How to Approach Learning
Luckily, most moms and dads nowadays don’t have overly high expectations for their children. They believe that we can reach higher, but don't want us to pop our arms out of their sockets. But this is not always the case.
Take the example of the Tiger Mom, a term coined by professor Amy Chua at Yale. Chua herself is a self-proclaimed tiger mom, with notable feats like rejecting her 4 year old's messy birthday card and threatening to burn her daughter’s stuffed animals if she didn’t play the piano piece perfectly.
I can anticipate your disdain for this type of parenting. But consider this: both of Chua’s daughters, Sophia and Lulu, are straight-A students with extraordinary musical accomplishments. The Guardian writes that "by the time Sophia was 14, she had performed Prokofiev's “Juliet” as a Young Girl at the Carnegie Hall … Lulu, aged 11, auditioned for the pre-college program at the world-famous Juilliard School." So how does a borderline abusive parent chuck out two over-achieving kids?
It isn’t because she, and billions of other parents with the same technique, stumbled upon some kind of educational goldmine. Instead, it is because they, and many of us, are forgetting the difference between proficiency and passion.
In fact, nowadays, skill seems to be valued more than passion. The standardized test regime has only reinforced this. Children and teens end up having no choice but to do what they must to move forward to better opportunities. The sad truth may be that almost none of them enjoy it. Luckily for us, there are schools and communities who are already going against this wave, and Exeter can almost proudly count as one of them.
But, as Exonians, how can we use our resources to help more children develop lifelong passions? Where lies the core of our learning experiences? How can we push them into the broader community? I believe there are two key aspects to developing a love for learning. One, the approach you take, and two, the mentality you have whilst learning.
Let’s start with looking into the first one: the approach you take. Learning approaches vary greatly, but for many of the best education systems in the world, it all starts with the selection of teachers. According to Pasi Sahlberg, author of Teachers as Leaders in Finland, teaching is considered as top job. Newly prepared teachers possess well-balanced knowledge and skills in both theory and practice. Prospective teachers [also] develop deep professional insight into education from several perspectives, including educational psychology and sociology, curriculum theory, student assessment [and so on]." A teacher can make or break your learning experience. We’ve all had that wonderful teacher who made us love a subject, and great education systems try to ensure that all their teachers have that same effect.
On top of this, creative learning methods can foster passion as well. Although there are multitudes of creative ways to learn and teach, there is one principle that unites them all: putting the student first. Standardized tests view every student as a statistic, someone to be stuffed into a uniform mold. Effective ways of learning see students as individuals and value their thoughts, pushing forth students’ curious and creative genius. Sir Ken Robinson outlines a perfect description of this in his book Creative Schools. He writes of Steve Rees, whose class on creativity and entrepreneurship not only promoted students’ engagement, but improved his students’ confidence and academic performance. You might now be tempted to ask, what did he do in class? Well, they built bridges out of toothpicks, thought about ways they could run a barber shop and make $80,000 a year, restored four old cars, drove them around the country and made 40 pit stops to teach more people about how they learned. Spreading by word of mouth, more and more students began registering for the club. Once, 53 students showed up to a meeting in a school of 180. Putting that into perspective, an equally popular Exeter club would boast 323 members.
The second aspect is the mentality you have whilst learning. Growth mindsets, for instance, while it is not the only beneficial mentality, are good exemplars in this regard. The term, coined by psychologist Carol Dweck, basically involves treating your situation as “the starting point for development.” Dweck goes on: “your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Learning consists of failing, learning, succeeding and repeating.
Kids learning to walk, for instance, flop on their face thousands of times, but they never stop getting up and going again. And we never yell at them for flopping into the mud; loving mamas and dadas helped them up to go again. Yet when we grow up, this stubborn mule that wasn't afraid of flopping face down and failing seems to ebb away. Instead, the best people become those who get it on the first try, not those who fail, laugh, learn and try again.
That’s why the growth mindset helps children learn to love learning. It starts a flame that, according to Sarah Peck "embodies a passion for learning rather than a hunger for approval.”
So, at the end of the day, what you like is really only dependent on your approach and mentality. Tiger moms are products of the environment they are in—a world that only cares about results. In this result-crazed world, they may just be the best moms out there. But we don't need to stay in this world. Humans are geared to be curious and to learn, and we just need to find the right way to ignite that flame.