What Has Interest Got to Do with Education?
Charlotte Mason Volume 3: Chapter 19 - We Are Educated by Our Intimacies
It’s not uncommon for adults to ask children what they would like to become in future. There is a good chance you’ll get an answer. I count it unfair to pressure children to come up with an answer before they have got the opportunity to develop affinities for a profession. An affinity is not a feeling of - this will be cool to do. An affinity is what happened to Ruskin when he saw Turner’s pictures in the book, Italy, a Poem, and worked to imitate them as best he could with careful pen shading.
Ruskin spent nine years working on his technique before he produced his first original drawing. He felt like he had been wasting his time all those years. However, he didn’t understand that it’s impossible to trace every step of a growing passion. This experience is why we cannot be satisfied with exposing our children to the three R’s (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic). Our job is to prepare a feast and invite our children to partake of it. Our responsibility is to make sure plenty of opportunities are freely provided at home (and at school) to create these connections that can last a lifetime.
Children should have relationships with earth and water. They should run, jump, ride, swim, and establish the relationship that a maker has with material resources, and they should do this with as many kinds of material resources as possible. They should have treasured intimate relationships with people, through face to face talking, through reading stories or poems, seeing pictures or sculpture, through finding flinthead arrows and being around cars. They should be familiar with animals, birds, plants and trees. Foreign people and their languages shouldn't be something unknown to them. And, most important of all, they should discover that the most intimate and highest of all relationships--the relationship to God--fulfills their entire being.
- Charlotte Mason
To the outsider, this might look like the child only does what he is interested in. Interest will undoubtedly make it easier to learn any skill. The reality is, some activities will always feel like a chore. Even the activities or subjects we are interested in require discipline and effort. A bird-watcher will be up by 4:00 a.m. to get a glimpse of the birds making the dawn chorus that is causing the rest of us to groan in our sleep. A soccer player will perform repetitive drills that are far from enjoyable. We understand the journey to success is sometimes unpleasant, and that’s why we train our children’s habits. We teach our children to pay attention. We teach them ( and ourselves) to put in mental effort. We do this because we know that a lot of adult habits are established in childhood.
As we learn to do our best work, we also learn to put effort into friendships. We realise that friendship is more than a casual meeting at a club or a Twitter conversation. True friendship requires attention, effort, love and respect. This we need to model and teach.
There is always the danger of us parents over-scheduling our children hoping that they will find this ‘affinity’ or Captain idea. We fail to realise that unless our children have the time to think and be comfortable in silence, it is higher unlikely that our children will develop a deep connection to any idea at all.
A few points to note:
Lessons should be enjoyable. They should stimulate thinking beyond the class.
Every child has the right to be exposed to various genres of knowledge. NOt just the three Rs.
A child’s lessons should create a natural appetite for knowledge.
Do not come between a child and good books. We don’t do our children a favour when we give diluted knowledge.
Natural love and hunger for knowledge will last a lifetime. Competition can only motivate for so long.
Children learn best from real, tangible things, and books. Tangible things include:
a. Natural structures for physical activity like climbing, swimming, walking, etc.
b. Resources for working and building with, such as wood, leather or clay.
c. Natural objects in their native habitat, like birds, plants, creeks, and stones.
d. Works of art.
e. Scientific instruments.- Charlotte Mason
Resources for learning in our present-day will also include:
Science kits( National Geographic has some wonderful ones)
Lego (Lego is the best way to learn - My 5-year-old)
Turing Tumble *- One of my favourite ways of introducing children to algorithms.
Rubik’s cubes
Musical Instruments
* affiliate link
Parenting is important work.
Remain blessed,
Olufunmike