Musing Mondays: Children and Learning

So, I was gonna start a YouTube channel with this content, but as I recently started working, making videos just isn't practical right now.

So, I'm happy to introduce a new series on my blog; Musing Mondays! Basically this series is gonna be me talking about things that I think are important, like trending topics, raising children, and what's going on in the world. These are topics that I feel strongly about, and tend to do a lot of research into.

This week, I want to talk about Children and Learning.



If you know me, then you know that I think the Public Schools system in America has done our children (and some of us) a great disservice. We are falling behind not only in test scores, but also in morale. The only things American students can brag about leading in is depression, bullying, and suicide rates. The average American Highschool student shows many of the same symptoms and mental illness that would have gotten you admitted into a psychiatric facility back in the 1950s. And we are steadily declining.

Why are kids slipping into depression and feeling more stressed out than the average adult 50 years ago? It's simple: they are not allowed to be children.

The age of starting formal schooling is getting younger and younger. Turn on any channel aimed at kids and you'll be bombarded with commercials about apps and programs that are supposed to help teach your child to read at the age of 4.

I'll admit, some kids show a higher interest in learning their letters earlier on. I was one of those kids. I in fact did know how to read when I entered kindergarten at 5, but not because my parents put me on an app that was supposed to 'expand my brain' (okay, that's also because there was no such thing as a phone app in the 90s), but because they read to me as a small child, and I just kind of picked it up.

My sister, on the other hand, didn't learn how to read until she was around 8, and then hid the fact until she was nearly 10 because she was so shy about it. And it's not because she's stupid (she's really not, she's a genius actually), just because she had a different personality than me, and she took things at a slower pace. Now, she's an excellent poet, and has even read her own work on stage before (which, by the way, gave everyone in the audience chills and they all came up afterwards to talk to her about it).

So just from personal experience alone, it's obvious that children all learn at a different pace, and not many kids are trying to learn how to read at 2. My own 2 year old is far more interested in matchbox cars than sitting through a reading lesson.

The entire idea of formal education is a strange one actually. We force young children (getting younger) to sit perfectly still for hours every day, trying to cram information into their heads that they aren't ready for, or aren't interested in, then fill them with drugs when we claim they have ADD from not being able to sit still. News flash: no 5 year old can sit still for that long. Heck, most adults don't like sitting in one place and listening to someone talk at them for 8 hours in a day.

Kids just can't handle the sheer amount of pressure they are put under at such a young age. They're told they must learn as much as they can before testing, then ace the test, in order to put our country on the map of smartest.

And it's not just elementary school kids who are dealing with more stress than they are able to cope with, highschool students are also struggling. Adolescence is an age where one basically reverts to an adult-ish toddler. You're dealing with hormones, emotions, and situations you'd never had to deal with before. You're having an identity crisis because you aren't sure where you fit in with the rest of the world, you're suddenly noticing things about the opposite sex that you never noticed before, and you're learning how to be an adult, all while still feeling like a kid. Being a teenager are some of the hardest years of your life, next to being a toddler. Adults know how to handle situations because we learned it as a teenager.

But instead of helping make our teens be productive members of society, we instead force them to sit in a room full of other hormonal teenagers, giving them almost no outlet for their energy and ideas, no place to really get in enough exercise, and hardly any proper nutrition. They're running off of way less sleep than they need, and they're learning things that most people forget the second that diploma is in their hand, because it holds no practical application in the real world.

It's a flawed system from start to finish. And we have to change it if we want the next generation to be able to function at all in society. We're already seeing the fruits of this diseased tree; 20somethings who get to college or out into the real world and don't know how to apply for a job, don't know how to write a check, don't know how to wash their own laundry, don't even know how to boil water. And that's just the practical applications, my generation, so fondly dubbed 'the millennials' struggle daily with tasks that should be beyond simple, like eating healthy so you don't get sick, making phone calls, dealing with our own emotions, battling the overwhelming tide of depression and self doubt that is flung at us daily. We are expected to 'pay our dues' but nobody ever taught any of us what that is or how to do it.

The millennials are only the first wave of a broken system. We will wreck the world if somebody doesn't step in and help us function in society. You wonder why people think there is more than one gender? It's because we're so plagued with real problems that we don't know how to fix, that we make up problems that we can rant about on YouTube.

At this point, most of the 20somethings are going to have to figure it out as we go along, but there's still hope for the next generation, and it starts with fixing our so called 'School System.' Basically, we have to chuck it out and adopt something that actually works.

