"What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more
and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their
experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and
advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where
they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out
what they want to find out."
—John Holt, Teach Your Own
My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.
—Dylan Thomas
"I’m an unschooler. Lessons are never over. On the other hand, lessons
never really begin. Children’s question are answered and an atmosphere
of learning is created so that questions are constant and answers are
never far away. "
—Sandra Dodd
"Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking—the strain would be too great—but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest…The question is not,—how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education—but how much does he care?"
—Charlotte Mason
*Where "day" = "as often as I remember to do it." How’s this for a fun idea? In addition to regular posting, I’m going to start posting daily quotes about How People Learn Stuff. Such as:
"The child is curious. He wants to make sense out of things, find out how things work, gain competence and control over himself and his environment, and do what he can see other people doing. He is open, perceptive, and experimental. He does not merely observe the world around him, he does not shut himself off from the strange, complicated world around him, but tastes it, touches it, hefts it, bends it, breaks it. To find out how reality works, he works on it. He is bold. He is not afraid of making mistakes. And he is patient. He can tolerate an extraordinary amount of uncertainty, confusion, ignorance, and suspense."
—John Holt, How Children Learn
"Tastes it, touches it, hefts it, bends it, breaks it." Boy is that right. Actually this is just what Maria Montessori was talking about in that quote I posted on Bonny Glen the other day.
"Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants—doing nothing but living and walking about—came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning: would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child’s way of learning. This is the path he follows. He learns everything without knowing he is learning it, and in doing so passes little from the unconscious to the conscious, treading always in the paths of joy and love."
So there you go: your Joy of Learning Quote of the Day, where "quote" is sometimes plural.
