Today, while at church (the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Newark...a wonderful place to explore new ideas, accept ALL people, and celebrate this beautiful Earth that we all live on!), I saw a great poster. It read, "Learning that is enjoyable will be remembered always." So true.....
It made me think of all of the learning that we don't choose and we don't enjoy, and therefore, we don't remember. What do we get from such forced "lessons?" Not much, except a negative attitude. It reminds me of a dear friend of our family, Beni. She teaches Spanish at an elementary school. She is always talking about how the children don't REMEMBER anything! This seems obvious to me. Why should they remember something that they didn't choose to learn?
Our daughter, Amelia, is the opposite of this. She has taken to Spanish lately. She WANTS to learn the language, so she is! She can now count to 39 and say various phrases. I imagine that if I had said to her, "OK, we are going to sit down and learn our Spanish lessons now," that she wouldn't be very interested at all. (In fact, that was my original approach to reading, and boy did that backfire! Though it really did lead me to my current unschooling approach, so not a bad thing after all.....SERENDIPITY!)
I love this unschooling life that we live! It gives my children the chance to CHOOSE what they do on a daily basis. And, in doing so, I know that they are learning that LIFE IS LEARNING!
Learning is fun and natural, not forced and artificial. Learning rocks!
So true, Lydia. I am constantly amazed by the amount of information (technical, scientific, classification-type information) about prehistoric animals that Rainer absorbs and remembers. I remember agonizing over trying to remember information for tests in school. I usually did very well on those tests, but darned if I would be able to pass them today. What a waste of time!
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