My friend wrote this morning requesting that I teach people how to study. My first instinct was to think, "Why would anyone want to learn to study? Should we not learn how to learn?" Then, I thought about it further and asked, "What is the difference between study and learn? I googled and found the following...
This is a very interesting question, especially for those of you who are learning or studying English. So what are the differences?
Let’s start by looking at the definitions:
To Learn – to gain knowledge or skill by studying, practicing, being taught, or experiencing something.
To Study – to read, memorize facts, attend school, etc., in order to learn about a subject.
Therefore studying is one way to learn.
This is why we can say “I studied but I didn’t learn anything”. It means I memorized facts or read about a subject, but for some reason did not gain any new knowledge or skills.
So why is it important to know the difference? Because you, the student, must concentrate on the final objective: learning. You want to learn English. Therefore, you must find the best way to gain this goal; maybe studying grammar for hours will not work. So you will be studying but not learning. You must find which is the best way for you to learn!
Source HERE.
I thought the above expressed very well my disdain for studying. You can really study a lot and learn nothing. Conversely, you can learn a lot without studying. Isn't that infinitely more preferable?
After putting out my post on GE vs Hi-Po, a couple of GEP alumni from the early years of the program (before program expansion) got in touch with me. So started a mind-provoking conversation that ranged far and wide (in which I learnt much). One of the things I learnt related to "unschooling". Read THIS to understand unschooling.
I did not know that I had actually unschooled both my children. I only knew the term homeschooling.
The Daughter
The Daughter was in the bottom 25% of her cohort in P3. We sincerely believed that she was intellectually limited because she appeared to study so hard only to learn nothing at all. I was a young mother. Lost. Afraid. I prayed very hard and God moved.
After putting out my post on GE vs Hi-Po, a couple of GEP alumni from the early years of the program (before program expansion) got in touch with me. So started a mind-provoking conversation that ranged far and wide (in which I learnt much). One of the things I learnt related to "unschooling". Read THIS to understand unschooling.
I did not know that I had actually unschooled both my children. I only knew the term homeschooling.
The Daughter
The Daughter was in the bottom 25% of her cohort in P3. We sincerely believed that she was intellectually limited because she appeared to study so hard only to learn nothing at all. I was a young mother. Lost. Afraid. I prayed very hard and God moved.
Our family was sent to the USA for 1 year. The equivalent P4 classes were about 2 years behind the Singapore system. I decided to homeschool her. I downloaded the Singapore syllabus for each subject and filed them. I would tell her what topics we would cover that week and then, we would pick books from the library for her to read. We had 2 libraries within 5 minutes from our house. One of them was a central lending library (i.e., it was a library that lent to other libraries).
She would read the books and brief me. We would chat as I vacuumed the floor and made our beds. We worked intensively for 2 hours every morning and for the rest of the day, we went out. We chased ducks, went fishing, explored the herb garden, dug up ant hills (not recommended), scraped pollen off cars. We learnt that one should not pat baby goslings because the mother goose bites and she can run very fast too.
I fully expected The Daughter to stay in the bottom 25% of her cohort at the P5 mid-year exams. Till today, I have not got over the shock of her P5 mid-year results. She topped her class in all 4 subjects. Till today, The Daughter holds within her the scathing memory of me saying, "You must have topped because they were easy papers. The real PSLE will not be so easy."
Well... I suppose that is what I mean by learning a lot without studying.
The Son
In 2009, The Son brought home a report book that set off a nuclear explosion of negative emotion like a Hiroshima mushroom cloud hanging over our dining table. Desperate to help him, I did what I did with The Daughter. I unschooled him. I lied to his school about needing to go overseas. Yes, judge me if you will. I lied and lied and lied. I kept him home in 2010 (Primary 4) and unschooled him for 5 months, sending him back to school for SA1 and SA2. He ended P4 8th in class. In Primary 5, I unschooled him for 4 months. Again, I lied to the school. He ended Primary 5 2nd in class.
Unschooling Science
I bought a set of very well written Science guidebooks, now no longer in print. See photo below. These guidebooks are very interesting to read. If materials bored me, I assumed they would bore my kids and I would throw them away without asking my children to read. To me, their time was important and I did not want to waste their time doing boring things.
