Entry #1: Chapters 1-5 In the first five chapters of Free to Learn, Peter Grey introduces the idea of forced education that can be currently witnessed in the majority of schools throughout the United States. To begin with, this book is not one of complaint; it is a book about seeking improvement and hope for children’s education. I, for one, believe that so far (from reading the first five chapters) this book holds so much great information that I did not know before but there is a few things that I hold doubts about and definitely question, but do not necessarily disagree about. “We were so independent, we were given so much freedom. But now it’s impossible to imagine giving that to a child today. It’s one of the great losses as a society”, saids Hillary Clinton. Free play is the only time when children are able to make their own decisions and aren’t under constant adult supervision. That freedom allows children to grow and live new experiences that simply can’t equal to the negative energy school brings to kids. Referring to what Hillary said along with many other world-wide leaders who think similarly, I agree 100%. I remember my mother telling me stories about her childhood and how she always had time during the day to play outside with her friends. Obviously, times have changed and due to safety or any other reason, children do not usually play outdoors, but that still doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have the freedom or time for free play. We, as humans, are designed by nature to play and explore on our own, without constantly relying on adults. On the other hand, there are the hunter gatherers. “Hunter-gatherers’ sense of autonomy is so strong that they refrain from telling one another what to do.” Parents and adults (from hunter-gatherer groups) give their complete trust to their children. “…children were free to play from dawn to dusk every day.” Here is where I question myself. Were there any teachers present in these groups that taught something more educational like, mathematics? Probably not. They gained skills on hunting and food gathering but what about other educational subjects? However, after reading some more, I answered this myself. Hunter-gatherers don’t need the same education we need today because they lived a very simple life with very few necessities within their small community. The author isn’t telling us to live like them, he is simply giving a concrete example of the type of values we should take in counter in present day schools. According to the rise of protestantism and the origin of compulsory education, “the belief that young people are incapable of making reasonable decisions is a cornerstone of our system of compulsory, closely monitored education.” In the mid 19th century, only children from 8 to 9 had to go to school and they only needed to complete 12 weeks of attending school. Now a day, we have deprived children from their own freedom to learn and have taken their time of free play which is how, by nature, they are designed to learn. This brings in the story of Daniel Greenberg, a successful and intelligent professor that quit his job and moved to Massachusetts with his wife to build a new school with a different learning system. The school community was very similar to that of the hunter-gatherers, which was a truly democratic school. The school’ staff members weren’t called teachers because they were only there to comfort or give advice to any child in need of assistance; they never helped them too much because the point was to give them freedom and independence to figure things out on their own. To sum it all up, this system is overall extremely successful not only giving children a funner way to learn but it’s also great academically. This same school system is seen in over three dozen schools in the united states and in addition, from the interviews taken by the graduates of the Sudbury Valley school, a large percentage of them do not regret attending the school and presently, have very successful jobs that they love. “Through play and exploration, students discover activities they enjoy, become good at those activities, and quite often go on- still in the spirit of play - to make a living at those or similar activities”. I can’t yet judge these different ideas people are coming up with about children's education but what I can do is agree with the facts the author gives about student’s perspective’s on school. We all just try to ‘get by’ with each thing we do. We might cheat once in a while to pass a test, but only because we care too much about the outcome. We constantly compete with our classmates and feel way too much pressure from teachers and we feel forced to learn things that we know we hate and know that we will not pursue it in the future. I am excited to continue reading this book to finalize my thoughts and opinions and definitely feel intrigued to learn more on this topic. Entry #2: Chapters 6-10"Whenever children or adults bring imagination and creativity into their efforts toward discovery, they are combining play and exploration. In adults, we call that science." Wait, but isn’t science performing labs, creating a hypothesis, and writing a conclusion? Well, in the last five chapters of Free to Learn, Peter Gray proves us wrong. I personally, was surprised when I read that part in the book. For me, science has always been experimenting on something boring and reflecting on the results of that experiment. That’s basically how I look at school. I don’t really get the chance to explore what I find interesting and make my own discoveries. Everything is always given to me and I, obediently do what I’m told. But after reading this book, I now know us, children, don’t deserve to learn this way; it’s not really the most healthy way to learn, anyways.
