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The article is subjective and expresses the personal opinion of the author.
Human ideas about how to teach children have repeatedly changed. For example, hunter-gatherers allowed children to play a lot, did not force them to take constant tests, did not threaten, as soon as the hunting child lays down to take a nap: “Why aren't you preparing for the set-off? That is, to initiation. Soon you have to kill a deer and stand all night on one leg on a high pillar! ”
In an agricultural society, children first helped adults, and then they studied. And although there was nothing special to learn - neither a summer literature list, nor organic chemistry - it was considered important not to spare the rod for children. The stronger the teacher presses the students, the more sense will come out of them. Well, at least they will remember the text of the prayer! Until the last centuries, even in the most civilized societies, it was believed that knowledge should be transferred to the head, standing on peas and other harsh methods that contribute to the assimilation of material.
The humanist educators, of course, tried to tell something about education, but nobody especially listened to them. The humanists are one thing, and the son of an ignoramus is growing another!
In the 20th century, humanity changed its mind a bit: progressive educational practices arose, based on the belief that the child already had a desire to develop and comprehend complex matters. It is only necessary to remove the bore with a rod and a dull educational structure. Schools, classes, schedules, pressure - all this is extra fuss, many theorists assured.
However, now there are many supporters of ansculcing (this is a form of training without a specific program and intermediate certifications up to grade 9).
Experiment: 1-month unschooling, 9-year-old baby and patient mom
The idea is terribly attractive. Firstly, the child immediately sees that his mother trusts him, since she did not lead to school, but left alone with the cat and the collection of the ancient German epic. Secondly, it eliminates the torment associated with homework, visits to the director and reading parental chats.
I had to try. My almost 9-year-old son is not burdened with homework anyway: he is enrolled in family education and goes to a private club where children do everything (from developing emotional intelligence to robotics and ancient history), but not the public school curriculum.
It always seemed to me that funny stories about Aristotle are a much more valuable thing than the set of facts that children feed in primary school
In fact, sad thoughts sometimes gnawed at me that sooner or later all children, even those who program the robot with emotional intelligence, would have to pass tests and retreat two cells. And in order to alleviate my anxiety, I was seating Yegor for the dividend and column exercise machines.
During the experiment (1 month), I got rid of these cowardly tricks and gave my son the opportunity to spend leisure time as he sees fit: if he suddenly did not want to go to some lesson, we did not go (this happened only a couple of times). No reminders of the lessons, no exercise books, no olympiad problems: “But look - a curious task with matches!” We did not even watch training videos with experiments. And I acted as if the human genetic code already contains a desire to get rid of printed letters and use only capital letters.
Let's see how deep a person is able to develop in a month, I thought. On the one hand, I was tormented by vague fears that the guy would shoot from the pneumatics at the glasses and sing obscene ditties. On the other - with me was Alexander Nill, Peter Gray, Ken Robinson and other smart guys who believed that the child did not feed honey, let me figure out the world’s structure, or at least dismantle the alarm clock with a screwdriver.
First week
At first, these limits, about which Nill wrote, were not amazing. For example, an iron pipe tied to the Swedish wall turned out to be an unfortunate achievement on the development path. He threw balls into the pipe from above, and forced his sister to collect them around the apartment. I heard the sound of a ball in an iron pipe and I cast bitter glances at Perelman's collection of problems. But then the pipe became overgrown with details: plastic branches were attached to it, wrapped with layers of scotch tape and made a postal system to which orders and samples of subject letters could be sent to the younger rank.
From other achievements:
- Crawled in a duvet cover on the floor, depicting a black monk.
- Rehearsed a somersault with a running start.
- I listened to the album The Prodigy (Lord, why The Prodigy? How did he dig them out under a layer of normal music?).
If you suddenly suddenly gave your child the freedom not to study, then you should not expect him to immediately reveal his talents and confirm the words of Alexander Neill. First, he will delight you with meaningless and wild pursuits. For example: with a business look, hammer the ice with a rusty iron bolt for 30 minutes in a row.
Second week
The search for something really interesting continued.
- He played the piano. Very similar to The Prodigy.
- I read teenage stories and fantasy.
