FOR THE BEST LEARNING

Question: What have we learned during the last year of the pandemic about schools, education, and learning? Several things, among them is that the best learning is not done in front of a computer screen! And there’s lots of reasons why that’s the case.

1) Most children have not learned how to concentrate their attention, so to ask them to sit in front of a computer screen for an extended period of time is asking them to do what they are not prepared to do. I even know adults who have difficulty concentrating on a screen for an hour or two! “An hour or two?” “How about 10 minutes!?” Ever wonder why Ted Talks are 18 minutes in length?

2) Most children and adults have not learned how to listen or gather information. Listening is a skill in and of itself, and from my experience in training professional Coaches how to listen— schools don’t have a clue about how to teach that. Demanding energetic little kids to sit still and listen, especially to what doesn’t seem relevant, often teaches them that school is boring so that they come to hate it.

3) Most children and adults have not learned how to gather information. Listening is just the beginning, it is a tool for gathering information and gathering information is a precursor to learning. Yet if a person doesn’t know how to gather relevant information, that person will not know which data is important and which is not. The result again is finding school boring and distasteful, something to avoid.

4) Most children and adults have not learned how to learn. Just gathering information is not learning. Just thinking is not learning. Learning involves more. Yet schools are notorious about teaching content (the what) and avoid teaching process (the how). Consequently, children do not know the process of learning any particular subject— how to learn to read, to write, to do mathematics, to learn history, to learn geometry, etc. In each domain, there’s a different kind of thinking required for a different kind of learning.

Yet such meta-learning is not taught in schools and so when a child is stuck at home during the pandemic looking at a computer screen— they are often bored to death, anxious to tears, and completely stuck. And because meta-learning is not taught, even parents and other adults often do not know how to help.

5) Most children, and even adults, need guidance in learning. When it comes to learning anything new, learning is always accelerated if you have an informed guide. If you have a teacher who is intelligent, caring, and engaged. That always makes it easier to learn. Such a teacher will be skilled first and foremost in creating a positive learning environment, set up expectations for learning, and create a sense of the relevance of the learning.

Everything is harder to learn, and sometimes impossible, when you don’t see the point. “Why should I learn this? How will this help me?” Relevance of the materials and its value to a person’s life is what transforms a learning from being boring to being interesting and exciting. And again, most people don’t know how to do that for themselves. That’s part of meta-learning — learning how you learn best and why it is important.

Given all of that, no wonder mental disorders in children has skyrocketed in the past twelve months. No wonder anxiety, depression, and even suicide has become an even larger problem. What I hope we have learned is that — it is not good to shut down schools. That was a mistake. Private schools for the most part stayed open and have done just fine. Today only 44% of children in the US are back in school. That means 56% are still at home and waiting to return.

Since the best learning does not occur in front of a screen, but in person in the classroom with a competent and caring teacher, and since science says it is safe to open the schools, then it is time. Who would oppose that? Who is preventing the children from returning? Paradoxically, the Teacher’s Unions! Not the teachers, but the Teachers Union.

My guess is that most teachers want to return to the classroom. It is the Teacher’s Unions that are ignoring the science that says it is safe to return. Worse of all President Biden is catering to the Unions rather than to the parents, children, and teachers. He has shown no courage to stand up to the Unions and order them to get back to work. That part of it is nothing but political dysfunction. And it is time for all of that to change. After all, learning is the heartbeat of humanity.