen" in my to-do list for a specific day, you can bet I will NOT be doing THAT. I might wash the walls and the dishes and the cars, rake the yard, clean the oven, and Marie Kondo my closet, but unless the floor actually looks like it needs swept, I won't do it. And chances are, if it needs swept, I won't write it in a future to-do list, I will just sweep it when I notice. 

Two other things I CANNOT stand? Bribes and threats. Rewards and punishments. Rewards/bribes disgust me and make me pity the person offering puppy treats, and threats or actual punishments set off my survival fight or flight instincts with a hearty dose of anger. And all of that happens BEFORE I can objectively decide whether I want the reward, can manage the punishment, or whether the task itself is worth doing of its own merit.

You know who else is endlessly curious and loves learning? Who also despises coercion and bribery, and can see it a mile away? Kids. All children, who have not been trained or injured out of it, or have healed from such things, feel just like me. 

Side note: Yes, i just called myself a child. No, I have no plans to grow up. It's all Neverland over here.

What about you? What about your children? Do you LOVE learning? Are you one of the few who believe they are good, or even passable, at math? Do you read for pleasure, or the pleasure of learning? Why not?

I can tell you why not. Its either because you were forced to do it against your will, without your interest or consent, and/or because you received enough rewards for doing it that you have no interest in whatever you must do to get the reward, only the reward itself.

Compulsory schooling destroys learning in many ways.

The most obvious of which is by triggering those of us who are defiantly independent, the other ways are more insidious. Following a predetermined curriculum, which we call teaching and have created a gigantic jobs project out of, numbs the intrinsic motivation for learning in (at least) two ways. The first is by dimming, if not totally darkening, any curiosity a student might feel by deciding in advance and usually without the student's input, what to learn, when, and how much. 

Example: No matter how much Debbie loves dinosaurs, math is still after lunch, and after this week's dinosaur unit, she will have to wait until next year before the science curricula spirals back around to her beloved dinosaurs.

The second part is by circumventing any chance of a student feeling a sense of discovery, of following their curiosity and finding out where it leads. This happens because an externally predetermined curriculum offers most of its information when a student has no curiosity for that particular information, but must memorize it anyway and will therefore never feel any ownership over that learning. It kills their curiosity because they learn that there isn't time for their interests, there is only time for the curriculum, and if they aren't allowed to follow their curiosity, they will never feel a sense of discovery. Feel free to ask any teacher how difficult it is to engineer a learning module where any student feels the thrill of discovery, let alone a whole class. 

Continued Example: The teacher isn't trained to see (or be able to do anything about) the fact that Jack is about to discover that multiplication is simply repeated addition, skip counting even, leading to a profound desire to discover all the patterns elementary math contains. The teacher can only read from the curriculum script: "Multiplication is repeated addition, and memorizing the multiplication tables is a way to speed up how quickly you will be able to complete larger multiplication and division equations." If the teacher is lucky, she actually understands what she is saying. Likely, the class barely heard that there was a connection between addition and multiplication, only that a large amount of time would be spent this year memorizing math facts. Jack hears "wont wont wont, wowont won wont," but repeats it back, memorizing it just in case it will be on Friday's test. He is bored to tears, and worse, believes he isn't, and cannot ever be, good at math, because if he could be, why would it have to be drip fed to him? Why can't they trust him to be able to learn it? Is it that hard?

I cannot imagine being a teacher, or a parent, and having to tell Jack that there is no time for him to discover multiplication is repeated addition, because right now I have to tell you that multiplication is just repeated addition. Or saying, “No, now we must move onto language arts. I know you are fascinated with how multiplication works right now, but the bell rang and we must move on to diagramming sentences… no, we cannot get back to math after that, because after language arts is geography, and we need to memorize state capitals…” or telling little Debbie after the science test that I cannot offer her any more fun with dinosaurs, but next year she can have two whole weeks to learn about them.

When an adult gets curious, no one stops them to say, "That's enough for now." No. We fall down great big huge rabbit holes, and often those deep interests become hobbies we love, passions, obsessions even. Sometimes there's even the possibility of producing income. And don't we remember what we discover oh so much better than what we were forced to learn in school?

Requiring everyone to consume the same education requires some hardcore scheduling. The act of forcing everyone to memorize the same externally predetermined curricula set to an age-specific dead line leaves no time for curiosity, discovery, or the feeling of accomplishment they lead to. The curiosity cycle develops the core feelings of intrinsic motivation, which is the fuel for: self-direction- the ability to meet self-determined goals, perseverance- the grit to work hard even when you don't see a solution, and resilience- the capacity to recover from difficulty, largely through feelings of self-worth- the knowledge that your value as a person is not contingent upon success or failure at any pursuit or performance.

