I love the innocence of little children, especially the adorable toddlers who are so excited about learning and trying new things. They have a sense of wonder that is untainted by preconceived notions. They embrace each new day as a grand adventure in which they encounter new situations with unfiltered interest. Those children who have only been loved and are yet to feel the sting of rejection or hate are bold in their willingness to discover the world. They want to know how things work. They find joy in the process of learning. They are at the peak of adding new words to their vocabularies and imitating behaviors that they witness from their parents and their siblings. They are free with their emotions, laughing with delight one moment and loudly expressing their frustrations in the next. 

I often wonder what happens to dampen the uninhibited joy of those little ones. Is it a natural aspect of our human development to become less enthusiastic and more self conscious as we grow older or do we unwittingly teach our children to be wary of being themselves? In a world of rewards and punishments do they learn to fear failure, thus becoming less willing to experiment and consider new ideas and concepts? Are we somehow responsible for dampening the natural human inclinations to approach the world with an investigative enthusiasm?  Do we rank and quantify our children’s actions and personalities too much instead of reassuring them that each of us develops in differing ways?

I began my career in teaching working with four year old children in a pre-school program that was mostly a fun way of learning. We used activities to teach numbers, counting, land etters and their relationship to one another. It was a happy time for those of us who were the educators and for the children as well. Every little one worked at his or her own pace. Their were no comparisons, no systems for grading. There was a great deal of singing and laughing and seeing how things work. There were many personalities that we attempted to nurture rather than change. Sometimes there were tears of frustration if something was difficult but mostly we let our little ones know that is was okay just to try, to interact with each other and the world around them. 

I eventually ended up working in the upper grades, teaching mathematics. Numbers and the rules that make them orderly were easy for some of my students and daunting for others. By the time those young people came to my classroom they had been graded and sometimes degraded many times over. They were tested and compared so often that they knew what came easily to them and what was quite difficult. They had divided themselves into many different categories. They were nerds and jocks, popular and unpopular, confident and broken. Sometimes they became sullen. Sometimes they asserted themselves as bullies. All of them were simply attempting to fit into the round holes and square spaces that the adult world had unwittingly created for them. They had been told that they were “good” or “bad” and they believed those things. They were loved or rejected by the adults who had been tasked to raise them. 

I saw all of these things and had to attempt to repair the damage. I had orders to push them through a carefully designed nine month curriculum whether or not they were ready for it or so advanced that they were bored with it. The required methodology often created the “I’m no good with math” crowd and elevated those who did not need to expend much effort at all to soar. Test scores and grades and awards and punishments endemic to schools made certain that each of them came to know both their limitations and their strengths without realizing that they were simply on a continuum of learning that should never be rushed. 

I suppose that we need to know what our young people have learned and what they still need to master but because of the way we have organized our educational system we forget that development is not linear with an identical rate of change for each person. That is true of all human activity. Given the right individual pace each of us is capable of learning or doing almost anything. Our level of expertise will vary but if we do things properly everyone will continue to find joy in the process of discovery. 

I was that kid who ran away from sports because it took me longer to develop the coordination and kinetic skills for making my body respond to incoming objects. Without patience and guidance from those who ran sports programs I learned to avoid athletic endeavors at all costs. In my math classes I encountered many who had adapted to the world of numbers with the same kind of avoidance and because they were being pushed forward continuously they lacked so many of the skills that they needed. They gave up on themselves and I had to put them back together, light that fire of enthusiasm that is so natural in each of us. 

If only we remembered the basics of human development we might encourage students to keep moving forward at a pace that works for them. Some will move quickly and others will take more time. The goal should be to get there, not to race there. We should not be using our young to assess students on skills that are above their level of mastery. We certainly should not use our students to grade teachers or schools or school districts. Such methodology flies in the face of what we know about how humans learn. We kill the joy of discovery when we do such things. Instead we would do well to give our young the time they need to bring out the very best of their skills and their confidence. Think of how remarkable that would be!