“Play is activity in which means are more valued than ends.” When students play they have nobody expecting them to do their best or waiting for a final outcome. They don’t need to find the quickest way to finish a task because they don’t have one. While they play they enjoy every minute of it and use their curiosity to explore different ideas and ways to play. Play has structure and rules but these are all agreed upon everybody and are only there to provide organization to make play even more fun. Wouldn’t it be great to truly enjoy an assignment and use our curiosity to discover new things and not have to worry if our discoveries fit the criteria? In other words, wouldn’t it be much funner and educational to worry less about grades and more about the process? I think it would be. Ever since I was little, school had always been work for me. It’s not that I didn’t have fun, I definitely enjoyed myself various times but almost all of that fun seemed to wash away during the time I spent waiting for my grade and worrying if I had disappointed my teacher and parents or not. In chapter 8, the author compares informal sports (play) to formal play through 5 lessons. Within these five lessons he explains how when playing any informal type of play you need to keep everybody happy because everybody has the freedom or right to quit whenever they want so it’s important to keep everyone satisfied so you don’t lose any players. As you can see, during play, you work together with other people so everybody has the chance to have fun. You're not thinking about yourself and what YOU have to do to be better than everybody else. You don’t mind if your th best or not because you are part of a team. Of course in school there are always group projects, which are great because you learn how to collaborate with others and everybody contributes their part. But what happens when one student decides to complain about a group member to the teacher to try to make themselves look better? Or the fact that they know somebody in their group is doing something wrong, yet they don’t tell them for their own self advantage? I’m not saying this always happens in groups but these situations do exist. In my opinion, and from my own personal experience, school sometimes can make us crazy. For starters, most of the time, when there is just too much work to get done, you’ll do anything to just get by. You don’t really care how much you really learned or if you tried your 100%, you just want to finish and get the good grades. So sometimes you cheat, you plagiarize, etc. Even the people with the best grades are guilty of it because they needed the extra “help” to get into their dream college. This doesn’t mean at all that teachers should have more control of their students. I’m saying that, is it really right to call it education when most students get to a point that they don’t even feel like they’re learning anymore? Do we really need to obligate kids to learning something they have no interest in if they’re just going to cheat to get the answers? I can’t help but feel sorry for us students that are given so little freedom at school. Free age mixing is something that really caught my eye in the book. I have to admit it took me a while to really imagine same aged children learning together in the same class or activity because I was convinced all ages were at the same levels. “...the younger children can engage in and learn from activities that would be too complex, difficult, or dangerous for them to do on their own or only with others their own age.” Many kids feel embarrassed or stupid to ask a teacher or adult a question but usually with kids closer to their age, they feel more comfortable asking. I, for one, can totally relate to this because it is way easier to ask questions to somebody that has the same perspective as you, considering he/she is also a student. Learning by observation is a gift all children have, especially if your a visual learner. In my opinion, a simple action can say more than a million words. It is easy for young children to remember and copy what someone else does so this is how they learn and how their understanding increases when it comes to a specific skill or learning subject. And this as well benefits the older children because they can reflect on what they know on the way and might make some realizations as the younger children ask them questions. I can relate to this because about 3 years ago my little sister asked me to help her read a book they had assigned from school. As I read the book, my sister often asked me what a lot of words meant. I had to second guess myself after each of my responses because I really did not know how to define the words. That was my wake up call that I had to read more and increase my vocabulary. The last chapter of Free to Learn by Peter Gray surprised me. First because of the title: Trustful Parenting in Our Modern World. So, without much thinking, I read the chapter with my mother. The author separates three kinds of styles of parenting: trustful parenting, directive-domineering parenting, and directive-protective parenting. Trustful parents give their child the freedom to be independent and learn from their mistakes. They allow them to follow their passions and support them no matter what those passions may be. Directive-domineering parenting, is when the parents see their child as their own personal project. These parents believe that their child is theirs, meaning that they have every right to control and direct them to do anything they want. Directive-protective parenting, is when parents feel too emotionally attached to their kids which ends of being too much of an exaggeration. This can turn out to be too protective because these type of parents are depriving their children from their own personal freedom. While reading this with my own mother, we realized how important it was that this chapter was included in the book because we can both agree how stressful school can be and how crucial it is to have your parent’s support. I am glad I read it with her because I found it really cool to get my mother’s perspective, especially while reading this specific chapter that she can potentially learn a lot from. “Career success is not life success”. This part of the book really stood out for me and I’ll tell you why. In my school, starting in 8th grade we already are given talks about college, and when you get to high school, you feel like you should already know how your life will be in the next 10 years. All I think about during these talks is, when do we actually get to enjoy life? What about travel, culture and the fun part of life? When do we get a break, a chance to breathe and not think about our future career? I think were at the point in life where we should not know what were gonna do for the next years of our life, instead we should be trying different things out, discovering things on our own and making mistakes we can learn from. After reading this book I honestly have a different perspective on school education. I’ve never felt more eager to want to feel the desire to go to school. I wan’t to wake up in the morning and feel excited to learn new things I have strong interests in and hopefully use my curiosity to make new discoveries I can share and comment on with others. But like Peter Gray said himself, “I am optimistic”. For all I know, school systems will change and I will soon get that desire. For now, I am glad I read this book because all of the thoughts in my head that were all unclear are now laid out and I can finally see them. In other words, I know how I feel about school and can now imagine a different scenario where all is not work but play is also present.
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June 2016
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