Kindergartners, like most young people their age and younger, come into school with a ton of questions and curiosity about the world in which they live. Fast forward 13 years and these same Kindergartners, now as seniors, possess a very small amount of that energy and curiosity. Some of the change is due to maturity and a clearer picture of how the world works. However, if we say we value curiosity, passion, and the ability to ask questions in the young people who graduate from a K-12 education, then I think we need to stop and reflect on why the dramatic change in our young people?
In the book "Free to Learn", Dr. Peter Gray shares his view on the importance of play when it comes to learning. In short Dr. Gray points out that those who have studied and written about play have identified five characteristics of play: 1-Play is self-chosen and self-directed, 2-In play the means are more valued than the ends, 3-Play does have structure and rules that emanate from the minds of the players, 4-Play is imaginative and non-literal, and 5-Play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind. I dove deeper into the idea of substituting “learning” for “play” in a post titled Can Playing and Learning be Synonymous?, so I won’t go there for this post. However, I bring it up because it is through play that young people satisfy, maintain, and enhance their curiosity. The current structure of schools often counters our ability for young people to “play”. The standards in particular act as a metaphorical governor on the curiosity engine driving our young people’s passion for learning. At the same time, I do feel standards are important for eliminating the educational lottery that can arise from low to no common expectations in school. (see also Using Standards and Collective Efficacy to get On Common Ground). So, if not “play”, then what?
Many of you reading this blog are educators and as a result have completed your student teaching prior to graduating and gaining your teaching license. I suspect most of you had the same experience I had in that more learning and understanding of being a teacher was gained through the process of student teaching than all of the education classes I took combined. It was, in short, an apprenticeship in teaching that was most likely carried on in the first few years of teaching under the support of a mentor. Today, we tend to think of “apprenticeships” taking place after graduation from college or perhaps high school. However, the history of apprenticeships dates back for literally hundreds of years, but it begins with children. Think of a page for a knight in the middle ages or a blacksmith’s apprentice in the 1800’s. These young people had the mental capacity to learn and kids today have that same intellectual ability, if not more, when given the opportunity. Now admittedly, if you were a 12 year old page or blacksmith apprentice back then you were already close to half the age of your life expectancy. So, it made sense that you were on some sort of pathway to a vocation. Today, with a life expectancy of 80 or higher, we typically don’t encourage the same rush to vocational training for our children. We certainly wouldn’t expect, nor would we want, a sixth grader selecting what they wanted to do for the rest of their life and restricting them to that pathway. At the same time, as we have seen with apprenticeships of the past and present, there is value in developing a set of skills that can prepare you for your future through working with a mentor of sorts. This is where an “Apprenticeship for Learning” comes into play.
What if the mindset in schools was not the current “curriculum transfer” model that is most prevalent, but instead a form of apprenticeship for learning that will help to better prepare our young people for life. By focusing on learning as the skill to be passed down or developed, we are not restricting the young people in our classrooms to a specific vocational pathway. After all, learning is a skill that can be applied to any vocation as well as any part of being successful in life. It is the most valueable skill we can develop in our young people. Just like any apprenticeship, an apprenticeship for learning starts slow as our young people first learn the basics (ex. Learn to read) and then gradually apply the skill (ex. Read to learn). What is different in a learning apprenticeship from the experience of school for most students today is that young people are not told what they should know and then expected to know it, but are instead put into situations by a mentor that allows them to see patterns, make connections, and form relationships which are the hallmarks of learning. An apprentice must learn by doing and the first time they try something it never goes well. They are not expected to be experts at this point of the apprenticeship. That is why they learn, often through failure, from the situations in which they are put in by their mentor. Gradually, through time and experience, they get better at their craft until eventually they approach, rival, or even surpass their mentor’s skills.
If we want young people to develop their ability to learn, and we all say we do, then an apprenticeship for learning is the best model for schools. In this model, the ability to learn is the focus and not the curriculum. The curriculum is merely the medium in which we work. The situations in which we put the young people in our classroom are what become valuable for learning and not what we “tell” them. The apprenticeship still calls for a mentor, but the expertise is that of being a learner. Learners beget Learners, just as life begets life, so we as mentors must also be learners. It is an impossible task for a non-learner to properly mentor a learner. Which means that if we want to support an apprenticeship for learning in schools we, as the educators/mentors/experts, must be “learners” and continue to learn as well. (see also The Red Queen Effect). This approach in schools provides the latitude of play that Dr. Gray references with the consistency which standards provide. It will work K-12 if we, as educators, get in the mindset that schools are an apprenticeship for learning.
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