Other countries have been seeing amazing success with simple things, like not having the kids sit in the classroom until they're much older. Young child (8 and under) need to be outside, connected with nature (actually, we all do, but that's for another time). They need to learn about cause and effect by finding it in their surroundings, not by reading about it in a text book. I don't remember hardly anything I learned while under the stress of having to learn it, but the moment I was given the chance to find things out on my own, I became like a sponge for knowledge.

So, to start off with, don't set your 2 year old in front of an app that will teach them the color 'blue'. Take them outside and point at the sky and tell them that it is blue, and they will learn in their own time.

Don't send your 5 year old to sit for 8 hours a day (by the way, recess is getting shorter and shorter, and kids are loosing it younger and younger). Again, let the kid go outside, let them pick up sticks and rocks and learn about textures that way. You'll learn more about dirt by sinking your toes into it than by learning about it off a chalkboard.

Don't expect an 8 year old to come home from school and spend another 3 hours doing homework. Leave the worksheets at school, let them help cook dinner, let them tell their family what they learned for the day, give them a job to do at home, let them play outside with the neighborhood kids until bedtime.

Don't teach a 10 year old sex ed and then expect them to not have sex. Let them ask you about the changes in their bodies, have an open conversation about it, whenever they need to talk. Talk to your kids about the crushes their forming, tell them that it's just a feeling, it's not something that makes them an outcast. Then send them outside to play, occupy them with important work (like washing dishes, helping Dad mow the lawn, keeping their own room clean), and they won't be so worried about their peers.

And when it comes to Highschool, it's a redundant concept which needs to be done away with all together. Vocational schools are a great idea, it will help teach young people about their career choices, give them ways to be productive, teach them a trade which will be far more useful than knowing the powerhouse of the cell (unless you're a scientist). By the time a child reaches highschool, they've learned their 3 R's, they know how to learn, and that's all school is for. You can read, you can write, you know how to do math, and anything beyond that should be something the kids choose. Why would you force a child to learn complete biology when they want to be a mechanic? They are going to waste years of their life, and still not know what they're doing when it's over. Teenagers must have an occupation, they must feel useful, they must learn about the adult world while they're still young enough to be protected from all the harsh realities of it. Highschool puts you in a fantasy world where you think the information you're learning will be useful. Is it any wonder teenagers feel so betrayed when they discover they wasted so much of their time?

And if you've taken away the time-sink that is highschool, then college is equally redundant to the majority of the students. It can go back to the way it should be; useful only to a select few, at which point, a college degree will mean something. At the rate our country is going, everyone will have their degree, and it will be as pointless as it is expensive. Companies do not often hire someone who is only 22 years old, unless they've had experience, which they cannot have, because they've been busy in school. And often, you're far too overqualified, with no experience, and you'd need to be payed too much, so they'll pass you over, and you end up with a heap of debt on your shoulders and working at a coffee shop because you can't find a job in your field.

The people who should be going to college are doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers. You don't need a degree in women's studies (literally one of the most useless degrees on the planet) because nobody will hire you off of that. You want to learn something? Take a class or two at a local community college, where you can pay $75 a class and be done with it. You shouldn't waste your time at a University because you wanted to learn the history of some Greek Deity. It's a colossal waste of time, money, and resources. And if you were able to attend a vocational school or become an apprentice as a teenager, then you shouldn't need to go to a University unless you are after one of the higher paying jobs I just mentioned (no, teaching is not a well payed job, but that's a problem for another post).

Formal Education does not, and should not, take up nearly the first two decades of someone's life. The purpose of school should be to teach you how to learn, the rest is up to an individual. Some people might have no higher aspirations than to make pizza their whole life (not all heroes wear capes), while other people might want to be President of the United States. Why should every child be forced to learn the same thing, at the same time, for the same amount of years, if they're not all heading the same place? It's ridiculous, and a huge waste of everyone's time.

I can guarantee that if we were to adopt even a few of the ideas that other countries use, the rates of depression would plummet, kids would be learning like they're meant to, retaining information like a sponge, and they would make happier, more productive adults. I bet bullying would even go down by a lot.

I know it sounds like I'm being an idealist, but isn't hope and good ideas where all revolutions are born? Maybe for some of you, following this idea means pulling your kids our of school and homeschooling them instead. Maybe some of you are going to take up arms and go on a tirade against a corrupt system. And maybe some of you think I'm a young hopeful, dreaming an impossible dream. But if we don't do something, our future is bleak, there will be nothing but a country full of depressed, sluggish, sheep who will obey and not think twice, and then kill themselves because they know their life is meaningless. And I know none of us want that for our children and grandchildren. It takes just one voice to get the revolution started, it takes just one action to change someone's world. Let's fix this for our kids.

Cheers!