The traditional approach to schooling emphasizes teacher directed activities and mastery of the 3Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic (Walsh et. al, 208). Thomas Newkirk argues against the dominance of what he terms “normal schooling,” where the curriculum revolves around textbooks and there is a “pernicious confusion of standards with standardization” (5). The primary focus of class is the teacher dispensing knowledge and testing the students’ retention of it. The emphasis on sedentary, written activities in normal school can diminish children’s motivation and concentration. Research with 10 and 11 year old students found that the more passive learning activities children had, the more likely they were to refer to them as boring or onerous (Walsh, et al., 218).
In a comparison study of play-based and traditional curriculums in Northern Ireland, writing activities occupied 70% of the time of normal school students, while the students in “enriched curriculum” environments spent 80% of their time on play-based and practical activities (Walsh, et al. 210). As the 4 and 5 year old student-subjects age, the amount of time they spend bored stiff in school is likely to increase. Another area of concern is the decline of recess, which offers one of the only places for child-driven activities in a normal school setting. In 1989, 96% of American schools had at least one recess period; a decade later that number had dropped to 70% (Ginsburg, 3). In addition to the loss of recess, The American Academy of Pediatrics identified several other factors that threaten child’s play, including over scheduling of enrichment and extracurricular activities, and the standards created by the No Child Left Behind Act (Ginsburg, 2). Filling out worksheets does not give students a chance to think critically or reflectively, nor does it give them the skills necessary to make independent decisions.
So what exactly does a traditional curriculum teach in six hours a day, 180 days a year (1080 hours total)? John Taylor Gatto, who was New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991 , believes that the “method of mass schooling is its only real content (19).” He describes a hidden curriculum of seven lessons that normal schools innoculate their students with. The first lesson is confusion, by teaching information dislocated from context. This incoherent cacophony of facts is the opposite of the professed goal of education: to make connections, sense, and order out of the vast quantity of information we process each day. This “infinite fragmentation” is directly contrary to the age old human search for meaning (Gatto, 4).
The second lesson is class position, segregating the children according to age and ability. This ranking causes envy and fear of the “better” classes and contempt of the “dumb” classes. Indifference is the third lesson of the hidden curriculum: the teacher demands total involvement and enthusiasm until the bell rings. “Students never have a complete experience except on the installment plan” (6). Twelve years of internalizing the message that no work is worth finishing creates apathy. When the schedule pushes relentlessly forward, regardless of the absorption of the students in the task at hand, learning suffers. (Barnes, 25).
Emotional dependency is created through systems of ranking within the class. Privileges, punishments, hall passes, stars and red checks all function to reinforce the fourth lesson. The fifth lesson is intellectual dependency, well-schooled children wait for an expert to decide what is worth knowing. Gatto writes, “Curiosity has no place in my work, only conformity” (8). Following these acquired dependencies is provisional self esteem. The students are constantly being evaluated, judged, and ranked. Research has shown that testing has a negative impact on student’s desire to learn, with low-scoring pupils in double jeopardy: “being labeled as failures has an impact on how they feel about their ability to learn” (Harlen & Crick, 2003 (Clouder, 13)). The final lesson is that one can’t hide. Teachers, other students, and hall monitors ensure that children get no private time at school, while homework diminishes the opportunity for private time at home (10).
These lessons may seem harsh and Orwellian at first glance. But critical pedagogist Jonathan Kozol agrees that schools operate as sorting mechanisms and churn out a product “thoroughly schooled in passive compliance, if little else” (George, 94). When normal schooling is considered from this perspective, the failings of the educational system are actually indicators of success. John Taylor Gatto’s seven lessons illuminate the hidden curriculum of normal school, but not all educational processes serve these ends. At the turn of the 20th century, Dr. Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner founded educational movements that approach learning in a drastically different way.
Dr. Maria Montessori was Italy’s first female physician. Her success with mentally disabled children inspired her to open a school in 1907 (The Montessori Method). All modern Montessori schools are guided by her philosophy of “Follow the Child.” The children are grouped into classes of ages 3 to 6 and ages 6-12, with 30 pupils. Each class has a teacher and an assistant, and the older children learn by teaching the younger ones. Jozsef Nagy, a Hungarian educational sociologist, found that children’s abilities varied from their “calender age.” His research showed that 6 year old children can vary biologically by plus or minus one year, vary mentally by plus or minus two and a half years, and vary socially by three years in either direction (Clouder, 14). Normal schooling’s strict age and ability segregation is not sensitive to the children who may be behind or ahead their calendar year peers.
