Sustainable Learning

People tend to think that a subject is too advanced, too complicated, too theoretical for a child’s understanding. But children – like all people - are surprising in their capacity to learn and understand complicated things if their interest is captured. Increasingly I think the real issue lies here – if the person is not really interested; if he cannot see in what way the new information matters – personally – to him, he will not be motivated to learn. A lack of interest thus by default becomes a lack of understanding. But where there is interest, aspects of life that would normally be considered beyond the child’s grasp become attainable.

I saw this recently. The younger girls and I meet every second week with another home educating family. The children are great friends and in spite of very different approaches to the education of our children, Stephi and I enjoy our times together. We had decided, for this term, to base our activities loosely around a theme of sustainability. We felt that this theme would follow on well from the nature study focus we had had for the last year or two. Stephi and I had also spent happy hours establishing vegetable gardens with the children. We had picked blackberries and apples and made jam. And recently Stephi’s children had acquired chickens, sparking off a similar objective in my children. As I write, Julie Anne is busily working on her chicken enclosure...

So.... sustainable living. Big topic. Important topic. What did it mean in practise, and how should we approach it?

I spent some time looking at school lesson plans and worksheets on the internet to get an idea of what was included in national curricula. No real help there – most of what was covered was already familiar to the children. I was also certain that I did not want to approach the topic from a negative ‘Humans are destroying the earth’ or a fear based ‘We are running out of resources’ kind of perspective. Regardless of the truth or lie of these perspectives, it seemed to me that such a young group of people (ages 4, 9, 9, 11 and 13) deserved to retain the wonder and joy that had been so evident in their learning about nature. I did not want to burden them, but neither did I want to fob them off with some sugar coated veneer. So it was rather difficult to decide how to begin.

My objective was to retain the perspective of delighting in God’s creation, and loving the earth, and learning more about how to be good stewards and guardians of it. I certainly did not want to weigh them down with guilt and anger about man’s carelessness, environmental destruction and global earth warming. I did want to introduce and clarify some of the complicated issues around sustainability. Rather, I wanted them to feel empowered and encouraged; to feel that they could and would make a difference to the well-being of their particular environment.

I thought and thought. Wikipedia came to the rescue – on the page on Sustainability there is a Sustainable Development diagram. I recognised this diagram immediately; Craig had studied it as part of his MBA. It was particularly of interest in that it clearly illustrated the tensions between the needs of the environment, people, and economics. I really wanted to share it with the children, because it had potential to lay a solid foundation for our explorations into the topic. But would they understand it? I think that most people would feel that it was far too theoretical for the children.

On the other hand, I think that both John Holt and Charlotte Mason would have been willing to take that risk. Charlotte Mason cried out against ‘twaddle’ and pleaded again and again that we adults recognize the capacities of the child’s mind. In fact she went so far as to comment that the child’s mind was in a better state than the adult’s mind, because it had not yet been stultified by drivel.

“It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the child's' level.” 
(Point 6 of CM's 20 Principles).

“But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas.” 
(Point 11 of CM’s 20 Principles)

And John Holt felt so strongly about not discriminating against children that he had suggested that we do away with the institution of childhood, and went so far as to write a book about it!

In the end I took a large piece of cardboard, and shapes in different colours cut out to reproduce the Venn diagram. Four year old Joe eagerly assisted me in sticking the shapes together to make the diagram, and while we worked, the older children and I talked about the meanings of each of the words we were sticking down. Their interest and focused attention was evident, and they had so many interesting things to say about sustainability. As we went on to consider the challenge of sustainable living being the process of keeping the needs of all three areas in balance, the children offered different examples of sustainability, or the failure of sustainability. They surprised me with their insight. Once again I found myself thinking about how it so often happens, that when we come to teach the child, he already knows....

We concluded the discussion (which incidentally went on for much longer than the planned 45 minutes) with each person sharing which aspect of sustainable living most captured their heart – helping with environmental issues, social issues or economic issues. The younger children were quick to choose environmental issues; as animal lovers it was pretty obvious that this was where their interest would lie. The older girls chose social issues. Which left me and Stephi to consider economic issues, seemingly the most boring one... until we began to discuss exactly what kind of project - if they could initiate one - the children would like to do? It quickly became clear that nothing much was going to happen without money, which led to some conversation about effective fundraising. And from there it was easy to point out the reality that people sometimes harm the environment because they don't know how else to get the money they need to feed themselves and their families.

To conclude our time, I asked the children if they would make covers for a book on sustainable living; covers which would include the diagram. This they were eager to do, and even Joe, little as he was, seemed entirely aware of what it was he was doing. He illustrated his diagram with drawings of people, money and the world! I came away from our time together freshly encouraged about the innate capacity of the mind to take in information, even complex and theoretical information, so long as there was interest.