Freedom to Learn

Excellent summary! Yeay, now I have something to point to, along with the anecdotes I tell. I think this could work with learning math also. But the adults around a child often don't like math, so the natural progression you describe for reading can get stunted for math.

I'm working on a book about playing with math - in math circles, as homeschoolers, and online. I'd like to discuss these issues with you by email, Peter. Would you email me at mathanthologyeditor on gmail?

Well, yeah. Of course learning to read is harder when people are trying to teach it, forcing the student into a passive role, than when students are left to their own devices in the (modern) world where the written word is ubiquitous (on signs, in books, on card games, on video games, in computers, etcetera).
Is it any surprise that people who have been told, in a million different ways by most adults that they interact with "oh, of course this is so terribly boring and awful that we will have to force you to do it, or you would never do it" actually come to believe those lies, and build up an active fear and resistance to what is in fact (in English) a *very* simple 26 letter code? There is no reason at all why reading should take more than a week, but somehow schools turn it into a terrible 7-12 year production.

Any person who has ever studied a non-native language with a different alphabet will happily share that learning to read is the easy part. In picking up Hebrew as an adult, for me, it was a matter of a couple dozen flash cards for a couple days to learn to read. Likewise for the hiragana alphabet.
Speaking and comprehension are the tough parts. Thank goodness that at least, for that most sensitive and difficult task -- learning to speak and comprehend one's native language -- the schools come in to late to interfere and stunt the natural development of the child.

Consider what Saint Augustine wrote in the fourth Century (translation by Albert C. Outler):
"There was also a time when, as an infant, I knew no Latin; but this I acquired without any fear or tormenting, but merely by being alert to the blandishments of my nurses, the jests of those who smiled on me, and the sportiveness of those who toyed with me. I learned all this, indeed, without being urged by any pressure of punishment, for my own heart urged me to bring forth its own fashioning, which I could not do except by learning words: not from those who taught me but those who talked to me, into whose ears I could pour forth whatever I could fashion. From this it is sufficiently clear that a free curiosity is more effective in learning than a discipline based on fear."

This is a wonderful column, and all very true. My own four (unschooled) kids learned to read at ages ranging between 3 and 8 years, and each learned in his or her own way. I'm now watching my unschooled grandchildren following the same path - the 8 year old has just taught himself to read, and I can see his 5 year old sister is close behind. I often tell other parents with kids in school about my experiences because they worry so much if their kids aren't reading by age 6.

Teresa

I think the key here is that children's brains develop at different ages and stages so, I believe that developmental readiness is when a child will learn any subject. I've unschooled my son, he started to read at around age 6, then didn't have much interest and didn't really take off in reading until age 8. But parents of public schooled kids, or kids that were being taught to read at home at an early age, were impressed that our son would just take a book off the shelf and start reading whenever he felt the urge to read, or look at picture books. We never pushed it, I did read to him quite a bit and modeled reading every day. He started by asking me to let him read the words he knew, then having me read a chapter, then him a chapter. We had quite a lot of fun reading books together through his younger years.

This article is definitely very true to my experience. I homeschool my children, but we haven't been unschooling, yet we are tending more and more that way. Despite employing different reading methods, I found that my son did not start applying any of his skills outside reading lessons until he had the desire to do so. For him, it was when I was reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the kids, one chapter a night, and he didn't want to wait to find out what would happen. Then he devoured book after book.

I think I'll back off with the younger kids. They do get reading instruction through playing on Starfall.com, which teaches phonics quite thoroughly, but they do it on their own and under their own initiative.

As for math, my kids have taught themselves a lot using Math-U-See blocks and Cuisenaire rods. We had tried the Math-U-See curriculum but the books themselves were too repetitive, we just got the Miquon Math books and I think we'll continue to use these in a relaxed manner.

I took my son out of school aged 10 and a half because of extreme bullying and Special needs that were not being met. I tried to 'teach' him from then on, but when you are trying to 'teach' a child to read who cries and thumps his own head in frustration because he 'can't' read and believes that he is stupid (even to sayoing out loud 'I can't do this Mum, I'm too thick') you have to realise when enough is enough.
I checked through his school books again and found yet again that the school had not progressed his reading book in the 3 months prior (they hadn't changed it at all or made any comments on the messages I had left in the book), so I double checked what age he actually was in reading ability. The school still had him on Year 1 books which he couldn't read. So I stopped trying to 'teach' him to read. 9 months later he read out a leaflet that had been put on the windscreen of the car, with no coaxing from me at all.
I don't think my son will ever get over the fear, frustration and humiliation that reading at school put him through, so I doubt if he will ever consider reading to be pleasurable, but he can now use the abilty to read.

