Connection and learning

As you might have figured out, I think (and write) a lot about connection. Usually this is connection in the relational sense, but tonight I want to write about connection in the educational sense. 

I often find myself answering the question of what the positives are of homeschooling. I think there are a lot, but the one I think that gets short shrift (and really shouldn't) is that homeschooling allows us to help our children see the connections between everything they are learning. This is especially true for those of us who do school in a manner more off the beaten path and don't think in terms of teaching subjects. 

By subjects I mean English and writing and math and science and art and history and penmanship and spelling and...  Modern education (including pricey homeschooling curricula) really likes to break learning down into silos of discrete parts that have little to do with one another. But that's not really how the world works, is it? If a child is interested in learning about outer space and decides to write a short story about what they have learned, where does the science end and the language arts begin? What if they're interested in the history of the space program? Or they watch the movie Hidden Figures and are curious about all that math which also leads into the Civil Rights Movement? Which then, if they listen to public radio becomes questions of certain states being uncomfortable with teaching the Civil Rights Movement. Where do current events fit in? Any borders put between subjects are arbitrary.

By highlighting the connections between things, we make them easier to learn because there are more mental pegs on which to hang new information. We all need these pegs. The first time you hear something that is brand new information, it can be difficult to make sense of it; it can be more difficult to understand. But if you have even one small connection between the new and something you already know, it gives you a starting point, not unlike one of those "You Are Here" maps. 

Without a mental peg, so much information just goes by us. Our brains are excellent filters and are nearly continually filtering out unneeded information. If our brains didn't do this, we would be so overwhelmed that we couldn't function. We need some sort of connection to something for it to even make it past the filtering system. It's not unlike the phenomenon of hearing a new word or bit of knowledge. Often it seems that afterwards you come across that word or bit of knowledge everywhere. What happened was that it got hung on your mental pegs and you created a connection to it thus allowing it to pass through your brain's filter. It was always there in the same amount before, but because you were unaware of it and lacking a connection, it was filtered out. 

I think we do no favors to our children if we give the impression that school subjects are each unrelated to one another. It is all too easy, when areas of learning are disconnected from each other, that it all becomes just unrelated facts to be spewed forth at appointed times; there is nothing personal for the learner in it. If we want children to be engaged, to be curious about the world around them, we need to first reconnect them to that world in a way that it matters.