Late Night Inspiration

I'm having a little trouble coming down off of the Halloween candy rush, so why not make an update?

What is it that kills the thirst for knowledge. In her book A Philosophy of Education, Ms. Mason points to a couple of culprits.

"I can touch here on no more than two potent means of creating incuria in a class. One is the talky-talky of the teacher. We all know how we are bored by the person in private life who explains and expounds. What reason have we to suppose that children are not equally bored? They try to tell us that they are by wandering eyes, inanimate features, fidgetting hands and feet, by every means at their disposal; and the kindly souls among us think that they want to play or to be out of doors. But they have no use for play except at proper intervals. What they want is knowledge conveyed in a literary form and the talk of the facile teacher leaves them cold. (Emphasis Added)

Another soothing potion is little suspected of producing mental lethargy. We pride ourselves upon going over and over the same ground 'until the children know it'; the monotony is deadly. A child writes, - 'Before we had these (books) we had to read the same old lot again and again.' Is it not true? In the home schoolroom books used by the grandmother are fit for the grandchildren, books used in boys' schools may be picked up at second-hand stalls with the obliterated names of half-a-dozen successive owners.

They cannot go over the same ground repeatedly without deadening, even paralysing results, for progress, continual progress is the law of intellectual life."

Rather than run the risk of proving Mason right, I shall refrain from exposition and allow the text to speak to you.

The Money Argument

It seems that the state of Oklahoma is bickering with itself again about education funding.  Yes, when it comes to what is spent regionally, we spend much less.  We pay our teachers less than 47 other states.

However, a fool thinks to himself that he needs more money to repair cracks in his walls, patch his roof, and repaint his rooms when his house is on a foundation of sand.  Money will not help this man unless he is first willing to raze his house and put it on a solid foundation.

Money will not restore the curiosity of our middle and high school aged children.  Money will not replace their apathy with caring.  And, at this point, money will not feed their minds.

A child is a person.  They deserve a system that treats them as such.

Children do not need to be manipulated or "added to."  They need to be strengthened and inspired.  It doesn't require huge administrative buildings or cutting edge technology to do that.

The only food for the mind is an idea.  Ideas do not cost me a red cent, and the books that contain the greatest ideas humankind has recorded are not expensive.

Until we realize this, we will continue throwing money down a hole that has put our nation's educational system behind many poorer countries, despite the fact that we spend more than any other nation in the world on education, save two.

For the Teachers

"In urging a method of self-education for children in lieu of the vicarious education which prevails, I should like to dwell on the enormous relief to teachers, a self-sacrificing and greatly overburdened class; the difference is just that between driving a horse that is light and a horse that is heavy in hand; the former covers the ground of his own gay will and the driver goes merrily.  The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding."  -- Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

Do we as teachers know any differently?  How many teachers DON'T know what it feels like to have to push, pull, bite and claw to get a student to take their studies seriously?  How many teachers have the love of teaching pummelled out of them by nothing more than the relentless, day-in-and-day-out message that is sent both verbally and non-verbally from the students that nothing on earth could be less interesting or important than what the teacher is attempting to impart to them?  Could we have made a bigger mistake in this country's attempt to educate our youth than to lay the entire burden of education at the feet of the teachers, instead of the place where the burden actually exists: solidly on the student?  Such a mentality was more understandable in an age when books were rare and college-educated teachers were even more sparse, although it was arguably still misguided.  Today, there is absolutely no excuse for it.  But anyone who would blame the students for their abysmal lack of initiative in claiming their intellectual birthright is missing two thirds of the picture.  For that, you must look to the parents, who are usually far more concerned about grades than understanding (if they are concerned at all, that is), and to a school system that insists on intellectually starving students while figuratively beating them into a very literal behavioral submission.