An Education of Discovery

 Having cycled through different educational forms over the past seven years, I have come back to a year where my kids will all be mentored from home.  I find myself surprisingly revisiting those questions that have not only plagued me, but many other parents who have decided that homeschooling is best for their children:

-How can I possibly teach them enough?

-Should I just follow someone else's curriculum, and if so, how can I know it will give my children what they need?

-If not, where in the world should I begin?

AN EDUCATION OF DISCOVERY

Tackling these hard questions has always overwhelmed me.

I took a breath, stepped back, and tried to look at the big picture: the WHY of educating. In doing so, I gravitated back to an old mentor, Sir Ken Robinson:

From the talk: "You see, there are things we're enthralled to in education. A couple of examples.  One of them is the idea of linearity: that it starts here and you go through a track and if you do everything right, you will end up set for the rest of your life.

"Everybody who's spoken at TED has told us implicitly, or sometimes explicitly, a different story: that life is not linear; it's organic.  We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us.  But, you know, we have become obsessed with this linear narrative.  And probably the pinnacle for education is getting you to college.  I think we are obsessed with getting people to college...I don't mean you shouldn't go, but not everybody needs to go or go now."

Robinson then tells of a thirty-year-old man he met that is currently a fireman and has been since he graduated.  He had wanted to be a fireman since he was a kid.  A teacher in high school singled him out for this and said that he was "throwing my life away if that's all I chose to do with it, that I should go to college, I should become a professional person, that I had great potential and I was wasting my talent to do that."  The young man shared with Robinson how humiliating it was.  The young man followed through with his dream and became a firefighter.  The young man continues:

"'You know, I was thinking about that guy recently, just a few minutes ago when you were speaking about this teacher because six months ago, I saved his life.  He was in a car wreck and I pulled him out, gave him CPR and I saved his wife's life as well...I think he thinks better of me now.'

"[Current] education [models], in a way, dislocates very many people from their natural talents. And human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they're not just lying around on the surface.  You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves." --from the above talk 

Sir Robinson's talk embraces the concept of an education of discovery, not force-feeding.  

GIVE THEM CONTEXT

We can safely reject the absurdity that we (or anyone or any system) will be able to teach our children "everything they need to know"...as if most of us remember anything from school!

So how to know what to teach?

Well, the better question is why to teach? If it is not to have a certain amount of forgettable knowledge crammed into our heads, what is it that we are truly hoping for our children to get out of being in school?

Let's begin with the big picture. I believe my personal "big picture" is captured in this article by Timothy Clark:

https://www.deseret.com/2011/3/14/20370210/timothy-r-clark-the-core-and-the-crust-of-leadership

SUMMARY:

Crust=skills used to share vision in an impactful way

Core=education of the heart, the birthplace of principle and personal moral constructs

People with: 

Weak Crust + Weak Core=Couch Potato

Weak Crust + Strong Core=Well-meaning but ineffective (and thus frustrated) individual

Strong Crust + Weak Core=Hitler

Strong Crust + Strong Core=What I want for my kids.

(For more context, I encourage you to read the article, both short and powerful.)

David Hicks, the author of "Norms and Nobility" stated: that the supreme task of education is the cultivation of the human spirit:

-to know what is good;

-to serve it above all else;

-to reproduce it;

-to recognize that in this knowledge lies responsibility.

Do these ideas resonate with you?

If so, how do we then combine these two ideals into workable educational system?

Well, if we use the core and crust model as a big picture context, we can easily break things we learn into two groups: #1 skills that strengthen our crust and #2 experiences with ideas that change our character and impact our internal frame of reference.  The core is the study of what lies at the heart of any discipline.

The beautiful thing about this view is it gives anything we learn context and potential application: the why we are learning, which is something that most kids struggle to find.

COMBINE THEM INTO A MODEL

Let's add a third concept that will help us harmonize the incorporation of knowledge.  In his book "Teach the Children," Neil Flinders talks about different lenses through which we can study one object or subject.  My friend gave this example:

Tree through scientific lens (inductive): biology of the tree itself, it's role in the greater ecology of it's locality and the world at large.
Tree through math lens (deductive): Fibonacci numbers in different trees, circumference, age of the tree, photosynthesis, etc
Tree through history/geography: Different types of trees in different areas and how they affect the lives of the people there, how they affected the westward expansion...
Tree through arts/imaginative literature lens: Painting a tree - noticing it's colors, light, textures, beauty. Reading The Giving Tree and imagining what the world might look like through a tree's perspective.

"You can see how studying a tree through all these different lenses gives you a "whole" picture of a tree."--Karen Bates

This ordering of knowledge, combined with the "core and crust" idea helps us come up with a model that gives us a frame of reference for all knowledge and how it fits together:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzFTE1OI37bbRWFxVUNYR1RYQWViRmUtemRjZ29wZXlnQ1dF/view?usp=drive_link&resourcekey=0-2XSwmW0-pK91lV8Vi6ld5Q  This model is from a world view with a belief in God but can be used in any world view.

Everything we want to teach or expose our children to can be placed within the context of this model!  We can see how the skills and the heart behind why and what we learn matter and work together.  Though we must embrace that we may never fill our children with all the knowledge we would like, we CAN give them not only the tools to use the information they will gather during intentional and experiential learning, but the core to be able to apply it nobly and effectively. This purpose is the heart of what I have called the "Vanguard model."*

A parting thought from David Hicks' "Norm and Nobility":

I'm excited to move forward, picking gems for them to learn not out of fear but out of excitement.

An education of discovery indeed, not only of the world around them but the world within themselves.

"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
--Michelangelo

"Every child is a work of art inside and it is the task of the mentor to help them discover it.
The trick is to see the wonder in their being and give them the tools they need to set it free."
--me ;)

*I have an abundance of videos and articles to further outline what the Vanguard model is and suggestions and ideas on how you could apply it individually. It is beautifully adaptable to each family or school group, easily tailoring the needs and passions of each group.  And the fruits are truly amazing.