Time to Re-Think School? Re-Imagining Education In a Way that Honors Our Children’s Innate Creative Intelligence
Written By Marsha Austin
The coronavirus pandemic has forced many of us to get up close and personal with our children’s development and education. As we face the prospect of home-schooling, hybrid-schooling or even sending our children back to their schools after a long period of time with us at home, there is an unprecedented opportunity to be more deeply involved in their education than we might have planned.
The chance to take a more active role in choosing and creating our children’s learning environment is a golden one, for it could be the single greatest factor in shaping who they become as adults.
William Spady, PhD, Amy’s guest in in Episode 16 “Powerful Possibilities in Transforming Education and Empowering Our Kids,” has been challenging the educational status quo for more than 50 years. He encourages us to ask the question: “What kind of human beings do we want to send out the door?”
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Time to Re-Think Our Education System
In the episode, Amy and Dr. Spady discuss how research conducted over the last two or three decades has shown that only 25 percent of people learn in the “traditional” academic way.
Amy puts it bluntly: “This system is a disaster if we want all kids to learn successfully.”
What alternative educational methods are there, that incorporate outcomes, open ended play and exploration, passions, creativity, the outdoors and freedom?
How do we offer our children a path to the outcome, instead of forcing them to fit the process?
How do we escape an education system rooted in the vestiges of the industrial revolution that were intended to mold human beings in assembly-line fashion to be compliant workers, not necessarily visionary leaders?
How Do We Honor Our Children’s Innate Brilliance and Curiosity?
I recalled my own experience with school and I got curious. I have carried my entire life, an undying love and appreciation for my first two schools – one a Montessori pre-school, and the other a “progressive” private school located on a historic farm. It’s those experiences that I credit for cultivating in me insatiable intellectual curiosity, delight in discourse and critical thinking, appreciation for unfettered creativity and the pursuit of full self-expression in myself and others as one of my most valued pursuits.
My experience of my middle and high school years, at Midwestern public schools was quite the opposite. I loathed those places. I’d often take my own books and put them inside the text books so that I could escape the boredom and chore of rote, uninspired learning. In those places, I felt like a prisoner, wasting my days.
As I sat down to write this blog, I wondered, “what was it about those first schools that still inspires me to this day and how can I bring that into my child’s day-to-day?
I made a list of what I loved most from my early school years – and none of the 3 “R’s” were on it (although I’m quite proficient in all of them by report card standards). There were two things that stuck out in my memory – the specific activities that gave me so much joy, and a poignant sense that there was a “way” that we learned, that the teachers and my fellow students interacted with each other, that made all the difference.
I remembered the music room and the vibrations of the timpani drums in my body, in the art barn, stretching to pushing the big stone pottery wheel with my foot while giggling over the cool, wet clay oozing through my hands. I remembered the magic of the pottery glaze turning different colors from being fired in the kiln, and how proud I was of my creations – I still have them, a car, a dinosaur, a Picasso-like vase with a dozen openings for wildflowers.
I remember the outdoor amphitheater – it was built in the ancient Greek style – and being a lamb that hid in a drum during one of our plays.
I recalled the privilege of being allowed to go to the school library and pick out whatever book I wanted for silent reading time, and how I fell in love with Madeline L’Engel’s “A Wrinkle in Time.” I was in the second grade then.
After I crafted my list, I went to the school’s website to see if they had any information about their educational methods and values. I was shocked, and overjoyed, at what I found.
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Outcomes-based Education Authentically Empowers Our Children’s Inner Gifts
According to Spady, “Authentic empowerment projects the presence we want to be in the world by transcending and dispelling the generations and centuries of dis-empowering social conditioning to which we’ve all been exposed – conditioning that denies, distorts and diminishes the incredible inner gifts of spirit that we actually embody…And authentic empowerment emanates from deep within our being – from powerful sources rarely acknowledged.”
Instead, Spady advocates for what he calls “outcomes based education” where the reward is for the actual accomplishment of the end goal, not in evaluating how one got there. For
“Examples of Outcome Based Education: Karate instruction, scuba instruction, musical instruction. Defined levels of ability. When I did scuba training, if I couldn’t pass Level One or Level Two, they wouldn’t let me try Level Three. They don’t give C+ merit badges! They don’t give B – karate belts! A karate Belt is an ‘A’ for what those skills are. What we have been caught up in is a giant comparison and labeling game. We have saturated our civilization with competition!”
“A whole new species of souls are coming in,” Spady tells us. “They will be learning and maturing, taking responsibility and operating two to three times faster than we ever did. And the worst thing they can do is get locked into a grade-level curriculum.”
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Real Life Lessons from Visionary Educators
When I went back to my primary school’s website I found a link to one of the original founder’s letters laying out the vision for the school. A group of professors from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD had come together to create the school. In 1958 their notions had to be somewhat radical, as many of them still are today (unfortunately). Here are a few key excerpts from Thomas K. Simpson:
“These college professors, convinced that children possess inherent intellectual vitality that schools generally do not reach, agreed to bring discerning teachers and promising students together in small classes.”
“The grades are organized into three year segments, with children working at their own pace, and to the degree of their intellectual curiosity within each three-year block. Once the material of the three years is completed, they advance to the next level. Age groups are kept together and exceptional children work on deeper material.”
“…the innate curiosity and unprejudiced minds of children,” will be honored. “Current educational practices seem phenomenally successful in stifling this natural desire of children to know, to ask questions and to seek answers. The age old vision of the free, thoughtful individual seems all but forgotten in many of our schools.”
Simpson goes on to say that the school would not be hiring graduates of traditional teacher’s colleges or programs to instruct at the school.
My main take-away from all of this is to share that having adults listen to and honor my questions, my flights of fantasy, my curiosity, no matter how random it might have seemed to them, and to feed me with deep and thoughtful answers and activities, honored my being at such a level that it has been the number one positive driving force in my life. Thank you Mr. Simpson!
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A Daily Checklist for Fostering Innate Intelligence
Here’s how I am honoring this with my daughter:
Listening openly, and resisting the urge to jump in and correct her when she’s sharing or asking questions.
Allowing her to explore what she is interested in – and what she’s not – at her own pace. When she doesn’t want to practice learning to read, or addition and subtraction, I don’t push it. I wait for her to ask about numbers and letters, and I stick to what she’s curious about.
I have placed my daughter in a multi-age classroom school that emphasizes imaginative play, and emotional intelligence.
With my husband, we look daily at opportunities to guide and cultivate our family’s core values of playfulness, courage, generosity, compassion, kindness and joyful perspective in each and every interaction.
I ask more questions than make declarative statements or judgements.
Providing open-ended play stations throughout our home daily where she can explore in her own time and in her own way. These include:
Art table and easel – paper, markers, colored pencils, chalk, glue, glitter, stickers, tape, pipe cleaners, googly-eyes, feathers, pom pom’s, ink stamps, kid scissors, paint, sponges, cardboard of all shapes and sizes.
Music area – a collection of instruments, music books and cards.
Dance time – music in the living room to dance around to.
Reading area – books are offered within her reach to select.
Letter writing station – this is combined with the art table, and is for creating pieces to share with neighbors and family
Nature collections – pine cones, sea shells, rocks, sticks, leaves.
Dress up – a box of dresses, costumes, costume jewelry, shoes, hats and scarves
Clay station – colored clay with colored beads, jewels, sticks etc.
Jewelry making – beads, string, yarn.
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Author: Marsha Austin
Marsha is an award-winning journalist, content marketer, entrepreneur, and mother to a preschool-aged daughter. She loves diving deep into spiritual practices, while maintaining a light heart, and self-effacing sense of humor.
