This is the final installment of my reading of Chapter V of Charlotte Mason's Towards a Philosophy of Education. As I've mentioned in my previous posts about my readings, this chapter is about the sacredness of a child's personality. I understood through this chapter that children deserves the highest reverence from their parents and educators. This means that their brains are powerful spiritual matters that are capable of understanding information without the need for us to dumb it down for them. The soonest we grasp this bit of information, the better the education of the children will be.
It is also in this chapter where Miss Mason discussed the different ways that we may hinder our children's education through the very same things that we think are helping them achieve their goals. I learned that too much use of fear, love, suggestion as a means to push our children one way or the other towards our end goals may actually be counterproductive for their education. It also discusses that too much triggering any one of a child's natural desire - approval, excellence, ambition, etc. - may actually be detrimental to their success.
But the question remains. How do we as parents and parent-educators motivate our children to study and learn? The answer was actually simple.
Education is delectable.
Children are born with curiosity natural to them. They have the insatiable thirst for knowledge. As soon as they open their eyes, they have that appetite to learn all about the world around them. This is where the system of education makes a big error and ends up hindering the child's education.
Schools aim for children to score high on their exams. They all want to see those high marks, top scores, medals, and anything that could prove to everybody that their school is the best institute to enroll your kid in. They rope in the teachers in this system of grades and marks and places. The more honor students they produce, the better teacher they are. And that's where education becomes less appetizing to children - and to adults alike.
Gaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge - and I mean truly knowing and understanding, not just studying so that they could score better at an exam - is supposed to be relaxing and enjoyable. When your curiosity is satisfied, doesn't that give you more thirst to get more answers to more questions in your mind?
Charlotte Mason used food as a metaphor for knowledge. And rightly so, because knowledge is food for the brain as grain and meat is food for the body. And a fully healthy, well rounded person should be fed healthy food both for their body and brain.
Knowledge is delectable. Our children has that curiosity and if we feed that curiosity for the sake of learning and education - not for other end goals, not for possible occupation in the future, not for medals or honors - if we satisfy that thirst for learning, we will be surprised to find that on their own, they will long for more knowledge. They will read a book just because they want to know what happens in the end. They will solve a math problem just to find out if there is another way to answer it. They will observe a caterpillar just so they can see how the metamorphosis happens firsthand.
We will find that there really is no need for external motivators. These will just be crutches for our children's education that will hinder their learning. Remove those external motivators and a child will lose interest once they have gotten used to winning. But train them to enjoy learning for the sake of learning, and you'll be surprised to see that they too, will be able to say that knowledge is delectable. Maybe not worded that way, children has funny ways of saying things but they will show you that they are enjoying the full feast of knowledge that you are serving them.
