In The Bond of Power, Joseph Chilton Pearce pointed out that "learning research finds anxiety is the great enemy of intelligence and development. So its increase can be seen as an automatic index of a decrease in intelligence."
We can apply this finding to both ourselves as homeschooling parents and to our children as young learners.
Homeschooling Parental Anxiety
As parents, our own worries and fears can frighten us into putting pressure on our children. This transfer of anxiety represents an inhibition of our own primal intelligence about nurturing our children.
Jean Leidloff, author of The Continuum Concept, wrote: "If you thoroughly understand that children are innately social, then you understand that what they want is information. You don't have to be angry to tell them what's needed. You just let them know. The idea is not to blame, and not to praise, because both are insulting. Expect children to do the right thing. You then are being a clear model and there's no conflict. It's the way nature designed us to behave."
Children are social learners. They learn what we do, not what we say, as the saying goes. Contructivist learning theory posits that children develop knowledge through the interaction of ideas and experiences, intrinsic motivation influenced by extrinsic social interaction.
Much Too Early: Child Anxiety
In a USA Today editorial, Ruth Bettelheim suggested that schools are failing "because the natural learning behaviors of children [i.e., curiosity, play, and exploration] are routinely penalized instead of praised." She suggested that initiatives such as "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top" are failing because they don't consider the research on how children learn. Homeschooling families are susceptible to the same mistakes.
- Have you as a home educator considered the research on how children learn?
- Does your homeschooling support natural learning behaviors?
- Are you schooling or educating?
The term "schooling" is often confused with educating, but schooling refers only to the limited academic training curriculum programs provide, whereas education encompasses all of life's experiences and lessons.
In harsher terms, “schooling” refers to making kids do stuff via force, coercion, or threat. This causes anxiety and inhibits intellectual development, which presumably was the point of the focused academic training.
In Magical Child, Pearce wrote: "Anxiety always cripples intelligence...Its roots are deep, its branches prolific, its fruit abundant, and its effects devastating."
Thus, pressure in academic training branches out to affect the child's self-image, feelings toward learning, and all other aspects of the child's life experience, or education.
Sources:
Pearce, Joseph Chilton. The Bond of Power. E.P. Dutton, 1981.
Pearce, Joseph Chilton. Magical Child. Plume, 1992.
Mendizza, Michael. Magical Parent Magical Child. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2004.
Sara McGrath - Sara is a veteran homeschool mom of three, Usborne consultant, and the author of Unschooling: A Lifestyle of Learning.
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