(Listen to this newsletter as an audio recording right here. It’s just over 9 mins long.)
Hello friends,
how are you all doing?
I want to talk some more about making learning visible, why society is so concerned about it, and why this is a problem.
I wrote an essay for my Masters about evaluation in early childhood learning and development, and essentially made the case for evaluation and record-keeping that looks much more like Reggio-style learning: qualitative, narration-based, co-operative and based on the understanding that children are active participants in their learning, and therefore also in the ways their learning is made visible.
I went a little further than this, to put forward the question: why evaluate and record-keep in the first place? In other words: why the need to make learning visible? Why is it that when learning is concrete, quantitative and visible, we assign more value to it?
I am not saying that we shouldn’t ever encourage children to produce visible, concrete things or aim for learning or skills that are specific, even data-driven. Of course not. Of course, if our child wants to do things that are visible, go them! What I AM saying, is that we lose out on so much learning and life when we assume that all learning culminates in a visible product. That there is a test or exam that can prove all the learning done on a subject over a stretch of time, that there is a worksheet for everything, that there is a project or craft or piece of writing or creation of some kind that allows for our child to “demonstrate” what they have learned.
Sometimes (very often, actually) people learn and have nothing to show for it. Nothing - not a story, not a piece of writing, not even a correct answer to a pointed question. Just nothing. This doesn’t mean nothing has been learned - it means that perhaps they don’t feel like having to prove their learning, or perhaps they don’t understand the pointed question they’re being asked to determine their learning, or perhaps they don’t feel the need to produce anything. Perhaps they have a rich inner life and it’s all happening right there - outside of anyone else’s view.
Often, it is our obsession with having to evaluate that pushes children to ‘make learning visible.’ Do you find yourself going there a lot? Seeing that your child is into something and sort of steering them towards a form of physical or even oral product based on that learning? I do. I do it all the time. Sometimes I do it spontaneously, because I imagine it’s something they might like or I might do in their place, but sometimes I do it.. just because that’s what I’ve been taught to do.
My thinking goes a bit like this, in relation to my children: You have a lot of thoughts and ideas in your head - why aren’t you writing them down or recording them (where others can see them)? It baffles me, because that’s how I was educated. But also partially because I love to keep records of things - I kept scrapbooks as a kid before I even knew what a scrapbook was, I love making photo books, I have kept a diary or journal since I was 10.
But also, this was and still is the expectation in schooling and society at large. All of learning, and pretty much all of schooling, has to translate into a physical product. If you’re a child, relatives and complete strangers will ask you questions to determine ‘what you know.’
Of course there are things you can’t learn without a physical product - you can’t call yourself a carpenter without making things out of wood, you can’t call yourself a writer if you don’t write, or a dancer if you don’t dance. Fair enough.
But I feel like the focus has to be on the doing of the thing, rather than on the finished product. If you write (no matter what and how and when you do it, and who sees it), then you’re a writer. If you dance, you’re a dancer. The focus is on you doing the thing, not on the finished product and everyone else’s opinion of it. The focus is on the living of the moment, the making of the thing, the playing of the music - even if no-one is there to witness it - not on the evaluating of it once it’s done.
Of course, some people do things BECAUSE they want others to notice. That is their main driving force - and that’s okay. That’s meaningful to them. But, I often feel like this becomes the universal driving force in the things we do, create and learn: a finished product people can look at, admire and also critique. This is the ‘evaluative gaze’ that Carol Black talks about. The gaze of adults in school settings (but also just adults in general) that tells children they’re not only looking at what they’ve achieved or created, but they’re also assessing. Her essay is enough to persuade me that in the case of children (and maybe in the case of many adults too!) this sort of approach does more harm than good.
The point is also that if our children learn in an environment where there is no pressure to compete, no need to please, no desire to impress and earn recognition, then their primary incentive for producing things will be the process, rather than the product. Is this more desirable or superior? Maybe not - maybe finding any meaning or purpose, even an instrumental one, is what matters. And maybe, not relying on the conditional acceptance of others might be a surer way to find themselves and the things that bring them true joy.
But back to invisible learning - I have loved reading Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison’s writing (How Children Learn at Home and Rethinking Learning to Read) on how children learn at home, because they make a firm distinction between teaching and learning, claiming that the two often have very little to do with each other, and open up all sorts of options for the ways learning happens. They also get comfortable with the idea that so often, learning happens and we just don’t see it. We have no proof, we have nothing to talk about or evaluate or record. And that’s okay.
Except, it’s not that okay when it comes to most schools, and even some states and countries where home educators need to keep records. It’s actually kind of an issue that I feel policymakers are massively behind on. The tendency is increasingly one of data-driven, quantitative measures and “accountability” of students, teachers and schools. This is hugely problematic for early childhood, schooling and even higher education, not to mention for more relaxed homeschoolers and unschoolers. There is lots of research and writing on how this neoliberal view of childhood and learning is influencing education systems globally - and it’s worrying.
Which is why I feel so strongly about expanding the many ways we talk about learning and the many forms learning can take. I’ll write more on this soon!
Actual Life.
I wrote up a Week in the Life on my blog! Take a look. And isn’t WILT the saddest acronym? In my WILT though, I feel like I didn’t mention how much my kids play together and separately. A lot, basically. Some days that is their main thing - they play for hours and hours. I used to be worried - like, shouldn’t they be doing something more useful? But of course, play is pretty much the best thing a child can do. So yeah. I stopped worrying and leaned in to play.
Books.
On that note, I’m reading Lenore Skenazy’s Free Range Kids and enjoying it a lot. It’s a fun read (her writing is hilarious!). There are bits I’m not so keen on, like some of her parenting advice, and also the fact there is no talk of privilege and identity and the way this plays into the whole “free-range” narrative, which I think is a major pitfall of the book. But I do agree with her main point: kids need more unstructured, self-directed time.
People.
I’ve been talking about Maria Montessori and the ways her writing overlaps with slow schooling and unschooling in my stories this week - I’ve saved them all in a highlight on my account if you’d like to catch up. I suppose my last thing to say would be that Montessori for me is most problematic when it is not consent-based. If you’re running a Montessori school that is rooted in consent and respect, then you’re able to pivot and shift based on the child - you are able to literally follow the child, like she envisaged. But if your school or setting is married to the method and pedagogy over respect and solidarity with children, then I think this is problematic. I’ll be chatting more about Montessori and Slow this month, so keep your eyes peeled!
As always, thank you for reading.
If you’d like me to write about a topic you’re keen on, email me or reach out on instagram.
I hope the rest of this week treats you kindly.
Love
Fran x