Is Playing Superior to Education?

Friday’s are always pretty relaxed around here. If someone took a quick glance they would probably think we weren’t schooling our little. But in fact, at closer examination my little is learning and growing, do I dare say it, more than the average school kid in the general education today. Why do I say that? Perhaps if you took a deep hard look at your own memory of being in the classroom. I know for me I was in a classroom with thirty plus peers and was bossed all around all day by my teacher, even though I considered her to be a nice person. I feel more often than not, from Kindergarten (sometimes before) school children are conditioned to feel like adults are dominate and they are to be respected, but lowly children do not deserve the same respect. I bought into this logic from day one despite every effort my mom made for me not to.

My mom was sort of a self-proclaimed women’s liberal. She once told me she was the first girl in her school to wear pants, which I thought was pretty cool. She majored in subjects that were predominately just for men and scored at the top of her class. In her elementary school years a teacher through an eraser at her for talking, but that sure didn’t stop her. If anyone knows my mom she is probably still talking on that same sentence from elementary school. Hahaha! (Hope she doesn’t read that).  I guess as a child I didn’t have that same will. I wanted nothing more than to please authority. I see nothing wrong with that so long as the person exercising the authority is not abusing it, but unfortunately there are those that do.

I loved school. I mean I Loooooooved school. I remember my kindergarten teacher visiting our house. My mom and I were clueless as to why she was coming over. When she arrived she was full of compliments about me and said I was unlike other children she had taught. I had the highest level of comprehension they had ever scored for and wanted to know what my parents were doing at home that made me different. I remember my mom’s reply: “well we treat her like an adult.” I didn’t really fully understand this until I started researching education for myself. In a sense she was saying she didn’t dumb me down. My teacher Mrs. Summerall seemed impressed and told my mom that I would make a good mother or teacher someday. :D Ironic huh!?!

Unfortunately, not all my teachers were as nice as Mrs. Summerall.  I breezed through till the second grade. Oh Miss Dixon. She hated me and I didn’t know why. I was an excellent reader. I could read even before I entered Kindergarten. I loved to read. She constantly told me I could not read well. She had me put in Special Education. While all the other kids in my class are having fun in physical education I was stuck in a tiny trailer classroom with kids that couldn’t read mostly because English wasn’t their first language. The assignments they gave be in there I completed in seconds. The Special Education teacher said “I don’t know why you are here.” Neither did I other than I knew my teacher didn’t like me and I didn’t know why. Ms. Dixon belittled me daily and ruined my self-worth and confidence. I am not real sure what happened, but my mom came to the school and straighten Ms. Dixon out, but it was a little too late. The damage was done. My following school years Ms. Dixon would go out of her way to be nice to me, which really was a joke. I think her conduct towards me bordered on abuse, if not abuse itself. You can see some reasons why we homeschool I don’t want anyone reflecting their damaged view of children onto my child.  It took much reflection as an adult to discover my worth again, but I am happy to say I have recovered, but sometimes those thought still creep in there today and I am still correcting the mistakes I made early in adulthood based of those feelings of lack of confidence and self-worth.

 

So what are we doing today? Well today we are playing, yes playing. He is five years old and really what better thing could a five year old be doing than playing, having fun and enjoying life. I must mention that play he is doing involves Lego. He has been playing Lego for nearly five hours straight and anyone that knows anything about Lego knows that these are important brain building tools, that at the primary level that can be applied to language, literacy, mathematics and geometry, various engineering, design and technology-based subjects. In addition it increases lateral thinking ability, improves communication, three dimensional thinking, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, organization, planning by construction,  develops fine motor skills , hand eye coordination, duplicate complex patterns, develop scientific and technological solutions, learn to plan, learn to evaluate problems, follow directions with logical thinking and reasoning. So next time your kids are playing and you want to pull them off to do “more important things” think again and let them play.