John Merrow, noted education reporter for PBS' News Hour and other outlets, asked on his blog today "Should school be serious fun? If so, how?"
Here's what Steve wrote back:
Can school be fun? School has to be fun. But the fun cannot be added on – like a party or a field trip or an occasional game. The fun can’t be icing on the cake; it has to be baked in.
For example, when we teach reading and writing using the Reader’s and Writer’s workshop model, the fun just oozes out. It’s fun to share your writing with an audience and to hear what others are writing. It’s fun to read books you like and to talk about them with other readers. And it’s a lot of fun watching your teacher model all the things he wants you to do – and sometimes make mistakes in the process.
What’s not fun? Using a textbook. Doing test prep activities. Having no choices over what you study. Being told again and again that you’re a bad student because you keep getting Ds and Fs because the material you’re studying is way above your grade level and there’s no differentiated instruction going on.
Learning, as a natural human experience, is inherently fun. It’s the traditions of school that take the fun out. It’s the mindless focus on product over process and participation that takes the fun out. It’s discovering that school is not about you that takes the fun out. It’s teachers, who have been robbed of the fun of teaching, that takes the fun out.
Fun is not just a luxury; it’s an essential. Long-term learning requires long-term memory. And long-term memory requires the involvement of strong human emotions. All we have to do to understand this is to look back at our own school days. Some classes were fun; some weren’t. Which do we remember and rely on today? (Hint: we tend only to remember those experiences that were emotional.)
Mostly what kids enjoy is just what we all enjoy: the thrill of independence and running their own show; the ability to watch their own learning improve through meaningful self-assessment; the attainment of worthy goals; purposeful work at the right level of challenge; healthy social interaction with peers.
That today’s schools provide so little of this – and even less with each passing year – should tell us that we’re moving in the wrong direction. Even if test scores rise, learning may not. Why? Because with all the emphasis on test preparation, teachers focus on cramming kids for short-term memory exercises. The idea of raising lifelong learners has been replaced by the notion of prepping for tests.
We know how to make school fun. There are many wonderful professional books that provide explicit instruction for teachers about this very topic. But we are choosing to create a school experience that is dreary and meaningless by the instructional choices we make every day.
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