- He dumped the rest of the books from the closet and, together with his sister, putting them on the roots, made a huge maze throughout the apartment.
- He called a friend with whom they shot toy dartwaders from machine guns for five hours in a row.
- He played the war in Vietnam. Broke a chair.
It is impossible not to notice that the child left alone begins to take the initiative and realizes his creative impulses. Our problem is that we do not particularly value them. We like good children who do what is commanded. And if the nervous parent is unbearable to look at the fruits of the children's initiative, you just need to remove sharp objects away, buy dirt-repellent clothes, wrap antiques in polyethylene, and then go somewhere far away to save yourself from premature gray hair.
And a good calming technique is to choose the right words for children's activities: it doesn’t cuddle the drum with all its might, but develops a sense of rhythm. Do not quarrel with your sister - and pumping the skills of discussion. It does not spoil the interior (“Where did you drag the desk ?!”) - but learns to independently organize the space. Thus, any idiotic undertaking, as you yourself will notice, will be very useful and good deed.
Third week
By the third week, my child's academic interests prevailed over everyone else. Egor began to record the events of the past day and make long lists of "What all kinds of pens I will buy in the office supply store when they invent them."
- I went deep into reading. Among the read hundreds of pages of The Chronicles of Amber, Stevenson and Herbert's Dunes. He recounted the adventures of Sufir Havat to his five-year-old sister, although she tried to leave the room.
- He corresponded with friends from my account on social networks. Correspondence was in the mysterious language of emoticons and gifs. She noticed that little boys like to send crying kittens to each other.
- He made a presentation of five slides with pictures and text on the topic: "Why I do not want winter to end." In the pictures, in addition to the types of winter, for some reason there were kittens.
- Made a toy in Scratch - witches play soccer. Sam asked for help from his uncle programmer. On the way to training, he overcame the resistance of his uncle programmer.
- Opened "Entertaining Physics" Perelman! Looked thoughtfully into it (yes!)
- Found comics “Economics. How the economy works. "At dinner, I tortured adults:" Dad, tell us about communism. Why was Karl Marx wrong in his theories? ”
Perhaps many people listened to Marx's theory forcibly only because they found information about him not under the bed. If you desperately need the child to learn something, it is better to remove the teaching materials in some inaccessible place, as in Soviet times they hid sweets for the holiday. In addition, many children, such as my child, are happy to do exactly what is forbidden to him. This is a subtle point.
You bring home a book and say: "Read, cool thing!". Before the phrase is completed, you understand that interest in it will never wake up. The man nods listlessly and forgets about your recommendation forever.
Why did Yegor read “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”? Because I said that this is a terrible book and he should not read it before going to bed
Why did he grab onto the Zhelyazny? Because the grandmother said that this is hellish nonsense and should not be kept at home. Why doesn't the child let go of the 1000-page “Dune”? Dad said that Yegor was too early to read her.
Heaps of parental problems can be avoided if you remember a simple thing: no one likes it when they tell him what to do. But everyone likes to make independent, sometimes daring and risky decisions.
“The school teaches children to be employees and consumers; Teach your children to be leaders and adventurers. The school teaches children to obey reflectively; teach your children to think critically and independently. Well-trained children get bored with everything quickly; help your child develop his inner world so that he will never be bored. "
John Taylor Gatto
These are wonderful words, but, unfortunately, it does not say what exactly needs to be done to develop the inner world of the child. Do strikes with an iron bolt enter the methods of development of the inner world? Hope so. In any case, none of us was bored this month.
Of course, smart guys who pour inspirational quotes and cite the Sudbury Valley democratic school as an example are right. But you will always have an excuse: they simply did not sit at the parent meeting in your school and did not see the head teacher Tamara Mikhailovna. How can you not force your child to study if he is worse? For his own good!
But coercion is what really works poorly. Trite, but to form a sustained interest in learning, this is what helps:
- Creating a competent environment: all around are people who enthusiastically study, talking, libraries, museums, theaters, and also books, games, the right programs on the computer, objects that can be studied (still wrap antiques).
- The feeling of "I'm done, I can."
- Some freedom of choice. The right to make a mistake. And no matter how blasphemous - the right to abandon the words in favor of a shootout.
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