Some Thoughts on Education

Education Who or How:


Many teachers assign children homework that must be done with and signed by the parents. In my education experience I have had several of these teachers and wondered before: Who is the education system responsible for teaching, the students or the families? It appears that there are instances the teacher must tailor curriculum to educate both. Being aware of the family of a student lends itself to furthering education by encouraging continuing lessons in the home, and teaches parents about their child and his or her needs in the same motion. Specific observations begin with my Mother’s kindergarten classes.

She has taught kindergarten for most of 24 years and during that time kept current with all required “continuing education courses” for her grade level, obtained her Masters, repeatedly enrolled in additional Master’s classes, and has a pretty solid handle on pedagogy, brain development for children, teaching, and other such specific things. Yet surprisingly, over the years as curriculum has changed, further research has been developed, and “new” techniques have been popularized, her methods have remained the same. Simultaneously her students and their parents- now parents and grandparents to kindergartners of their own- still seek her and recommend her to other parents they know. Why is this? Because she makes a point of knowing them. It’s amazing how much can be accomplished when one simply knows another. One cannot care until one knows, and simultaneously the desire to know seems to be evoked upon the choice to care. Thus, utilizing parents that both know and care about their children makes a lot of sense in education. However this concept is applicable to the students as much as the teacher and parent educators. Since school establishes itself as a place to work on knowing things, and doing well at the things we desire or care to is a notable human tendency, maybe it is a relationship worth attention.

Here are a few interesting examples of ways to improve the knowledge of children by engaging them in a way they will care (Taken from my Mother).

My Mother will give a group a cup of jelly beans and make them count and divide them fairly, and it is astounding to observe the transformation of the student that doesn’t enjoy math to suddenly incredibly interested in the precision of figures.

There are inevitably in every class a chatty group of girls that giggle during the lesson but when they are informed they’ll be allowed to bring Valentine’s to school in February and music sessions are on Thursdays start singing the “months of the year” and “days of the week” songs with enthusiasm. They care about those things, and so they’ll learn what they need to know for them to happen.

Some of us enjoy writing more than others, and even for kindergartners that are just learning to form sentences this holds true. But as a third example of care for knowledge I’ve observed in my Mother’s class is “pet journal time”. Each child has a week to find a photograph of his or her favorite pet, or magazine or newspaper clipping of an ideal pet, and then they’ll have a special journal time. Instead of having to write about colors and weather or stories and what they want to be when they “grow up” each student must describe that pet from ears and eyes and tail, spots, textures, talents, and diet to their favorite memory had or memory they would want to make with that ideal pet. Pencils snap and papers fly in the frenzy to perfectly describe that wonderful creature. Care and knowledge are combined to then share and learn about the other animals chosen in the classroom.

What’s more? In all of the above examples students learn and care not only about the subject at hand but how to work with each other in knowledge. They learn to care how many jelly beans they’re group mates get and learn they ought to be fair about it. They learn some of the relativity of prescribed times and the pleasure of writing to, giving to, and singing with their classmates. They learn how to describe something they value in both objective and subjective terms to another individual, and what little parts make up a whole. During all of this the teacher chose to care to start knowing her students further knows them and is able to devleop even better exercises in the future.

It’s amazing the way a teacher’s combined knowledge and care for her students applies to…

that knowledge and care educating her students in…

knowing and caring in their experiences.

Perhaps stricter standards and further sophisticated systems are not the solution to better education but utilizing a care to know, and what is known to care, are.