“A spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down.” This line in Mary Poppins can be used as a very relevant metaphor for the changes that education needs to largely consider undertaking (in the United States).
As we forget that there is a concept that too much forced, anything, is never good.
Essentially, a little coding (or padding) around difficult themes and information is needed every now and again to assuage information into a humans working-memory.
Schooling, like our bodies, finds anything in excess toxic.
So like medicine, too much testing, forced learning, and not enough play are toxic for children (and adults too).
We forget that there is something called the
Cognitive Load Theory that, I think, rightly hypothesizes that when we forgo breaking learning down into reasonable chunks and instead ask students to “digest” all of the information at once, anything learned simply does not have enough time to “sink in.”
Overwhelmed by information, and perhaps structure, students do not grow to enjoy the process of learning.
They fear the pressure, tests, and successive content-mashing-into-their-brains that occur within the hallowed walls of the school and thus children try to avoid going there (at least I did).
So basically, we are overdoing it with kids!
And it’s not that educators, or at least the majority of them, want kids to hate school and lifelong learning but, I think, the opposite.
I think they, the teachers, love instruction too much.
They want kids to get it all at once.
Like a weightlifter getting juiced up on protein shakes; I think teachers assume that the kids will just get pumped up on learning.
But, as it turns out when we overdo things we are actually being selfish.
We are only thinking about ourselves.
This is a theme I recently discovered in a children’s book (of all places), and one that should be a best-seller aptly titled
, A children’s book about overdoing it, by Joy Berry.
So, I leave you with a question.
Do you think that all of this effort placed on core subjects and the reiterative use of “high-stakes testing” is a “gift” we are giving kids?
Or do you think that “assessment processes”
is something that is harming children? Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated here in this ongoing conversation about how to successfully cultivate lifelong learning in children.
