The Problem with School
As a general rule, kids don’t love school. They tolerate school (with varying degrees of success)
while what they really crave is the freedom offered by the weekend and summer break. Of course, it
is pretty broadly understood that school is an very important part of kids’ lives. A critical step along
their pathway to functional adulthood. But an important part of cultural progression is taking a good
hard look at our assumptions and figure out the reasons behind them.
I want you to consider all of the reasons that you think kids need school, and all that comes with it.
Why do they need teachers? Worksheets? Homework? Tests and grades? Etc.
Now I want you to imagine something for me.
I’m an educator, and I design a program that teaches a specific skill. I enroll students in my program
for one year. Virtually all of the students I enroll are unable to demonstrate the skill when they enter
my program, and virtually all of the students are able to easily demonstrate the skill upon
graduation. My program could definitely be considered a success, correct?
Here’s where I tell you that the name of my program is Learning to Walk 101. The goal of my
program is to teach children to walk, and children are enrolled from the age of 6 months to the age of
18 months.
Now, the value of my program diminishes quite a bit when we know that I’m teaching a skill to a
group of children who, barring developmental issues, will certainly learn the skill anyway regardless
of whether they’re in my program or not.
So now we come back to our education system. If your reasons for school attendance fall in the
category of “kids need to learn (fill in the blank)”, I would encourage you to look again.
Let’s take an example. Kids need to learn to read. I agree with that statement wholeheartedly. It’s
critical for kids to learn to read just as it’s critical for them to learn to walk. But it’s entirely possible
that in our print-rich society, as long as they have ready access to books and other print materials,
kids don’t need formal reading training any more than they need formal walking training. They’ll
figure it out regardless of what we do.
Plenty of parents are already testing this theory. Unschooling is a branch of homeschooling that
ditches pretty much all the trappings of traditional schools and lets kids teach themselves. And then
there are schools that are essentially unschooling, but in a school setting. Generally referred to as
Sudbury schools, kids at these schools have an extraordinary amount of freedom when compared to
a student at a traditional school.
Thousands of kids in these settings have never had a formal reading class or lesson, and they all
learn to read. The time frame may be different from what occurs in a tradition setting, but then kids
always do things in their own time. There is a huge push in our society to get kids reading earlier, the
earlier the better. But if you look at the research on this, we see that “the early introduction of formal
learning approaches to literacy does not improve children’s reading development, and may be
damaging.”
When you look at what we know now about a child’s development, there are a lot of ways we can
support a child in the complex process of learning to read. But sitting them at a desk staring at
worksheets or sitting quietly in a circle listening to a teacher talk are far less effective than simply
letting them play.
Reading is just one example of course. But it always comes down to play. Do you want your child to
learn math? Play. Social skills? Play. Improve their handwriting? Play (really!). Be better at
expressing their emotions? Play. I could go on.
Now, there are a lot of good things about our school systems, but I also see many kids who are the
proverbial square peg in a round hole. And too often, those children are blamed and punished
because they don’t fit. We are punishing our kids for failing at school, when increasingly, it’s the
schools that are failing our kids as they increasingly limit opportunities for free play and child directed
learning.
This is wrong, and we can do better.
Let them play.
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