Homeschooling
3rd June 2024
I now make a distinction between education and learning. With education someone else decides what they’re going to teach you, and they push it onto you. With learning you get interested in a questions and pull the answer from books, people, videos, and other resources, and the information sticks.
I don’t think there’s much overlap between education and learning. Rarely a student will be interested in what the teacher is teaching (by coincidence or because the teacher is good at generating interest), and when that happens, the information sticks. But most of the time the two are unrelated and the student remembers little.
We’re all told that education and learning are the same—if education is happening, then learning is happening. And students go through years of education. No wonder they think that learning is something to be avoided! They’ve rarely actually experienced it. We all figure out that education (and, incorrectly, learning) is a game where the teacher tries to get you to remember something and you try to do as little work as possible while getting acceptable grades.
…
If you decide to homeschool, the most common question you’ll get from friends is, “What curriculum are you going to follow?” As soon as you use the word “curriculum”, you’ve already lost. You’re doing education, not learning, because the student isn’t pulling information they’re excited about, they’re having your curriculum pushed on them.