Comments on: The Death of Love of Learning

By: britt

britt — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 17:25:55 +0000

TW I absolutely agree there is work involved in learning. HARD work. meaningful work. Some of it is tedious. Some of it is repetitive. What motivates such amazing hard work? a love of learning, a passion for the subject and dedication.

Love of learning keeps you going through the hard, meaningful work of learning. It keeps you learning even when parts of what you want to learn aren’t as fun or aren’t in your wheel house.

My 14yo son is definitely old enough for the hard work side of learning. what’s killing him is the tedium of meaningless work. busy work.

By: britt

britt — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 01:43:44 +0000

Charlotte, have you seen all that people have done with minecraft to teach? http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/17/how-to-teach-history-and-lots-more-with-minecraft/

It is amazing as time goes how confident we grow in the amazing abilities of children to learn in such natural and gentle ways.

Terrie…great example of when you knew you’d won!

By: TW

TW — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 01:32:21 +0000

have a love/hate relationship with this idea. Yes, learning is fun, but I don’t think is reasonable to expect to be all fun. I love that we use literature. I don’t regret time spent discussing books and it’s a privilege to have the freedom to customize our education goals with their interests. I will continue doing just that. However, persisting through a difficult math concept, isn’t always fun. Learning to write an excellent essay, isn’t always fun. There is work involved, whether it’s academics, chores or character. Many children will take the path of least resistance. I did just that as a child and the apples don’t fall far from the tree. I have cried tears over the fact that my homeschool didn’t measure up to what I thought it needed to look like. Thankfully, I have a better understanding of how we operate and have stopped romanticizing the process.

By: Terrie Lynn Bittner

Terrie Lynn Bittner — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 21:43:18 +0000

S–you asked how we regained the love of learning. I told them that there would not only be no prizes, but there wouldn’t even be grades. We wouldn’t need them because our goal was mastery, not speed. If they missed a problem or had to have a paper edited, we sat down together and went over it. Every paper would eventually be perfect. When they were finished and had practiced a bit, they decided when they had mastered it and we moved on. As Britt mentions, we did a lot of talking, reading, trying things out. We also focused more on ideas than memorization, as she did–although when you talk and read enough on a subject, you generally find you’ve also memorized what really matters. One day my daughter said, “I finished the chapter and passed the test, but I don’t feel like I mastered it. Can I do the chapter again?” At that point, I knew I’d won.

By: britt

britt — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 20:00:33 +0000

Terrie, thanks for sharing. It is true that children can detox. They can relearn or unbury their love of Learning that is just so natural and beautiful. The bribe was probably to finish the worksheet…but they connect it with learning. sigh. They are blessed to have you as a mom to let their joy flourish again!

By: S

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 18:19:03 +0000

Terrie, how did your kids regain their love of learning — how did you encourage that?

By: Charlotte Smith

Charlotte Smith — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 17:28:34 +0000

I unschool my three children. It was never my plan, but we had an extended period of illness in which we did nothing formal. We sat down to do a “lesson” on evolution only for my children (all under 6 at the time) to recite so much knowledge on the subject that I needed to get out college level books. Asked where it had came from “Trip to the museum, Phineas and Ferb, and Pokemon.” It forced me to reassess the way I home educated. That brought a lot of nail biting as my eldest took longer than I expected to read and write etc but my 11 year old daughter has a fantastic grasp of spelling, punctuation and grammar just from reading. When we go shopping she is the first to point out when a bill is wrong – her mental arthimetic is amazing. My 8 year old is grasping the ideas at the same rate as his sister and I am a lot less worried — now. Admittedly it would be nice if my boys would get geeky about something other than Minecraft but I am sure it will pass (previous obsessions have been birds, dinosaurs, fire, lions and the weather).

By: Dora

Dora — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 17:26:56 +0000

As a homeschooling mom with my eldest in High School at her own insistence, this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. On the other hand, my husband is a High School Teacher and if the administrators want to be […], which happens pretty often, they give him evaluations that say the students are not engaged, one time when they were apparently all looking strait at him and then again recently when they were participating loudly, he was told that the students were in retreatism. How the […] did an administrator with about 3 years in the classroom come to that diagnosis!!!??? Its crazy making, and a good teacher who loves teaching is going to retire as soon as possible.

By: Terrie Lynn Bittner

Terrie Lynn Bittner — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 16:49:43 +0000

Before my children started kindergarten, they could read, add, subtract, and multiply. They learned at their own request and did it just for fun. The first day I homeschooled the two youngest, they brought me their math worksheet, a review because I suspected their math skills had suffered from an experimental program, and demanded their candy. I refused to give them candy. They went through a list of rewards teachers gave for work. When I refused them all, one said, “Then why are we doing this? Why do we need to learn if we aren’t getting anything?” My heart broke. The ability to learn for the pure joy of it was gone and learning was mere duty. It took me about a year to give them back their joy.