When failure is met with curiosity, it merely begins the cycle over again. When failure is met with shame, either implicit or explicit, one's feeling of self-worth is diminished, sometimes greatly, especially if it is a regular occurrence or very harsh.

The possibility of losing the feelings of curiosity, discovery, accomplishment, intrinsic motivation, self-direction, perseverance, resilience, and self-worth is A LOT to bet on, especially if it's YOUR kid. Except it's not just your children, it's ALL OF THEM. These are the necessary traits for a truly fulfilling life that we are talking about here. 

True and retained learning is contingent upon interest, and interest is simply consistent curiosity. Compulsory schooling, for all that it takes 8+ hours a day, 180+ days a year, for 12+ years, has no TIME for curiosity, let alone where curiosity leads, not even to accomplish its own supposed goal of learning.

So how do you force someone to go somewhere to memorize things they aren't interested in?

Well, firstly you threaten to send their parents to jail if they don't send the kids to school. Being backed up by law is what makes this coercion a compulsion, that is why we call it compulsory schooling. Then, you convince the parents that the education you are offering is absolutely critical to their children's future survival AND you make the parents believe they themselves aren't smart enough to facilitate their children's education, so the parents are not only more than happy to comply, they are also conscripted into the army now threatening the kids (with bad grades, loss of privileges, the shame of disappointing their parents, and the fear of amounting to nothing with no possibility of ever surviving in the real world), otherwise known as coercion. Which, handily enough, is a self-perpetuating cycle of people who believe they are stupid feeling like they must send their kids to school, even though we can all see the utter failure of schools to deliver the education they promise.... which in itself is a self-perpetuating cycle of failing to achieve education goals, acquiring more of our money and time and resources by placing the blame on the students and parents, and failing to deliver again, year after year after year... but I digress. 

That's only the negative coercion side. What about rewards?

The supposedly positive way to force people to do anything is actually called bribery.

Rewards devalue learning or work by creating the belief that the learning or work is not worth doing, why would you need an additional prize if the work was worth doing? And of course, what if you could care less about the rewards being offered after you have decided the learning wasn't interesting? I won't go any deeper on this, but if you would like to, the book Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn is thorough.

In addition to this, the introduction of rewards (such as status conferred by good grades, extra privileges, and pride in performance of tasks your supposed superiors agree are important even if you don't see their relevance) creates competition for these rewards. Prizes take the focus away from learning, and competition creates anxiety, as where there is a winner, there must be at least one loser. In the case of school, a whole class full of unloved, unlovable losers.This not only creates a status hierarchy that promotes a highly stratified social class/caste system, but being raised in it from an early age makes these class systems seem not only normal, but preferable to intermixing freely, which sets the stage for all kinds of other class systems based in privilege, a few you might recognize are financial, racial, and religious social lines. We might not have nobles and peasants, but the class lines are there if you have eyes to see them. 

This anxiety triggers our fight/flight/flee survival response, which physically blocks new learning, sometimes a little, sometimes entirely, depending on the level of anxiety/perceived threat, as new learning takes too much time to save our lives, and won't matter if we perish. Notice I said perceived threat, and not actual threat, your nervous system doesn't know the difference, and having an anxious predisposition in the first place makes it much worse.

If there is not time for the curiosity cycle, and no social safety to even allow the brain to learn, there is obviously no time to explore creative expression, which requires not only intact curiosity, but also more social safety/acceptance and far more time, for both the actual creation process and deeeeeeep introspection. 

The effects of compulsion, coercion, and competition on self-worth are terrifying.

When personal value is assigned by "authorities" based on obedient performance in competition of the memorization under pressure of things you do not care about, one's feelings of self-worth become attached to this externally assigned value. This emotional dependence is even deeper when a child's parents are in on it. This leads to students truly believing that if they are not the best, smartest, fastest in the room then they are NOTHING, even if they are only 1/100 of a point away from that top spot, even if the person in that top spot is a much beloved twin sibling. 

Betting your children can keep their intrinsic feelings of self-worth intact in the environment of compulsory schooling is risky business at best. Relying on external validation for one's feelings of personal value is precisely why so many of us suffer from anxiety, depression, and worse. And now, it's our children experiencing these feelings. Knowing what I know now, I cannot imagine making that bet with my children's lives. It's too soul crushing to contemplate. 

Now that you know, what are you going to do about it?