I gave The Son some post-its. He read the books and marked out with post-its all the sections that stimulated further questions that he was excited to learn about. He would then google to get answers to these questions. I didn't care that his self-derived questions were not strictly within the syllabus. It did not matter to me that when he was reading up on Forces, he had branched off into guns - flintlock guns, matchlock guns... different ways bullets exited guns. I didn't care that his self-derived questions touched on why birds could sit on live electrical wires without getting barbecued by the high voltage. Somehow and somewhere, I had faith that his curiosity would cover the whole PSLE domain. I also gave him free rein to conduct science experiments, limiting my involvement to purchasing the materials he needed, e.g, if he wanted to do a fish dissection, I would be in charge of buying the fish.
I gave The Son some post-its. He read the books and marked out with post-its all the sections that stimulated further questions that he was excited to learn about. He would then google to get answers to these questions. I didn't care that his self-derived questions were not strictly within the syllabus. It did not matter to me that when he was reading up on Forces, he had branched off into guns - flintlock guns, matchlock guns... different ways bullets exited guns. I didn't care that his self-derived questions touched on why birds could sit on live electrical wires without getting barbecued by the high voltage. Somehow and somewhere, I had faith that his curiosity would cover the whole PSLE domain. I also gave him free rein to conduct science experiments, limiting my involvement to purchasing the materials he needed, e.g, if he wanted to do a fish dissection, I would be in charge of buying the fish.
He was adamant to be the one to conduct these experiments. I was worried that he might cut himself with the knife for the fish dissection and I muscled him out of the way and did the dissection myself. This lead to a major meltdown and I capitulated. I went out the next morning to buy a new fish (a much bigger fish so that his clumsy hands could better dissect without danger to himself). The moment I came through the door, he grabbed the fish, ran to the toilet and locked the door. There was no way he was going to let me steal his joy of learning again.
On another occasion, he dismantled an old Ikea table and informed me that he wanted to conduct an experiment in fluid mechanics. It sounded impressive so I said "Ok!" He proceeded to have great fun rafting up and down the swimming pool.
Whatever it is, The Son subsequently went on to top just about every single Science exam that came his way... at least top 3. By P6, his thirst for knowledge was such that he was reading research papers downloaded from my university's research paper database.
So, there we have it... the mysterious power of unschooling reared its beautiful head again to bless The Son as it had blessed The Daughter.
How Does It Work?
I don't know.
What I do know is that both The Son and The Daughter have learnt how to learn. They don't need teachers to learn. They know how to follow their own curiosity (because I allowed them to do so) and their own passions. The Son has recently won a couple thousand dollars in this or that software coding competitions. He learnt to code programs from the internet and he infected his friends with his passion so he had people to discuss coding with and make apps together. I did not have to pay for a single day of coding class.
He failed Math early last year but had decided that it was a weakness he needed to shore up in view of his longer term life goals. I offered him Math tuition 3 times and he said, "No". This year has ended and he is near the top of his class in Math.
He failed Math early last year but had decided that it was a weakness he needed to shore up in view of his longer term life goals. I offered him Math tuition 3 times and he said, "No". This year has ended and he is near the top of his class in Math.
The Daughter too, having been unschooled, is adept at generating questions and looking for answers.
Can Children of All IQ Do This?
I don't know.
Conversations with GE Alumni throw up suggestions that The Son demonstrates the traits of a GE kid, and that my own refusal to conform and my outlandish oddball insights are also GE traits. Though I still doubt any of us are GE, I must admit that both my children are reasonably above average.
So, perhaps unschooling works for kids like mine but if you had a kid that needed to be told everything, then conventional school may give you better results.
So, perhaps unschooling works for kids like mine but if you had a kid that needed to be told everything, then conventional school may give you better results.
In our case, conventional school did not give us results but unschooling paid off spectacularly well.
I have no answers to the above questions but I am excited to test a few things out in my mixed ability classes when 2017 comes around.
Do As I Say, Don't Do What I Do
Do As I Say, Don't Do What I Do
I would hate to be responsible for anything that may go wrong with children's academic journeys if parents followed my example in "unschooling". This blog has many posts that detail more conventional methods of teaching and learning. We used those methods too and I know and could explain why they worked.
I am not advocating unschooling as THE WAY, mostly because I haven't quite been able to articulate to myself why it worked. So please do not pull your children out of school to unschool them after reading this post.
Simply, just for fun, make time for children to do the things we did during unschooling. That way, you have the best of both worlds - (1) potential benefits from unschooling (2) the security of conventional methods.I am not advocating unschooling as THE WAY, mostly because I haven't quite been able to articulate to myself why it worked. So please do not pull your children out of school to unschool them after reading this post.