What if your kids could concentrate on their work so you could concentrate on yours?

Engagement is a sign of learning. What activities do you gravitate toward? (Image by Design_Miss_C)

Education, along with everything else, is in crisis in the United States. One of the central problems we’re going to be facing this fall is that, once again, working parents will be forced to find some way for school and work to coexist. 

By no means do I believe that I can come up with a universal solution to the challenge of school closures. However, I do have some thoughts to contribute to the conversation; as usual, my approach to pedagogy is grounded in my long experience as a music teacher. What I learned in that context is surprisingly applicable here.

The question I’m pondering is this: Why shouldn’t a school-age child be able to do his own work independently while sitting side by side with a parent who is working? 

What has to change in order to make this possible?

In music lessons, we generally expect children to labor independently outside of the lesson, even though the concept of daily practice is foreign to them at the outset (and, it should be noted, very difficult even for adults to have the discipline to execute). In some families, the parent will sit patiently beside the child as she plays, and in some families, not so patiently; however, in most American families, salutary neglect carries the day and the kid is on her own. Thus, the challenge has been to set up the lesson in such a way that the child is motivated on her own to continue playing at home. 

In order for the student to be interested in playing her instrument outside of the lesson, it’s got to be appealing. In order for it to be appealing, we need to be working in the child’s zone of proximal development where the work is neither too easy nor too hard — it is, as Goldilocks said, “juuuust right.” 

Furthermore, if we want the child to be able to operate without adult intervention, directions need to be extremely straightforward. 

The result is likely to be a lot more simplicity and repetition than teachers (and conventional materials) would tend to plan for. If the student knows how to read three notes at the piano, she can easily and confidently play songs and etudes that use those three notes. If the method book only has two such pieces, she will be done practicing after a minute or two. On the other hand, if she has a hundred pieces that use those familiar elements in an engaging way, those could keep her busy for awhile, deeply benefiting her developing brain as she plays.

Another possibility would be a system of delivering new material that is easily accessible, both in format and content. When it’s time to learn the fourth note, for instance, she might be able to do it on her own if there’s a video she can watch over and over — a video that is clear, simple, and contains enough familiar context that the new information becomes self-evident. Again, in order to be effective, this might be much slower and simpler than the adults would expect.

After experimenting for years, I was able to come up with an approach that worked. My students played their instruments without coercion at home, setting them up for long-term success as musicians.

We’ve all seen children become deeply absorbed in their solitary play — it is, in effect, their work. The frown of concentration on a toddler’s face as he places all his toys in a bin, then dumps them all out, then puts them back in again perfectly matches that of a scientist in the lab, running an experiment and analyzing the results. This is a perfectly natural state of being for a child and one that can be cultivated.

So what’s wrong with the typical schoolwork? So much of it is too complex if you don’t understand the underlying concept and too easy if you have already mastered it. A worksheet has value neither to the student who can blow through it in 45 seconds nor to the one who is crying in frustration as mom tries to explain the directions again. In order for learning to take place, we need to calibrate the assignments more thoughtfully to the ability of the student. When this is accomplished, the student can have a meaningful educational experience that might last ten or twenty minutes or even longer without adult involvement. 

Once this is accomplished, the next challenge for the parent or teacher is to deal with the discomfort of how much this looks like fun and not work. If nobody’s whining or gritting their teeth, how can this activity have educational value? If a child isn’t constantly being challenged with new material and new concepts, how can we be sure she’s living up to her potential? It’s very tempting to raise the bar.

We need to understand that learning is not linear, and the content is only part of the curriculum. Self-directed, self-paced, or child-led learning may indeed be slower, but this approach allows students to learn a whole suite of related skills and traits that are critical for their growth and development such as persistence, exploration, experimentation, and concentration. What’s more, students come to associate learning with positive experiences, creating a virtuous cycle in which they return to their work with greater enthusiasm over time. Thus, in the long run, this approach to learning is a shortcut: It leads to a student’s own investment in his education.

At The Rulerless School, we are actively developing materials that allow students to learn effectively without constant adult interference. However, a parent can do the same by following the child’s interests — or cultivating them if they have grown a bit limited. You’ll know you’re on the right track when your child is intensely, actively focused and you find yourself more interested in what he’s doing than your own work. Enjoy these moments — they are precious indeed. Might you even look back on them wistfully when your child goes back to school?