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Saturday, May 23, 2009 at 08:35AM 
We spent last week camping in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
I’ve written before about how vacationing tends to highlight adults’ need to control things. I made a few discrete observations on this trip that made me think about not only traveling with kids, but helping them learn at home, too.
Sometimes it seems like adults are always trying to get between kids and the experience. We’re trying to define it for them, we’re trying to frame it, we’re writing a lesson plan for it, we’re designing a rubric, we’re setting down expectations and goals and plans. We are dissecting it before they even have it and reducing it to its parts and labeling them by curricular area — this is language arts and this is science and this is math and this is writing and this is creative problem-solving.
We insert ourselves into the picture and stand between our kids and the experience like an over-enthusiastic docent, spouting facts and pointing vigorously to things and partially blocking their view.
They don’t have a chance to take in the pure, unadulterated (pun intended) experience … the whole view … the undissected and not-labeled thing … the thing that is itself, whole, apart from our ideas about how it checks off a curricular box or fulfills an educational goal.
We need to work on standing back and letting them experience things for themselves, ask their own questions, make their own plans, devise their own ways of interacting with what they see. Sometimes we need to climb into the backseat and just see where they go.
(p.s. Because I skipped off to the woods, I was tardy with approving comments to last week’s open thread — there is some good stuff in there that hasn’t been adequately discussed, so check it out!)
Reader Comments (21)
amy, so true about how much better things can be — really, it’s just like project work. if you try to pre-define what’s going to happen, you are automatically limiting what can happen. if you leave it open, the results can be amazing. and even if they aren’t amazing, they are way more enjoyable! :^)
As far as your observations, as usual I think they are spot-on. We seriously need to let our children experience the "unadulterated" version of nature. Sometimes I think we fail to realize that nature really doesn't need an interpreter to speak to our children.They can hear its voice just fine on their own.
But as long as we keep that in mind, I think it is ok for us to lead sometimes, too. We have good memories we want to share with our children. Things we loved as children ourselves, or things we missed out on.
I always enjoyed the times my mom took me out in the woods and shared with me the things she knew and loved (for this reason trillium, wild raspberries, and towhees will forever be associated with my mom in my mind). But I am also very grateful for the vast majority of the times when she took me out and just let me be, letting me develop my own independent relationship with nature.These "wild" times were priceless and I am so glad she knew that, too.
i think sharing our love of nature with our kids is great. i just think the guidebooks should be there as reference when the kids want to look something up — rather than used as lesson plans to organize the experience ahead of time. i think we need to let our children build a relationship with the outdoors and let them lead. (oh, i always think that. ;^)
what a wonderful story about your mom. :^)
xo, K
it’s a type of herding — we can’t let children just experience it and then ask their own questions. that would take so much *time*. they would be everywhere, looking at different things, interested in different things, asking different questions. or we imagine that they wouldn’t have any interest (this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, i believe — adults’ conviction that kids will be bored by anything that doesn’t resemble a video game) so we make an educational game out of it. what kid is fooled by that? and what message does it send?
to me, it says “ho ho ho, kids, we know you hate broccoli so look! we covered it in cheese sauce!” it sends the message that this thing is boring, which is why we had to jazz it up for you. and we know you wouldn’t know how to interact with this, so we set down a plan — here, go do this and this and this and you can have a sticker or a pin.
it’s more than just lowering (or tossing out) expectations, then — it also requires us to try to change our minds about the way kids are and rid ourselves of our anti-children prejudices.
thank you, kyrie!
And I find myself labeling a moment according to its educational value in the way you mention in your post. Even if I don't do this out loud, it's not a helpful way to even think. We find a turtle on a nature walk and, out of curiosity, look it up in our guide book. "Good," I think, "science." Or the children dump out their piggy banks and sort and count up the change, and I immediately think, "math." It's that curricular dissection that you were talking about , and it's very limiting, isn't it?
On another note there is a book called The Geography of Childhood that explores these ideas in great essays (by Gary Nabhan and Steven Trimble). The thing that struck me most in these essays is the discussion of the panorama view versus the tiny. How adults are interested in seeing the larger pictures and the landscape while a child wants to get lost in the small spaces.
Ah. Lori, we share that disdain of the museum scavenger hunt!! And even the very good, kid-oriented museums have them. At the Carle museum a couple of weeks ago I was trying to avoid the "gallery search" table, but my 7yo noticed it. Clipboards! Pencils! And he can read, so... he picked it up and immediately started looking for the items on the sheet. Although the sheet also had text explaining about the pictures they wanted the kids to find, he glanced right over that--he was in hunt mode. Argh! Both my husband and I tried to slow him down, we looked at all the pictures, and if we happened to come across one on the sheet, we discussed it.
It's very much talking down to children, as you say--if adults don't need a gallery hunt, why do children? Why can't they interact with the art on their own terms? That's what I try to model for them, and it's always interesting what *they* see. And I know this museum is very focused towards children, they have all sorts of Reggio resources, a beautiful studio, a wonderful story time (using the whole book approach--I meant to mention it in my comment on children's books), but it seems no museum can resist the lure of the kid scavenger hunt!
But even without memberships, that's something I need to remember, not getting between him and his authentic experience. Right now we have unlimited access to the national park here, so that is wonderful. If a hike lasts 5 minutes, it's fine. If a hike lasts an hour, but only takes us 100 yards down a trail, that's fine too. I guess the lesson for me is to keep on opening my eyes to similar OPEN experiences, even as he gets older.
