Learning What You Love is The Real Education

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We know how bored our kids are in school, yet we do nothing

We know how much our kids hate school, yet we tell them, ‘it’s for your future.’ And ask them to keep suffering for the sake of ‘their future’.

We have to ask ourselves, why do kids hate school and why are they bored? Of course, not all of them are bored, because they’re disciplined. If they don’t seem bored, it’s because they’re not showing it. Because they know it’s ‘for their future’. It’s inside all of us. The fact that we know school is boring yet we don’t show it.

I have friends who went to high school, yet when I ask them for some help, they say they forgot about the subject already, although they ‘used’ to remember it. What’s the point of ‘used’ to remember it?

The way we teach our generation is we throw information at them in hopes that they’ll return all of it when the time of tests. It’s not education because after the tests, they forget it again. Education is the knowledge that we remember after we forget everything else. THAT is education.

“Kenapa dia lupa?”

“Ya, karena dia pelupa. Buku tulis aja lupa bawa.”

WRONG. We remember the important things in our lives and those with good meaning. We remember our parents taking us to the park when we were kids. We remember the good times we had in highschool, which was actually the fun times with friends, not the education. Maybe education isn’t one of the ‘important things’ to remember, it lacks purpose.

BUT IT CAN BE.

In my years of home school I have learned the following. This is the golden rule: YOU CANNOT FORCE SOMEONE TO LEARN.

In my years of home school I have learned the following.

Economics: Stocks, bonds, banks, GDP, recessions

Science: Rockets, trains, bridges, hydraulics, planes

Cars: Over steer, under steer, car engines, car brakes, weight shift

Energy: Nuclear, bio-algae, biodiesel, gas from sugar, wind turbines, dam, fuel cells

History: Industrial Revolution, Age of discovery, WWII

If you ask me about bridges, I’ll tell you about compression and tension. If you ask me stocks, I’ll tell you that they’re shares of a company to help the company invest and also the stockholder to make some cash. I would have never done this without homeschooling and I remember these things up until now. Why?

WE STUDENTS CAN TEACH OURSELVES. All we need is the right equipment and we’re off to go. And that’s what I see in this modern technology age. We all have smart phones that can google, warnet’s down the block. Internet has already an abundant amount of info, why go to school?

You’ll ask me, why did I study all of this stuff? Daniel Pink’s amazing research tells why. He applied this stuff to Business, but it also makes sense if you apply it to school. The intrinsic motivation factors are:

Autonomy. To self govern and take control of your own life. (To learn what you want to learn)

Mastery. To get better at the things you’re already doing. (Why do we keep playing the guitar? Because its fun and we get better at it)

Purpose. To have a meaning in what you’re doing. (To learn the stuff that has meaning to you!)

If I could do this, so can your kid. In fact, your kids are probably learning by themselves right now and you’re not noticing it. My friend is learning the components of computer parts and what’s the best price for the best quality. There’s also a kid that goes to my warnet and likes to read legends and myths of other countries. In my SMP years there was a student who brought car magazines to school and read their top speed, etc. There’s also a bike group in my SMP years and they probably taught themselves about quality for price and the bike components.

Now is the time to let kids learn for themselves. To let THEM decide which is important and which isn’t.

Info used

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh

I highly recommend seeing

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feDJ3zL23qw