Thinking About How We Learn...

Recently reading an old Macleans Magazine (from September 2013), I came across a fascinating article about an American family with exceptionally bright children.

It was interesting to me, as a parent, as a teacher (for many years), and as a lifelong learner.

Jacob Barnett, a physics genius who was once diagnosed as autistic, owes a lot of his intellectual development to his mother, who intuitively let him study and focus on whatever interested him, instead of insisting he follow the school curriculum. She believed in "muchness" - "encouraging children's passions" rather than trying to remedy their flaws.




Did I do enough of that as a parent? I wonder, thinking back on my children's childhood years. I enrolled them in programs that interested them - or that I thought they would benefit from. But I never withdrew them from school to home-school them so that they could simply follow their passion. (Would they have ended up playing Nintendo all day?!)

I'm also fascinated by 15-year-old Jacob's comment in the article: "instead of being a student [in a] field, be the field..."

What does this mean in a practical sense to a learner - to me, for example, in my art courses? Does it  mean to trust my intuition?

It's not the way most classes work at school. The article has definitely left me with a lot to think about!