Delight Directed Studies
Delight-directed learning places
students in charge of their own learning, helping
them find something they want to accomplish. The
delight-directed method uses natural curiosity
to motivate the student. The student acquires
basic concepts of learning (reading, reasoning,
writing, researching, etc.) during the process
of examining the topic of interest. Less control
can lead to more learning.
All children love to learn-at
least all children love to learn before they go
to school. Forced learning can destroy the natural
love for learning that our children are born with.
Children locked into studying something they find
boring are no different than adults locked into
boring, irrelevant meetings. If adults cannot
see the relevance of the material covered in a
meeting, they will tune out or drop out. If children
do not understand how the subject will help to
address the concerns of their lives, they will
tune out. Would you, for example, read this page
if it were titled "Basic Plumbing Concepts." You might if you had a kitchen-sink leak or a
basement full of water. In the same way, students
need to have an interest in the topic they are
learning.
If we allow students a free choice,
they can concentrate on learning what they might
need in their lives. Freedom to choose what not
to study implies freedom to learn more about what
one cares about and freedom to explore new interests.
A teacher's or parent's first
job is to cause children to want to read something,
to motivate them to care so that the natural order
of learning can kick into action. The educator's
job is to provide the one item which today's education
system leaves out: motivation. (Schank, 1994)
When students are given good instructional
materials, they can teach themselves and they
will eventually learn to locate their own resources
(books, Internet sites, people, materials, classes,
etc.) For more on this subject read Self
Directed Learning by Cafi Cohen, author of
And
What About College).
Delight Directed Method
is Biblical
The Bible instructs parents to recognize that
each child is a unique individual with a way already
established that needs to be recognized, acknowledged,
and reckoned with by means of the truth of Scripture.
Proverbs 22:6 says Train up a child in
the way he should go, Even when
he is old he will not depart from it.
This verse shows us a parent's training must
be based on knowing his or her child. The Hebrew
text has the personal pronoun attached to the
noun "way." It reads, "his way"
and not simply "in the way he should go."
"Way" is the Hebrew derek, "way,
road, journey, manner." Parents need to recognize
the way each of their children is bent by the
way God has designed each of them. If parents
fail to recognize this, they may also fail to
help launch their children into God's plan for
their lives.
Individualized Education
Roger Schank from The Institute
for the Learning Sciences explains, in Engines
for Education, the importance of individualized
education.
Education should have a pragmatic
purpose. Education ought to be about building
learners' abilities to do useful things. What
is important to learn is whatever helps learners
do things that they want to do or that they
can be induced to want to do. Therefore, if
we want to detail the knowledge students need
to have, we should first detail the things students
should know how to do. Then we can determine
what knowledge will be useful in each case.
Depending on an individual's
situation and goals, there are many things that
might be worth learning. In order to give a
very detailed prescription for what knowledge
a student should acquire, we must take into
account that not every child will need or want
to do the same things. A curriculum must therefore
be individualized. It must be built around an
understanding of what situations a particular
learner might want to be in, or might have to
be in later in life, and what abilities he will
require in those situations.
Nevertheless, for many people, the notion of
mandating the same knowledge for every student
is appealing. Building lists of facts that one
claims everyone should know is relatively simple
to do. Furthermore, there is the attraction
of providing standards that can be easily measured.
But from the perspective of the teacher and
the student, this approach spells
trouble. Each mandated bit of knowledge removes
more local control and drives the system towards
fixed curricula and standardized tests, which
not only diminishes teacher flexibility but
also student choice, and therefore, student
interest and initiative.
In public schools from first
through twelfth grade, much of the classroom
routine is shaped by an emphasis on rote learning,
a strict adherence to standardized textbooks
and workbooks, and a curriculum that is often
enforced with drill and practice. The methods
and the curriculum are molded by the questions
that appear on the standardized achievement
tests administered to every child from the fourth
grade on. Success no longer means being able
to do. Success comes to mean "academic
success," a matter of learning to function
within the system, of learning the "correct"
answer, and of doing well at multiple-choice
exams. Success also means, sadly, learning not
to ask difficult questions. When we ask how
our children are doing in school, we usually
mean, "are they measuring up to the prevailing
standards?" rather than, "are they
having a good time and feeling excited about
learning?"
We should purpose to be flexible
in the way we try to tap into our children's innate
interests. When we are interacting with the student
we can evaluate whether learning has taken place.
If one approach doesn't work, we can drop it and
try another.
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