Connections

I know I write a lot about emotional connection, but that is not where I'm going with this post. Instead I want to write about connection in learning.

A week or so ago I mentioned the public speaking course I've been listening to while I walk in the mornings. The teacher is so good! She is a law professor, and while the course isn't focused on law students, she references her law experience. I don't want to be a lawyer, but this woman is so interesting that she makes me want to go to law school. Well, sort of. I'd actually like to just take more classes from her.

One of the things I enjoy is her wide use of references to make her point. I love learning things other than just the topic at hand. So far she has referenced historical figures (from Socrates to Lou Gehrig) and events (from the Triangle Shirtwaist fire to the trial surrounding Micheal Jackson's death), acting, music, and neuroscience. It's pretty wide ranging, which suits me quite well. I find the more ways I can think about a topic, the better able I am to understand and remember it.

It has reminded me of one of the things I love about homeschooling... that we can learn about topics and make connections to them. A topic is not learned in isolation. We may be learning about botany, but there is an awful lot of history tied to plants, so we learn history as well. We may be learning about the Middle Ages, but there is science behind why the Leaning Tower of Pisa leans, there is art in frescoes and cathedrals, there is literature in Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales. Subjects are all interrelated.

It drives me a little mad when curricula create artificial divisions between subjects as if one didn't have any bearing on another. Without hooks to hang information on, it becomes that much more difficult to learn and remember things. Our memories work best by connecting information, by making stories out of what we've learned. And if a child (or anyone, really) has been able to see or touch or physically experience something, it becomes even more memorable.

For instance, we've gone to see the reproduction Viking ship that was built in Sweden and sailed over for the Columbian Exhibition a couple of times. My children have a pretty good sense of what a viking ship looks like. So when we read this morning about King Harald of Norway deciding to invade England in 1066 and how his ships were maneuverable regardless of the direction of the wind, they have a pretty good sense of what the author is talking about. Along with that, from our years of reading the Swallows and Amazons series, where there is a lot of discussion about wind and tacking and sailing with and against the wind, an awful lot of passive sailing knowledge was accumulated. So when we read that William over in Normandy couldn't sail against the wind because the ships weren't designed to do so, my children have some context for the basic ideas of sailing. A plot point of a major event in western history is better understood. I find it is these discoveries of connection that brings joy to the learning process. 

My wish for new homeschoolers is that they stop worrying about ticking all the boxes and getting in all the subjects. Instead, follow rabbit trails, ask questions and look for answers even if it doesn't have anything to do with the page in the textbook, be adventurous in your learning. The more widely a child learns, the more hooks are available on which  to hang new information. How sad if instead of creating an entire universe in their heads they limited to just a few unrelated facts on a page.