Dr. Montessori emphasized the importance of play for young children by labeling it their “work.” There is a 3 hour work period every day for students to explore their interests, and children who are engrossed in an activity are not pulled away from it when the bell rings (The Montessori Method). Montessori differs from Waldorf education in its recognition of child’s play being important work. In a Waldorf school, students age 7 and under spend the majority of their time engaged in play and fantasy. For example, history for these young students is commonly myths and legends (Waldorf Answers). Dr. Montessori found that given the choice between pretending to cook and actually cooking, children would choose to cook, so there is less emphasis on make-believe (The Montessori Method).
A Waldorf class is age-segregated, but the teacher ideally stays with the same students from first through eighth grade. Visual art, music, storytelling, and dance are integrated into the Waldorf curriculum (Waldorf Answers). Neither educational approach uses textbooks, although books are incorporated into learning as students age. Waldorf students aren’t graded throughout the year, but the teacher assesses their progress at the end of the school year. Rudolf Steiner founded the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919 (Waldorf Answers). He recognized that children play their way into knowledge, and during the first seven years of life they learn by imitation (Davy, 11).
Trying on adult roles is one of the benefits of play, in addition to developing physical, emotional, and cognitive strength. The American Academy of Pediatrics released a clinical report promoting play as “integral to the academic environment,” because it both helps children adjust to school and increases problem-solving skills, learning readiness, and learning behaviors (Ginsburg, 2). Using blocks and Legos allows children to develop an understanding of mathematical and spatial concepts. These skills are hard to quantify on a standardized test, but researchers have devised a method of measuring the spatial-geometric-architectural abilities of children (Bensen, 1). This allows a teacher to connect the student’s experiential learning with more formal understanding (Bensen, 1).
When children are asked to describe their ideal learning environment, there is no trace of the “hidden curriculum.” A study by the LEGO Learning Institute offered the most important perspective on education: that of the students. The children, ages 8-14 and from 6 different countries, shared a common vision of a play-based school (14). Anne Flemmert Jensen, the LEGO Learning Institute’s Director of Research, summarizes the findings, “They [children] crave a more spacious and physically challenging environment, which combines different media, and where teachers act as mentors rather than instructors” (LEGO, 14). In England, education research shows that children learn better in small groups and individually, as opposed to the traditional, whole class environment (Barnes, 25). The child-directed activities of Waldorf and Montessori schools may have an advantage there, as it is encouraged for the students to splinter off and immerse themselves in something. This sort of practice in self-direction, without waiting for an expert to tell them what to do, is a valuable life skill. Children’s active love of learning contrasts sharply with the daily grind of the normal school.
German neurobiologist Wassilios Fthenakis stressed the need for increased physical activity in schools, noting that his research has shown it enhances learning (LEGO, 14). The American Academy of Pediatrics also warned against cutting back on child-directed play time (recess, arts, and p.e.), stating it can negatively impact the “children’s ability to store information, because children’s cognitive capacity is enhanced by clear cut and significant change in activity” (Ginsburg, 3). Fthenakis’ other recommendations for making schools more conducive to learning include mixed-age classrooms, to promote “learning by teaching” (LEGO, 15). The multi-age class is a cornerstone of Montessori education.
He also advocates a process-oriented approach to knowledge, allowing children can work through the concepts themselves to arrive at their own conclusion (15). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED), studied 250,000 children in 32 countries and concurred that school curriculums should be “holistic with a greater emphasis on developmental outcomes rather than subject outcomes...more process related and co-constructive...defined by the vital interests and needs of the children, families, and communities...”( (OCED 2001) Clouder, 13). Fthenakis echoes the Waldorf philosophy when he advocates teachers being “trained for all educational levels so they can move within the educational system and become aware of children’s learning at every stage” (15).
Scientific and medical research communities are confirming what advocates of child-directed learning have known for over a century: the ideal learning environment is one in which concepts are taught in context and knowledge is first gleaned from experience and then reinforced by a teacher/mentor. In this environment, physical activities and play are meaningful components of the curriculum, not optional frills to be cut at a bureaucratic whim . How sad that the trend in normal schooling is towards writing and regimentation at ever-younger ages. The emphasis on high stakes testing may be more damaging to children than motivating, replacing the natural curiosity children have about the world with apathy about the incomprehensible system forced upon them. As former students and future educators, we have a choice. We can join the assembly line and churn out masses who are educated in obedience and mediocrity, or we can responsibly assist children in deciphering both the world around them and their place in it. But rather than following the “experts,” we should follow the child.
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Bensen, Lynn E. “Knowledge Under Construction: The Importance of Play in Developing Children's Spatial and Geometric Thinking.(Book review).” Childhood Education. 84.3 (Spring 2008): 174(2). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. 7 Mar. 2008
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