A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

“Frequently, by the time children reach 3rd grade, the sense of wonder with which they entered kindergarten—wonder out of which authentic thinking and thus thinking for oneself develops—has begun to diminish. By 6th grade it has practically disappeared” (459, Developing Minds, Thomas Jackson).

Traditional education models train kids to devalue their own thinking in favor of right answers and a teacher’s instructions. Little children who are used to exploring the world with their hands and wild imaginations are gradually conditioned to save those impulses for “after school” until they give them up all together before they even get to junior high.

And then we wonder why our teens appear to be inflexible, unable to grasp nuances. They’ve been conditioned by tests and homework to know that there is a right answer. They’ve lost their capacity for wonder. Teens who have retained their imaginations and their wide-eyed wonder are often seen as “not serious” about school or as “immature” or “socially inept.”

A Gift

If there were one gift I could give parents, it would be the ability to protect their children’s natural, not-jaded curiosity through the teen years. To:

• have a teen boy who is delighted by knitting or a teen girl who wields a power saw,
• converse with a teen who is enamored of fantasy novels to the point of writing their own and imagining that it could be published,
• know a teen who becomes so tender to the plight of abused animals, that teen chooses to volunteer at a shelter,
• raise a teen who plays with LEGO, who climbs trees, who secretly enjoys reruns of the PBS cartoon Arthur.

It’s one of the gifts of home education.

Let’s preserve conditions that promote wonder no matter what ages our children are.

The Enchanted Education for Teens

Still have questions? Learn more in my book, Raising Critical Thinkers.

The multiple-choice test ‘right answer’ thinking is what often derails thoughtfulness—evidence of caring about the question, not just surmising the answer a test-maker had in mind.

You’re in class. Teacher hands out the test. Hands on the clock tick. 50 minutes to answer 50 questions. Scantron hits your desk—ding!

What happens in your body? A thrill of adrenaline? Sweat?

You get to the end of the first question: four choices. You can’t decide between (a) and (b). Clock ticking. You can make good arguments for either of them. Clock ticking louder. You fill in one bubble, then erase it, and fill in the other. It’s hard to know which one is right. From one perspective, (a) makes complete sense. But you like (b) because it makes more sense to you.

Finally: you know! You know because you do one thought experiment to help you. You ask yourself, “What did my teacher have in mind when creating this question?” You stop consulting your own thoughts, ideas, and powers of synthesizing.

On you go—new method in mind. You won’t think about possible answers. Instead, you’ll ask “What’s the most likely answer the test-creator wanted me to supply?”

Goodbye critical thinking.

When we reduce learning to right answers alone, and decide whose right answers we must learn, and then put that right answer thinking under timed pressure, we eliminate an important force in our education: our own powerful minds!

Even math. Even spelling.

What would happen if your child could explain why they thought 7 x 8 was 54 or that “field” was spelled “feeled”?

How is it helpful to simply tell that child “You got it wrong?”

This post is originally from Instagram and @juliebravewriter is my account there so come follow along for more conversations like this one!

For more help, I’ve got a whole chapter addressing “multiple choice right answer thinking” and how it’s destroying our children’s natural capacity for wonder and intellectual growth in my new book, Raising Critical Thinkers.

Human beings are determined to wrestle information into a worldview that tells the story they love to hear. Let’s help our kids identify the storytellers.

Have you ever thought about the viewpoint of a fairy tale?

Fairy tales are repeated to us from the time we are tiny people in a wide variety of formats. So much so, we accept the narrator’s version as the truest one!

For instance, when I think about the Three Little Pigs, I think I know the true story of what happened. I know the role each character plays, their motives, and who deserves support or scorn.

But do I?

In the first chapter of Raising Critical Thinkers, I wrote about Jon Sciezka’s book “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs” told from the perspective of the wolf. His book is thrilling to children—in part because it has never occurred to them (or us!) that there may even BE another viewpoint to consider in this tale. What happens when we listen to additional voices? How do we determine which ones are reliable? Why do we trust the pigs and distrust the wolf?

If we spool this idea further, we can ask the same question about historical events, literature, culture, and media. On what grounds do we automatically trust one version of events or facts and equally distrust another?

Human beings crave storytellers and we are adept at finding ones who tell the stories we love to hear. Part of a robust education is helping our children learn to “name those storytellers” and then to vet them against our own biases and expectations!

That’s one of the chief goals of my book and why I was so enthusiastic about writing it. I love this stuff! I hope you do too.

Go to the book website for details!

This post is originally from Instagram and @juliebravewriter is my account there so come follow along for more conversations like this one!