To School or Not to School

“School is stupid!” The outburst had erupted from my daughter in Year 7. “What’s the point of it anyway? “Why do we have to have this stupidness? You are just learning all this stuff you will never use in life.”

The ‘stupidness’ of school is the ongoing debate in our home at present.

Point to consider. Ok how much do you use from your years of general schooling?

Apart from learning to read and write and do sums? I was rattling my brain to come up with a decent answer, as I am a strong believer in education. Coming from a family history of journalists, I was automatically editing my daughter’s statement of outburst - correct grammar, spelling and punctuation are vital, that’s for sure. “Stupidness” though grammatically incorrect, does in fact have a certain descriptive impact, that it should be considered perhaps, to be entered into the dictionary.

But reflecting on her statement, maybe she does have a point. Rheams and rheams of information, week upon week, month upon month, year upon year, your head buried in books hours on end, cramming your brain with so much information that there is no room for imagination.

I love finding out details about people and their lives. I love discovering new things about the world around me. I wonder at the intricate detail of the different markings of fish, birds, and insects, even amphibians and reptiles (as long as I don't have to touch one :-)). I love to read, it is a means of escapism for me at times, yet I wouldn’t read an encyclopedia or dictionary front to back like a book, though I have known some, such as my own brother, who have done just that. If they enjoy doing it, it’s fine by me. That’s the whole point here - Love, enjoyment.

Learning about the world, people and life around you should be enjoyed. Cramming information should be a choice not compulsory. Children need room for imagination.

“You’re daydreaming again!” Sound familiar?

Have you ever watched a baby sit, crawl, stand, and walk? The sheer excitement of parents and the wonder of achievement on the little one’s face, that’s how it should be with everything in our life. Learning should be natural, enjoyable, a part of the life around us, instead of your head buried so far in information that you might as well be an ostrich!

As parents, we are automatically teaching our children about the life around us. Making beds, cleaning house, cooking, baking, mending, repairing, taking care of equipment, and animals. Have you ever thought of all the maths, reading, writing, science and social studies that is required for those everyday things? Who needs a bunch of ink on paper for that! A toddler can’t read an instruction manual, yet he knows how to operate the DVD player or the TV, or how to change over to satellite or cable.

Look around you, what do you see? Can you see the trees, the birds, the flowers, the children playing in the yard or the parks? Or, do you have to shut your eyes from the 4 walls, a computer and desk, and pile of papers that need to be completed by 5pm this evening, take a deep breath, and enter a daydream to see the beauty of the world around you? How can you dream if you have never seen it?

Children need to dream, to imagine, and to live reality. Yes, I said it correctly, reality. If reality is being buried in a pile of paperwork, deadlines, meetings, phone calls, stress, insomnia, have we not created a prison around us? We might as well be planning our funeral! To me, reality is seeing God’s creation, and in it we can see the Creator Himself. That’s what is real, that’s what is alive. Show me a rainbow any day, and colour my world.

´Look what I drew, Mum’ I smile………………

Copyright 2006. Rebecca Laklem.