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Friday, January 21, 2011

Educational Discipline...friend or foe?

At a recent homeschool support group meeting we talked about discipline in education. Something about the discussion felt off to me, but I couldn't verbalize what it was at the time. The discussion started with one mom who said she used to think that if a child wanted to know something they would learn it due to their passion, but now thinks you have to push kids to learn or they won't really excel when they should.

She came to this conclusion after watching her daughter coast through math in a public school, never getting more than a B despite how easily she grasped the concepts. The daughter even tutored other kids and the teachers commented on how mathematically inclined she was. However the daughter never really loved math and today feels just ok about it - apparently she commented to her mom that she wished she had been pushed harder to excel by her parents (the implication being she would love math today if she had been pushed).

Another mom talked about how she told her son that he had to take piano for 5 years and how she pushed him through those times when he wanted to quit and hated practicing. Then when the 5 years were up, he realized that he actually liked how accomplished he was on the piano and decided to stick with playing it rather than moving on to something else.


These stories were told with passion, and while they sounded good on the surface there was something about them that just didn't sit right with me.

While arguably there is nothing wrong with training a child in what they will need to know, where I take issue is with the idea that by forcing kids to become disciplined in a subject they are then finally able to enjoy it. It sounds pretty on paper, but something tells me the girl never would have loved math the way it was taught and the boy doesn't and may never love piano (and may have loved another instrument if he had been given the chance). Just because someone is accomplished doesn't mean they will enjoy it nor that they will be prepared for life in that subject. It means they can parrot what they have been taught and pass a test with a good grade. I suppose they will be prepared for college and that is the goal our society emphasizes.

The second and more important thing that bothered me about this idea is you cannot discipline a child in creative thought and imagination. A child is born with the ability to reason and find creative solutions. We have to allow children time to explore and develop this part of themselves. By 'starting young' with timed tests and drill you are destroying this natural gift. So many kids go through the 'discipline' of education too soon and end up unable to think creatively. They are only good as worker bees, they no longer think of anything beyond what they have had drilled into their minds - as long as the soma (ie tv, sports, computers, the internet, etc) is available anyway. Once the soma of today loses its potency, you end up with depressed, anxious individuals who know something is wrong but cannot figure out what. Though we now have prescription drugs to boost the soma-effect for a few more years!

Universities were created for older people, not young children. A child can learn the basics they need - even for society today - in just a few short hours during their childhood. If they missed anything then they can pick it up as they get older. Yes, kids may pick things up faster when they are young, but I would rather that young children use their incredible abilities to learn and memorize on solving problems they face day-to-day (which include reading and math skills) and then train their minds for a discipline later, once they understand how to think creatively.

Sadly since I didn't figure out my problem with their form of discipline right a way, I wasn't able to express my concerns. I'm sure I will have other chances in the future which will give me time to work on developing my concerns more fully.

I get to do a presentation on Unschooling in May for this same group, so I may get a chance to voice my concerns after all.
Carlo Carretto, a leading spiritual writer of the past half-century, was a hermit in the Sahara desert for more than a dozen years. Alone, with only the Blessed Sacrament for company, milking a goat for food, and translating the Bible into the local Bedouin language, he prayed for long hours by himself. Returning to Italy to visit his mother, he came to a startling realization: His mother, who for more than 30 years had been so busy raising a family that she scarcely ever had a private minute, was more contemplative than he was.

Carretto drew the right lesson. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with what he’d been doing as a hermit. Rather, there was something wonderfully right about what his mother had been doing as she lived the interrupted life amidst the noise and incessant demands of small children. He had been in a monastery, but so had she.

A monastery is not so much a place set apart for monks and nuns as it is a place set apart (period). It is a place to learn the value of powerlessness and to learn that time is not ours, but God’s.

Our home and duties can, like a monastery, teach us that. John of the Cross once described the inner essence of monasticism this way: “But they, O my God and my life, will see and experience your mild touch, who withdraw from the world and become mild, bringing the mild into harmony with the mild, thus enabling themselves to experience and enjoy you.” John suggests that two elements make for a monastery: withdrawal from the world and bringing oneself into harmony with the mild.

Certain vocations offer the same opportunity for contemplation. For example, the mother who stays home with small children experiences a real withdrawal form the world. Her existence is monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centers of power and social importance. And she feels it. Moreover her sustained contact with young children (the mildest of the mild) gives her a privileged opportunity to be in harmony with the mild, to attune herself to the powerlessness rather than to the powerful.

The demands of young children also provide her with what St. Bernard, one of the great architects of monasticism, called the “monastic bell.” Bernard told his monks that whenever the monastic bell rang, they were to drop whatever they were doing and go immediately to the activity (prayer, meals, work, study, sleep) to which the bell was summoning them. He was adamant that they respond immediately: If they were writing a letter they were to stop in mid-sentence when the bell rang. When the bell called you to the next task, you were to respond immediately, not because you want to, but because it’s time for that task and time isn’t your time, it’s God’s time. For him, the monastic bell was a discipline to stretch the heart by taking you beyond your own agenda to God’s agenda.

Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart. For years, while raising children, her time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something. She hears the monastic bell many times a day and she has to drop things in mid-sentence and respond, not because she wants to, but because it’s time for that activity and time isn’t her time, but God’s time. The rest of us experience the monastic bell when our alarm clock rings and we get out of bed and ready ourselves for the day, not because we want to, but because it’s time.

The principles of monasticism are time-tested, saint-sanctioned, and altogether – trustworthy. But there are different kinds of monasteries, different ways of putting ourselves into harmony with the mild, and different kinds of monastic bells. Response to duty can be monastic prayer, a needy hand can be a monastic bell, and working without status and power can constitute a withdrawal into a monastery where God can meet us. The domestic can be the monastic.

Father Ron Rolheiser