Although I don't consider myself to be strictly in the unschooling camp (my children have assigned pages in math and grammar workbooks and some assigned reading), I am a fierce advocate of waiting until a child is developmentally ready for whatever learning experience I have planned. You are not only beating a dead horse teaching an unready child to "blend" sounds or do long division; you are, as one person in your study pointed out, taking his pride in learning away from him. He never gets to own the experience.

I have 6 children. The first one learned to read at age 9; within 3 months, he was reading Harry Potter. I had tried to "teach" him a year earlier; but he just wasn't ready and was becoming frustrated. When I saw him at age 9 sitting with a book and straining to figure it out himself, I knew he was ready and tutored him in basic phonics for a few weeks, 15 minutes a day. That's all it took, because he was ready.

My other children have all learned between ages 5 and a 1/2 and 7. It's never been a painful process. When they get frustrated or tired, I back off. It's not my accomplishment, it's theirs. The emphasis the schools place on early reading can easily discourage kids who aren't ready. By the time they would have naturally picked up the skill, they already hate it. They've come to regard it as a slog and a bore and to regard themselves as stupid/slow. It's a shame we can't just let the kids be.

I am a public school teacher and I'll be honest when I say I don't read to my son often enough, maybe once a week. However, I keep all my books in his room in the changing table and in the closet. Since we removed the crib side at around 2 years old and he had access to the closet, he's slept with books every night. When I get him in the morning, if he's already awake, he's reading. He's almost 5 1/2 now and he surprises me a lot when he's reading. A few weeks ago he found, "Happy Birthday Bad Kitty" in the closet, which is a comic book/chapter book. He told me the whole story and why the kitty was bad. I know he's mostly reading the pictures, but he's making connections, which will lead to word reading. He reads everything and anything he can get his hot little hands on which includes the travel brochures and maps from Burger King on the highway. We do a lot of board games and puzzles for math. There's no such thing as a quick game of LIFE when he's the banker.

I also think reading and math are developmental and I see the struggles repeated year after year with the kids who are just not ready. They soak up the read alouds, groan when I stop at the end of a chapter, and beg for more all the time. I think that should count! Let's not make them hate to read by forcing them to kill and drill.

I am homeschooling my children, although the oldes is 4. My son began interested in writing very early. He was able to hold a pencil with the tripod pencil grasp early, too. He was able to write his name, independently, by the age of three. Since then he has been asking me to help him spell words. I've gone over different phonic sounds with him while driving in the car. We'll play rhyming games, too. We've never used a curriculum. He has always been surrounded by books. We read several times a day. We have a dry erase board and a chalkboard-painted wall where he can practice his letters and words, or drawings. Yesterday while looking at a book in the car he said, "Mom, P-O-O-H spells Pooh!" That was the first time he's read a word that wasn't MOM, DAD or his own name. It was pretty amazing.

We're homeschoolers who do not unschool, but I waited until my son asked to learn to read before sitting down with him and introducing phonics (he was 5 1/2). He learned very quickly and progressed easily with the easy readers, but then an interesting thing happened- he no longer wanted to read to me. He complained about having to it and I noticed he wasn't trying to sound out words he saw on signs or menus for fun anymore.

In other words- he was learning to hate reading. So I stopped asking him to read me the BOB books (or any other easy-readers). It's been 3 weeks and guess what? He just started reading words again while at the grocery store or in the car.

It's true- kids really learn best when we stay out of their way.

I was so glad to see this article, because it validates so much of what I have learned from my children.

I learned to read by myself. Growing up we had very little spare cash and my biggest treat was to get a book. My mother read to me from the handful of books we owned, and after a while I was reading them back to her. I have no idea how I learned, only that I was reading fluently by the time I entered kindergarten.

