Black-and-White or Gray?

In my last post I referred to the research of Peter Gray, who makes this unsettling observation: ". . . the more scientists have learned about how children naturally learn, the more we have come to realize that children learn most deeply and fully, and with greatest enthusiasm, in conditions that are almost opposite to those of school."

Gray goes on to describe the current system--accurately, I believe--as a "top-down, teach-and-test method, in which learning is motivated by a system of rewards and punishments rather than by curiosity or by any real, felt desire to know, [and] is well designed for indoctrination and obedience training but not much else." This model grew out of history, as opposed to scientific research on how children learn.  Values from the Protestant Reformation, specifically,  formed the foundation for our educational system.  He writes:  "The blueprint still used for today’s schools was developed during the Protestant Reformation, when schools were created to teach children to read the Bible, to believe scripture without questioning it, and to obey authority figures without questioning them. The early founders of schools were quite clear about this in their writings. The idea that schools might be places for nurturing critical thought, creativity, self-initiative or ability to learn on one’s own — the kinds of skills most needed for success in today’s economy — was the furthest thing from their minds. To them, willfulness was sinfulness, to be drilled or beaten out of children, not encouraged."

Soooooo, how does one do school if you believe, as I do, that Peter Gray is right in what he observes about how children learn best--if you happen also to believe that some values of the Protestant Reformation-inspired system have merit?  I'm sure it's obvious that I am not perfectly trained according to Reformation-era thought, or I would never raise this question at all.

How did critical thought sneak into my psyche?  Did it get there by devious and diabolical means?  Is critical thought a vice to be rooted out in favor of obeying "authority figures without questioning them?" Avoiding critical thought would certainly simplify my life a great deal.  We all know instinctively, however, that holding to such a standard has its own hazards--perhaps chief among them failure to bear the image of God faithfully, in a way that reminds us of Who God is.  Some things in Peter Gray's ideal educational setting should resonate with those who believe man was created in the image of God.  Because of this, we can exercise initiative and creativity, and can learn and know.

Peter Gray sees homeschooling as offering far more potential for an ideal educational setting than the classroom model, although he cites a caveat that he feels is addressed helpfully in model schools such as Sudbury Valley School, currently in operation in Massachusetts, with a 45-year record of operation.  Copious amounts of social interaction across age groups is the factor that he identifies as being superior in this classroom model--although not in traditional classroom schools.  (Maybe Gray can't imagine how the same thing might be accomplished at home in large families.)

Most of us would hardly recognize Sudbury Valley as a school.  No classes are conducted, no lessons are assigned, students may engage in any activity they wish on the school grounds (a naturally diverse outdoor environment is present), and the only rules are ones the students and adults have decided on democratically.  No grades are assigned and nor report cards are handed out.  Discipline is meted out by a regularly rotating and democratically elected group of students and adults, but not much discipline is needed.  Students almost all love school.

Some parents have serious reservations about having a student spend all his or her time at school playing video games--even violent ones, fishing, etc., and perhaps never learning math.  Bad language is not a punishable offense, and that bothers other parents.  I'd be bothered too.

One thing that results, however, is that children do learn to take total responsibility for their own learning, and a very high percentage who leave school go directly to college and do very well there.  Those who don't go to college are usually well prepared for a career, and choose to go straight into that instead of college.  Predictably, when faced with college entrance tests, that student who never studied math suddenly finds himself in need of tutoring.  A tutor is hired, and in six weeks he's learned all he needs to know to do well on his SAT.  True story.

The other notable thing that children at Sudbury learn is how to participate in a "democratic community in which they acquire a sense of responsibility for others, not just for themselves."  

Implicit in these Sudbury Valley School values is a valid criticism of our more traditional educational systems, which seem to me to reliably include these:  1)  Students taking very little personal initiative in the learning process, perhaps because of being offered few choices and little control 2)  Individual advancement superseding concern about the welfare of the group  (Ponder this:  the word for some kinds of sharing is "cheating.")  3)  Initial excitement about school often diminishing as time spent there increases.

From an Anabaptist perspective, it's fair to note that our ties to the Protestant Reformation are stronger than they are for most Americans.  Besides the religious ties, we have ancestral links to the regions in Europe where the Reformation originated.  We are, by and large, of Swiss or German background.  These are not the only regions that figured large in the Reformation, and not all of us are Swiss and German, but I believe that our educational system looks much like that of Western Europe for very understandable reasons.  John Taylor Gatto traces some of these similarities convincingly.  We are like the German industrialists in our love of cut-and-dried systems that promote productivity.  We are like the Swiss in that we are rural people who take pride not only in productivity, but in craftsmanship also. 

While not very well fleshed out here, I believe that our Swiss-German heritage makes us especially susceptible to the idea that to do things right we need an educational system that is above-all efficient.   We employ cut-and-dried systems, with observable, quantifiable, testable, documentable, black-and-white outcomes in pursuit of this efficiency.  If the systems have been in use for a long time, so much the better.  No need to re-invent the wheel and all that.  To be sure, we tweak and make adjustments as our craftsmanship impulse prompts us to do, but we can hardly fathom how things might change if we stepped back far enough to examine the merits of the system itself.  The central question on merits of the system should be:  Does it accomplish what should be accomplished?  I'm not sure we get that.  

Further exploration of this matter will have to wait for another day and another post, not to mention further thought and prayer and insight--and courage.  Sadly, Gray does not provide all the answers, any more than black-and-white German industrialist systems do.