Doc and I have been emailing back and forth about our mutual admiration for John Gatto, about the Disseminary, and about Margaret’s and my homeschooling Nate (he’s a music theory major at Eastman School of Music, honest, though you might not guess it from the only online evidence of his existence), Si, and Pippa.
We had begun homeschooling the kids years before we knew John Gatto existed. At first, we considered buying a packaged curriculum; we were petrified at the prospect of flopping miserably at raising well-educated children. Eventually we wound up trying a home-brew, free-form approach to teaching Nate, and in the course of figuring out what was happening Margaret became acquainted with the work of John Holt. That settled things. From then on, we were unschooling the children, following their lead to help them learn as they felt ready, felt the need.
The years have had educational ups and downs, but we have seen before our eyes that children can learn as though they had cartoon vacuum cleaners in their brains, sucking book after book in. Our main educational strategies became (1) frequent trips to the library (spread the meme!), (2) leaving books in the middle of the floor, where the children were bound to stumble over them, pick them up, and give them a browse, (3) feint that we might not permit them to learn this or that, and (4) find others to help them with topics we weren’t ourselves adequately familiar with.
Doc observes,
Well, institutions have huge flywheels. I had a talk recently with a friend, a Ph.D., who had trouble believing that our 6 year old learned to read on his own (as did his older brother, many years ago... math too). Somebody must have taught him, she believed. We are all deeply locked into a belief system that regards education as a manufacturing system in which data gets downloaded from full to empty vessels by a curricular process involving teachers, classrooms, homework and sanctioned books.
This does connect with the Disseminary. Since Margaret and I had seen how our children thrived from learning what they felt the motivation to learn, when they felt the motivation to learn it, we also have observed how much more readily seminarians learn that which they want to learn, that which they care to grapple with as part of their formation for ministry. The Disseminary proposes that anyone who wants to learn about theology and religion should have the opportunity so to do, without the expensive, inessential appurtenances that institutional education entails.
Does this mean that we oppose the kind of teaching and learning that institutional education offers? By no means, as the Apostle said. We simply don’t think that it’s healthy for anyone concerned that “educational opportunities” should primarily entail “participation in a graded, periodic, for-credit, tuition-driven program.”
As I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the Disseminary and its relation to my vocation as an institutional (no jokes, please, about “institutionalized”) theological educator, I’ve adopted the terminology of “non-curricular learning.” I encounter that phrase mostly in discussions of literacy, but it manifestly extends far beyond the acquisition of language skills—much of our most important learning comes from sources other than school. With the Disseminary, we’re trying to offer a locus for non-curricular learning about theology and religion, opening up theological inquiry, and thus enriching both institutional and un-schooled (in the Holtian sense) learners.
Posted by AKMA at December 17, 2002 09:40 PM | TrackBackThanks for the inspiration AKMA - I should be doing something about this!
Posted by: Euan at December 18, 2002 06:35 AMElaine emailed me (having had trouble with the comments server) to say, "Having taught in New York State schools and having worked for 20 years for the New York State Education Department, I couldn't agree with you more. I wish I had home-schooled my kids, although the truth is they learned pretty much want they needed to know on their own. Going to school was more a socialization process, and even that not always in a positive way. What schools need to do is "teach" kids HOW to learn, encourage their natural curiosity and creativity, give them an interdisciplinay and connected perspective. That was my primary role in the NY Ed Dept --a gadfly and an advocate for that approach, mostly from the perspective of the arts and humanities. I was only mildly successful -- and that only because I was relentless (both one of my best qualities as well as one of my worst.)
Exploration, discovery, experimentation -- schools can't seem to find a way to foster those learning process and still have high enough standardized test scores/statistics to report back to the educational bureaucracies that give them funding. Gatto has always been one of my heroes. I remember when he was given the "teacher of the year" award, and I've heard him speak. Amazing educator!