My own children also learned to read by osmosis. When you are surrounded by books and parents who always have a book open, I think it is hard NOT to learn to read. By 4yrs, my eldest was reading the New York Times. He started as a toddler, looking for the "Hess" gas signs on the highway. #2 was a bit older, around 7 yrs old, when she decided to learn, but the most interesting was my youngest, who refused to pick up a story book at all and only wanted to do math problems. At 4 yrs of age she was very shy and clingy, so came with me when I taught at religious school. My teenaged students wanted to know why I "made" her sit and do math, and found it hard to believe that she actually LOVED it. I think it was the math book that taught her to read - she had to learn in order to do the "word problems."

Now I am watching my grandchildren's progress.
My son's boys both learned to read by themselves between their third and fourth birthdays. Within a few months they were reading fluently. My five year old granddaughter will come up to her mother to announce she can spell a certain word, then spell it. Her three year old brother and their almost three year old cousin can identify upper and lower case letters and count objects up to twenty, which, I guess makes them "ready" for kindergarten. There is no pressure to learn to read, just the expectation that it will happen when the child is ready.

I would love to see some more studies like this one. My favourite books on the subject are John Holt's How Children Learn, How Children Fail and What Shall We Do Monday? I also owe a debt to A.S.Neill's Summerhill, on which the non-schooling movement was built.

I'm thrilled to find your blog Peter. I wish I'd found it before submitting the manuscript for my recent book, Free Range Learning. Your articles would have made my research much easier! As I read back through some of your recent posts I see we're on the same page regarding natural, interest-led learning and paying attention to what has benefited humankind over the long run.

What a wonderful article, one I hope gets the attention it deserves. You may be familiar with small recent studies such as this one out of New Zealand http://www.otago.ac.nz/news/news/otago006408.html and this by the editor of Encounter magazine https://great-ideas.org/Encounter224/Keys-Crain224.htm

If you don't mind, I'd appreciate the chance to ask you a question or two via email.

I learned to read at a very young age (2 or 3, I believe), by my mother showing me how to follow along with stories she read to me. I love reading, and I believe it's because I wasn't pushed into it.

Math, on the other hand, I had a terrible time with. This was at least partially due to the fact that my statistician father made no effort to hide his disappointment in my lack of natural ability.

Peter -

I would like to share the stories of my children's learning to read, but will need time to write it out, as it is still evolving.

I do, however, have an anecdote regarding children freely learning math. It is an excerpt from my blog, THE UNFETTERED LIFE, and involves my then just-past-five, kindergarten-aged daughter.

*****A school math lesson, for a kindergartner, would likely involve another worksheet, on counting or pairing or more/less than, or writing numbers and letters.

There isn't much chance it would be the spontaneous desire to count the "monies" being stuffed into a piggy bank she'd just painted herself, or that it would include interesting tangents like wheat pennies and what it says on that Irish coin, or why the Sacajewea dollar doesn't look like a paper one.

One of the many things unschooling offers that traditional schooling can't, is the incorporation of learning into the very fabric of life. Coins were counted, identified, compared for size and value, saved for later spending power. There was realizing that all pennies don't look alike, nor all dollars, and that coins from other places look different and have different names than ours.

The day after this photo was taken, Annalise came to me with a serious look. "Mommy", she said, "can I have $11?"
I was surprised. She's asked for money before, but only in bits, usually coins she saw on a table. "Why?" I asked.
"Because Jeremiah says I need to pay $10 rent to come into his room, and, that way, I'll have 1 dollar left all for myself."

Pretty good logic for a five-year-old. Good enough that I gave her $5, and asked her to please not give any of it to her brother, because he wasn't being fair.

There was a lot more than 10+1=11 learned in those moments. Not that 10+1=11 is something seen in the average kindergarten classroom to begin with. That's for first grade.

Here, though, I have Annalise. She's not in a grade. She's not limited by what's being covered and her ability to understand it in the form it's presented, then translate it for use in her daily life. This moment was her everyday life. She knew the equation without seeing it, and she used the information she had to ask for just what she wanted.

Add in a discussion about fairness and self-protection, and I can't imagine a planned lesson could come close. The focus there would be on math, or on character education. Not both, at once.*****

The rest of the post, about our experience during "the first week of school", can be found here, if you're interested:

http://memismommy.blogspot.com/2009/09/first-week-of-schoolnot-for-us.html

I hope this helps,
Shan