Freedom in Teaching and Learning: Why Don’t Students Like School?
People who are frightened of the idea of freedom in learning usually believe that if you allow children freedom to choose what to learn, they will choose to learn nothing. In fact what will actually happen will be that the teaching will be accelerated, the children’s interests will be ignored and the learning will stall. Every time we add another hour to the time that children must spend in school or at homework, and every time we coerce or coax them into yet another adult-directed extracurricular activity, we deprive them further of opportunities to play, explore, reflect, and experience the joys and frustrations of self-direction.
Children don't like school because they love freedom. Children, like all human beings, crave freedom. They hate to have their freedom restricted. To a large extent they use their freedom precisely to educate themselves. They are biologically prepared to do that. In school they are told they must stop following their interests and, instead, do just what the teacher is telling them they must do. That is why they don't like school. Children do not need to be taught to learn. They have demonstrated their ability by learning to walk and to talk. They do not need to be forced to follow a curriculum devised by adults, because the whole world is their curriculum. What they do need is the opportunity to learn about what they themselves find interesting. A boy was passionate about all kinds of constructive play. He would make whole villages and factories, to scale, out of modeling clay. Another child fell in love with science fiction. Through that, he discovered mathematics and became passionate about it. He went on to become a math professor.
So, How does schools thwart passions
Students are indeed predisposed to lack motivation in school for a variety of reasons. They are perhaps very aware of the academic requirements. Even though, they are often very self-confident in their abilities, they may still lack academic motivation. Students who are put in high-pressure and unhealthy learning environments are less motivated and don’t perform as well.
- Requiring everyone to do the same things at the same time: School seems to be designed to destroy their individuality. There are conventional schools that ignore children's curiosity, suppress their energy and overrule their generous moral impulses. The ideal school must have an entirely different atmosphere. It must not even try to manufacture cogs.
- Replacing intrinsic motivation with extrinsic motivators, such as grades and trophies: This system is way to stressful for students. They might stay up all night studying for a test just to getting the best grade possible. Grades are motivation not to learn, but to memorize only for the next test. Instead of labeling them with A's and B's, teachers should write qualitative summaries of the student's progress and meet with parents regularly. They should encourage the student's interests and strengths and help them with their weaknesses. This will allow students to flourish and help them realize the kind of person they want to be in life.
- Threatening students with failure or embarrassment, which generates fear: It destroys opportunities for social learning by denying children the right to speak out. It creates an atmosphere in which children and adults are enemies rather than colleagues.
If a school would only start from the children themselves, what they know and what they want to know, it would nourish their curiosity instead of stifling it. The children would learn more, and faster, and they would love doing so.
We have endless ways of saying what we want to say in our mother tongue. Language gives us the freedom to say what we want to say. Unfortunately, many times when we are taught a second language, (and many times also when we learn it ourselves) we are taught in ways that serve to effectively limit our possibilities and what we can say.