This post will deal with my experience with child-centered instruction as a homeschooling mom. Unlike childcare facilities, homeschooling environments lend themselves to a purer form of a theory's implementation. Over the years I have witnessed how these theories function over the long-term. Many childcare facilities do not have this luxury because their set-up is institutional by character.
My Homeschooling Background
When I entered formal early childhood instruction on a college level, I already had 13 years of homeschooling experience under my belt. I also had a lot more life experience than many who study early childhood straight out of high school. During my homeschooling years, I had witnessed the implementation of many of the theorists' ideas that early childhood professionals revere. I had also been a part of cleaning up the messes these ideas created when implemented over the long term. Therefore, when these same ideas came up in my classes, I tried desperately not to visible roll my eyes and get on my soap box to explain to these people why that does not work. I deliberately avoided writing my papers on these principles and managed somehow to find common ground as a conservative in an extremely liberal field. Needless to say, all of that greatly enhanced my writing abilities.
What's the Big Deal?
When child-centered instruction is purely implemented and carried on throughout childhood, you will get children who know an awful lot about one or two subjects and yet cannot read or do basic math skills because they find the work involved in acquiring these skills boring. On more occasions than I care to remember, I have had to help homeschooling parents repair the damage done because they followed these theorists wholeheartedly. Most of the time, these children had to endure a horrible bootcamp-type season to bring their reading and math skills up to speed, and then the parents put them in public school in complete defeat. Sometimes the children were just simply put back in public school and left to flounder. The parents were not to blame. These theorists have it completely wrong.
Hard Work over Talent
This past week I posted an article on the Facebook page for this blog from Psychology Today that talked about what is required for children to achieve greatness. Most people say that talent plays the biggest role in whether or not children achieve greatness. However, in this article it talked about how hard work has more to do with it than talent. Even a talented child has to be able to work hard when it is not fun to rise above the masses and achieve great things. This applies for every genre of work across the board. As a music teacher, I know this article hits it right on the head. A talented child that is not willing to put in the hours of monotonous practice will not outdo the less talented child that is willing to put in the work. When work is equal, the talented child will outdo the less talented child, but lack of work holds back even the most talented of individuals.
Should Learning HAVE to Be Fun?
Child-centered instruction basically teaches children that learning HAS to be fun or they do not have to do it. Even our public school systems are falling into this trap and then wondering why we keep slipping into mediocrity as a nation. Of course, those who push child-centered instruction never put it that way. They say we need to make learning fun in order to keep the children's attention. However, the underlying message that we have been sending to these children is that they do not have to do anything that they find the least bit boring. We have actually done more damage to their attention spans than any boring instruction has ever done. It amazes me that no one has put together that the decrease in our children's attention spans coincided with the push of child-centered instruction.
Work Is Necessary to Be Great
One of the greatest lessons we will ever teach children comes when they push through the endless hours of monotonous practice to emerge as experts. Sports people have this down. Academic people have this backwards. The adults have to keep pushing the children through all the work required to become really good at something because children do not think long-term. However, even young children can learn to think long-term if they have worked hard at something for years and are finally able to perform at a high level. This works in sports, music, and even reading, math, and every other academic pursuit. We as adults must navigate the children through the mundane not around the mundane if we want them to truly achieve great things.
The Difference between Work and Play
What does this look like in early childhood terms? In my childcare I teach the difference between work and play. I dare teach these children that there are some things that must be done whether you want to do it or not. I teach them that work does not have to be fun to have to be done. We can try to make the work fun, but it still has to be done. This applies across the board and even involves academic matters. If a child is not in the mood to do their one-on-one instruction, they do it anyway. We lay the foundation for school, and they must learn to do their school work whether they are in the mood or not if they plan to actually learn. We must stop coddling and catering to our children before we completely ruin an entire generation if we have not done so already.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
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