That reminds me of a school field trip my fifth grade class took to the Arizona State capitol building many years ago. The tour guide was pointing out yet-another chunk of copper mined in Arizona and proudly displayed on a shelf (next to the other chunks of copper). However, most of us had noticed the wren outside who was feeding her babies. We watched intently, facinated, igorning the tour guide. The tour guide finally gave up and announced to our teacher and the class we just weren't interested in learning because we weren't paying attention to her.
Any thoughts on my struggle with my own attention span? I love watching my kiddos learn and want to answer their questions and such, but sometimes I just want to move on! *I* want to see everything and take it all in... selfish, I know, but I love learning too! ~:-)
It's amazing how much more rejuvenated I feel at the end of these outings if I just follow their lead. We'll definitely head back to that park and maybe next time we'll notice some of the plants or not.
sarah, i have talked here before about that *exact* same thing re: visiting the museum. adults who want to herd the kids through so they “see everything”, when the kids would get so much more out of lingering as long as they wanted to at a single exhibit. so true!!
and yes, it *is* so limiting — and really, just unnatural — to label things by curricula. because *rarely* is an experience just one thing, and when we label it that way, we fail to see its complexity. and maybe what is most important about it — because we reach for that easy label.
thank you!
stacey, that is such a good point, and so interesting — and i have absolutely no idea. you’re right. my generation of children was given completely freedom; there were no adults trying to organize our activities. we played ball without joining a league, we made up our own games without needing someone to organize us, and we wandered hither and yon without supervision. and then we grew up and became micro-managers.
“Is it because we feel that our experiences lead us to feel that we are experts or is it that we want to recapture them?” i almost feel like it is an anxiety thing — like we are afraid to let go of control, because we fear without controlling everything, our children won’t learn, they won’t have the “right” kinds of experiences, they won’t get everything out of it, and etc.
i’ve read geography of childhood! that point about large view vs. tiny view is an interesting one — forest for the trees, as it were. and that’s exactly what i was talking about. adults want to step in and frame it for children, define it, name it … and meanwhile children are focused on something very specific, *from which* they could eventually build meaning and understanding. but we just take it right out of their hands and turn the telescope around.
amy — “It's very much talking down to children, as you say--if adults don't need a gallery hunt, why do children?” — beautiful! and exactly right! why *do* children need that? it is talking down to them, and it’s making negative assumptions about children that i absolutely don’t agree with — that children can’t pay attention, they they can’t focus, that they can’t have a natural and unforced reaction to art, that they must be herded. it’s prejudice.
you are so right — so ironic to find that at the eric carle museum, which is so pro-reggio! because that is very anti-reggio — the idea that the teacher pre-defines the experience.
elise, absolutely — and you know, with the right attitude, everything becomes an open experience! but it does become difficult, as amy said, to *avoid* those scavenger-hunt-type things as they get older and start seeing them. they are naturally drawn to this sort of offered-up game — which gets in the way of them having their own experience! so frustrating.
sally, ah, perfect. sigh. i took our mixed age K-3rd class on a field trip to a local theatre with their teacher. the tour guide took them around for hours showing them everything and pontificating. he was a very nice fellow, but he never asked them anything — do you know what i mean? he didn’t engage them. he simply talked and talked. even though he knew they’d been working on a months-long theatre “project” (i’m sure he just didn’t know what that meant). at the very end, he asked if they had questions, and they exploded with very detailed questions. he then started to explain something and they all said, oh we know all about that. he very patronizingly said, “well, why don’t you tell me what you know.” and they proceeded to blow him away with everything they already knew. he was simply used to thinking of children as bored, listless, not-really-listening field trip victims — he couldn’t believe these kids were on fire with interest about this subject *and* already knew a ton about it. (more than he did!) what do these attitudes toward children mean?! how can adults with these attitudes hope to help children learn?
mary, you know, that is one of the things i love about visiting the same place over and over — those places close enough to home that can become special places. because you really have the *time* and the opportunity to get to know the habitat, the animals, the birds, the rocks, the plants … paying attention to different things each time and at different seasons! i think it’s wonderful you just let the day unfold and let them focus on what interested them most — and that you want to go back! :^)
I think there is a very "pose for the picture" sort of mentality with children and their experiences, both with nature and in some place like a museum/aquarium/zoo etc. Like, stand here where I tell you to, interact with it the way I tell you to, and then hurry on to the next "educational opportunity". It's disheartening, to say the least. As if children cannot possibly get anything out of the experience unless you force it upon them, or outline exactly the way in which the can experience it.
There's even a final "shot"- the inevitable testing at the end. Sad.
This really made me laugh. It reminds me of my kids wanting to see pigeons rather than world-famous paintings one time when we were traveling. Really, who am I to decide what they need to pay attention to and learn?
I find it much easier to just explore naturally in a natural environment than in somewhere like a museum. My challenge used to be one child who needs to explore quickly, ask a question and move on, and another who'd like to stop and stare for a long time. I learned to let go of my own need, except when it came to food (I was often the first to be hungry)! I also solved the mismatch by going with a friend so that the kids each had a buddy who liked their pace.
Great thoughts, I mentioned your idea of taking the back seat at my post today <a href="http://homeschoolersguidetothegalaxy.blogspot.com/2009/05/10-tips-for-happy-family-camping-part-1.htmll">10 tips for Happy Family Camping</a>.