Posted on 06/08/2011 9:23:48 AM PDT by MegaSilver
Children don't like school because they love freedom.
Someone recently referred me to a book that they thought I'd like. It's a 2009 book, aimed toward teachers of grades K through 12, titled Why Don't Students Like School? It's by a cognitive scientist named Daniel T. Willingham, and it has received rave reviews by countless people involved in the school system. Google the title and author and you'll find pages and pages of doting reviews and nobody pointing out that the book totally and utterly fails to answer the question posed by its title.
Willingham's thesis is that students don't like school because their teachers don't have a full understanding of certain cognitive principles and therefore don't teach as well as they could. They don't present material in ways that appeal best to students' minds. Presumably, if teachers followed Willingham's advice and used the latest information cognitive science has to offer about how the mind works, students would love school.
Talk about avoiding the elephant in the room!
Ask any schoolchild why they don't like school and they'll tell you. "School is prison." They may not use those words, because they're too polite, or maybe they've already been brainwashed to believe that school is for their own good and therefore it can't be prison. But decipher their words and the translation generally is, "School is prison."
Let me say that a few more times: School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison.
Willingham surely knows that school is prison. He can't help but know it; everyone knows it. But here he writes a whole book entitled "Why Don't Students Like School," and not once does he suggest that just possibly they don't like school because they like freedom, and in school they are not free.
I shouldn't be too harsh on Willingham. He's not the only one avoiding this particular elephant in the room. Everyone who has ever been to school knows that school is prison, but almost nobody says it. It's not polite to say it. We all tiptoe around this truth, that school is prison, because telling the truth makes us all seem so mean. How could all these nice people be sending their children to prison for a good share of the first 18 years of their lives? How could our democratic government, which is founded on principles of freedom and self-determination, make laws requiring children and adolescents to spend a good portion of their days in prison? It's unthinkable, and so we try hard to avoid thinking it. Or, if we think it, we at least don't say it. When we talk about what's wrong with schools we pretend not to see the elephant, and we talk instead about some of the dander that's gathered around the elephant's periphery.
But I think it is time that we say it out loud. School is prison.
If you think school is not prison, please explain the difference.
The only difference I can think of is that to get into prison you have to commit a crime, but they put you in school just because of your age. In other respects school and prison are the same. In both places you are stripped of your freedom and dignity. You are told exactly what you must do, and you are punished for failing to comply. Actually, in school you must spend more time doing exactly what you are told to do than is true in adult prisons, so in that sense school is worse than prison.
At some level of their consciousness, everyone who has ever been to school knows that it is prison. How could they not know? But people rationalize it by saying (not usually in these words) that children need this particular kind of prison and may even like it if the prison is run well. If children don't like school, according to this rationalization, it's not because school is prison, but is because the wardens are not kind enough, or amusing enough, or smart enough to keep the children's minds occupied appropriately.
But anyone who knows anything about children and who allows himself or herself to think honestly should be able to see through this rationalization. Children, like all human beings, crave freedom. They hate to have their freedom restricted. To a large extent they use their freedom precisely to educate themselves. They are biologically prepared to do that. That's what many of my previous posts have been about (for an overview, see my July 16, 2008, post). Children explore and play, freely, in ways designed to learn about the physical and social world in which they are developing. In school they are told they must stop following their interests and, instead, do just what the teacher is telling them they must do. That is why they don't like school.
As a society we could, perhaps, rationalize forcing children to go to school if we could prove that they need this particular kind of prison in order to gain the skills and knowledge necessary to become good citizens, to be happy in adulthood, and to get good jobs. Many people, perhaps most people, think this has been proven, because the educational establishment talks about it as if it has. But, in truth, it has not been proven at all.
In fact, for decades, families who have chosen to "unschool" their children, or to send them to the Sudbury Valley School (which is, essentially, an "unschool" school) have been proving the opposite (see, for example, my August 13, 2008, post). Children who are provided the tools for learning, including access to a wide range of other people from whom to learn, learn what they need to know--and much more--through their own self-directed play and exploration. There is no evidence at all that children who are sent to prison come out better than those who are provided the tools and allowed to use them freely. How, then, can we continue to rationalize sending children to prison?
