Natural vs Formal Learning
In my post “What is a Child’s Natural Way of Learning?” I discussed how children learn outside of (and before) a formal setting, such as a school or private lessons. In this post I’ll discuss the latter and compare the two. If you haven’t already, I suggest you read my earlier post before reading this one.
Formal Learning And Compliance
A Brief History of Formal Learning
The first schools were developed in Mesopotamia around 2000 BC. Known as Edubbas (“Tablet Houses”) they mainly taught boys in arithmetic and writing cuneiform. Similar schools developed in Ancient Egypt in the following centuries and around 1000 BC in China.
Higher education institutions, similar to modern universities, first developed in India, with the Takshashila in the 5th century BC near present day Islamabad, and in Ancient Greece, with Plato’s Academy in Athens in the 4th century BC.
In the Middle Ages—between about 1000 and 1500 AD—Cathedral and Monastery schools were developed in Europe teaching Latin, scripture, and the trivium/quadrivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy).
All of the above, though, were reserved for the elites of their societies.
Elite Education in the Ancient World
The thing about elites—whether in ancient or modern times—is that they live(d) in the halls of power and wealth. Thus, schools that developed to educate their kids were serving the needs and interests of power and wealth and had the force of that power behind them. The king is the model for how things worked in such schools. What the king says goes and if anyone doesn’t comply they face severe punishment.
Thus, the willingness of compliance in such schools was compelled by force, potentially deadly force. There was no concern with discovery or play and, in fact, these were usually regarded as having no place in learning. And in that type of setting, they didn’t.
Universal, Compulsory Education
The idea of compulsory, universal education didn’t develop until the 1700s in Prussia. From there it spread through Europe and, by the 1800s to the U.S. and Japan. These early schools were not limited to elites, but the elite education model was the only one there was, so they mostly followed that model in their educational and administrative structures. They lacked, however, the force of a king’s authority to compel compliance. They actually created a significant culture clash between the culture of the elites, built around the acquiring, wielding and enjoyment of the benefits of wealth and power, and that of the common people, built around family, community and survival. Thus, public schools in which everyone is legally compelled to attend, have always faced problems with behavior, problems that to a great extent stem from the fact that the kids had spent their first 4-5 years adapting to an environment in which they learned naturally, exclusively, and then were thrust into an environment in which they were expected to comply and there was no place for the natural way of learning.
This doesn’t mean formal learning is bad. On the contrary, when a student understands and accepts the nature of formal schooling and wants to learn, a formal setting is a very effective learning environment and enables the concentration of great learning resources in one place for the purpose of learning.
A Difference of Compliance
The crucial factor, though, is willing compliance. Without that, the setting breaks down. Yet, willing compliance to a formal learning setting is foreign to young children. And it will often seem to them off putting or impeding when it comes to something like music or art, something they are drawn to because they experience it in their world. Thus, it’s my belief that they will learn best when they can gradually grow from learning naturally to learning formally, without creating a conflict between the two (this is something the Montessori approach enables to a large degree). We don’t have to give up our natural way of learning in order to learn formally. We just have to be able to set it aside and comply with the setting and the teacher when we are learning formally. And with areas of learning that enable or require creativity, they must never abandon that natural way if their creativity is to grow and develop.
And it isn’t the case that the natural way of learning requires no compliance. Rather, it is natural for a child to comply with their innate desire to discover and play in a given situation. The child does not have to forgo anything they want in order to learn, for what they want at any given moment is the driver of their learning. In a formal setting, though, they have to put aside whatever they might want right now and focus their attention on what they are directed to focus it on.
Thus, whereas in their natural way of learning, Discovery & Play plus Environment equals Learning…
… in a formal setting, Compliance plus Environment equals Learning.
Two different yet equally powerful ways of learning. Those who go furthest in any field are generally those who are adept at using both.
