Part of the series Who says…
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2014-12-15.
We just don’t live or learn by subject in a real life, but live life as an integrated whole.
Building on a foundation that God is, that He created the universe and that He ultimately is responsible for our children’s being, should provide ample substance upon which to build our faith. This lengthy series will identify the secular thinking that has eroded that faith.
Bible Reference: 2 Tim 2:15
Have you ever tried to live a subject? As you read this blog, are you considering what subject you might be engaged in? Is it an exercise in English? Reading, maybe? If so, will you get a series of questions to measure your comprehension when done? Maybe it is more social studies or history or math since there are numbers involved! Biology is defined as the study of life, so perhaps this is a biology exercise since we are indeed studying some aspect of life! Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Is this how we learn or live in the real world?
We simply do not consider life as fragmented pieces, yet we unquestioningly accept that learning is best accomplished when scheduled into components called subjects, which are further broken up into levels of supposed greater complexity, called grades. We do not ask ourselves how someone, completely disassociated from our child, has determined that all our children need to learn the same things within each subject, at certain times and increments, without consideration of what application these things may have to the individual or to their learning as a whole.
We can all understand that there are indeed different things that can and/or should be learned and it is not difficult to see the creation of subjects such as English, math and science as constituting parts of a whole but when we confuse the breakup of learning into parts separated by time blocks, we depart from the reality of life! Consider a homemaker following the example of school. At 8:15 AM she focusses on the subject of laundry but at 9:15 she abandons the laundry and starts the house cleaning subject, only to leave that task at 10:15, at which time she goes into mental neutrality called recess, before engaging again in yet another subject at 10:30, which is left undone like all the other tasks she has worked on today. At 11:30, she changes her focus again, to the subject of making lunch before returning to more hour long segments of unfinished “accomplishments” in the afternoon. No problem! All those tasks can be advanced by another hour of effort again tomorrow, right? Eventually, things will get done, even if there is no real measure as to what that really means. Does this make sense?
Subjects (tasks), broken into segments (scheduled periods), recurring over time without consideration for the dynamic nature of life does not prepare children for the real world. Keeping our children home, to train them in the family environment God provided, introduces a lifestyle of learning where each child becomes a part of this big world in a unique way and lives life as a single, integrated, seamless unit, rather than of separate parts. Breaking learning into pieces may be why most people remember very little of what they learned in school. This is not to downplay the importance of focussing in study, but we should avoid confusing subjects with learning or skills.
Who says that we need to learn by subjects? Only a system bent on conformity would actually believe that such an approach could foster individuality!