I think the educational establishment deliberately avoids looking honestly at the experiences of unschoolers and Sudbury Valley because they are afraid of what they will find. If school as prison isn't necessary, then what becomes of this whole huge enterprise, which employs so many and is so fully embedded in the culture (see my posts on Why Schools Are What they Are)?
Willingham's book is in a long tradition of attempts to bring the "latest findings" of psychology to bear on issues of education. All of those efforts have avoided the elephant and focused instead on trying to clean up the dander. But as long as the elephant is there, the dander just keeps piling up.
In a future post I'll talk about some of the history of psychology's failed attempts to improve education. Every new generation of parents, and every new batch of fresh and eager teachers, hears or reads about some "new theory" or "new findings" from psychology that, at long last, will make schools more fun and improve learning. But none of it has worked. And none of it will until people face the truth: Children hate school because in school they are not free. Joyful learning requires freedom.
These days it doesn’t appear that thinking is encouraged in classrooms.
If you ask a group 10 or 12 year olds some simple things you might be shocked at how many can’t read a traditional clock dial or know how many is in a dozen.
One boy is looking out the window. Was Norman Rockwell trying to say that even in a totalitarian system you can’t get 100% conformity?
My daughter who attends public schools love school. She is sad when the school year ends. Why, mostly because of her friends, but she also loves learning.
There are several more reasons why kids hate school.
Replace most teachers with fun computer programs and easy to watch video tapes that allow a student to learn at their own pace, while insuring progress.
One of the most fatal flaws of any totalitarian system. You’ll never stamp out the spark that exists among the people.
Very much agree. Dependency is valued; not independence (and independent thinking). I think that spills over in a big way into politics and coverall culture; and peoples willingness to have others take care of them.
Possibly; but what about SOCIETY's??
What?
Schools don’t exist to solve society’s problems.
Wait, I thought you were old enough to remember that one!
Have you heard about Simon Lake and his magnificent diving boat called Argonaut?
[If so, you’re ahead of 99.99% of students these days!]
I teach in metro Atlanta. No teachers union! We are judged each year by our performance. I know there are crappy teachers. Always have been. Some of us try to do it right. I teach science btw.
I think education in this country would improve dramatically if students were forced to take time off at a certain point (I'm thinking a one-year period in the age 15-16 range) and get a mandatory job or internship to let them to see how the real world works and what their employment prospects would be like if they don't do well in school.
I understand Jeb Bush implemented something like this in Florida for students who were seen as high risks for dropping out of high school, and the improvement in their academic performance after they returned from their "sabbatical" was dramatic.
Can you drag some of that north to NY please?
I wish. I love it, crappy teachers actually get fired here.No union dues. I’m not saying we have all great or good teachers, administrators, parent or students. I just like the accountability.
You’ve heard of the ‘rubber rooms’ they have here for teachers who have been so lacking that even the uber-liberal unions have decided to ‘do’ some nnebulous ‘something’ to them for it?
The ‘teachers’ get to collect pay, sit in a room and do nothing all day while their cases get ‘reviewed’, sometimes for years, decades.
It was a surprise when the former principal of the Middletown High School got nailed for his inappropriate relationship with a male student.
He actually got jail time, quickly.
Why don’t prisoners like prison?
Yeah I have heard of those. I am just glad that our teachers here represent our community... CONSERVATIVE to moderate. Guess where I am!
My youngest had this problem, bored to death, hated school. They did let him leave and take college level calculus because the high school had run out of math classes to give him in his junior year. The community college told him he had enough credits to finish high school and get dual college credits, in one year. So he graduated at the end of his junior year with an adult high school diploma and a bunch of college credits too and not quite as bored or imprisioned.
Again, wish you could drag some of that northward.
‘Going to school’ is work.
Most people don’t like work. It is needed.
We must work, then we can eat.
Having said that, choice & competition would go a long way towards improving school services, making them more tolerable, and giving students with different personalities different options that fit them.
Not all students are destined for law school. Some will do well and excel in a lucrative trade or service area (auto tech, cyber-security, nursing).
I teach full time at a community college, economics classes, btw.
School is prison.
^^^^^^^^^^
School is prison for children whose only crime was being born.
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