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Ralph Olsen was a very angry parent. The school system had “diagnosed” his adored seven-year old Edna with attention deficit disorder as well as verbal processing disorder. He was red in his face as he sputtered. “Small wonder she hates school. You should see what that place is like. They treat the kids like prisoners. Make them sit still for hours in these horrid straight-back chairs. And the stuff they teach! They have the kids repeat this stupid stuff that has no meaning. Then they tell us that they’re the experts, and that they know how to teach kids how to read! Except they don’t. That is, a lot of the kids don’t learn. And when they don’t, these ‘experts’ label them with this alphabet soup of disorders. They’ve got a third of Edna’s class labeled as ‘dysfunctional’. Unbelievable!”
“That bad!” I said. “How are the other kids in Edna’s class coping?”
“You should see what they look like. They’re either climbing the walls or with faces shut-up like zombies. Who can blame them?”
Mrs. Olsen hadn’t said a word. I looked at her waiting for her reaction, then asked.
“What are you going to do?”
Myrna Olsen had already and quietly made up her mind. “I’m going to homeschool Edna. It’s only since she’s been in that school that Edna’s started to climb the walls and sass people. She’s never done that before. And she never, never had trouble expressing herself. Ever since she’s been in that school she’s been a different child. That school is a no-good place. It’s encouraging all sorts of bad habits.”
Ralph Olsen exploded with “We’re paying taxes for that lousy place! And what gets me is the way they put on this air that they’re the experts....” Myrna Olsen and I let him continue until he finally finished. The anger must have been escalating for quite a while: how that school with its incompetents had mistreated his darling Edna, who looked so much like her father.
Myrna Olsen had done more than make up her mind to withdraw Edna from the school and homeschool her. She had explored various teaching approaches, looking over interesting children’s books; used the librarians in the children’s section of several local libraries as resource people. She had begun to develop a teaching plan. And perhaps most important, she remembered her own childhood and recalled what had appealed to her, what had meant the most to her, what it was she still remembered as important knowledge.
When Myrna told me about her preparations, which included my own books I had to laugh. “I see. Looks like you’ve decided to create an intellectual feast for Edna.”
For the first time since coming to my office the reserved Myrna laughed. “Ralph would like that phrase. It would be right down his alley. Ralph’s like Edna. He too had trouble in school. He’s no good at memory work. But when things make sense, he’ll never forget them. Me, I’m different. I had no trouble memorizing anything the teachers wanted me to spit back. Teachers love teaching rote stuff. It makes live easy for them. That way they don’t have to be on alert and think. I’m good at rote memory work so I got great grades at school. But I’ve forgotten most of what I memorized and got such great grades in. But like Ralph, I never forget a good story.”
Edna also reveled in a good story. So it was no surprise that within weeks she had learned to read with Vad of Mars as her guide. And now that she was becoming literate a whole new world of exciting ideas and stories had begun to open for her. Literacy, as she discovered, is a true “open sesame.”
Several months later the more relaxed Myrna readily laughed when she told me, “I think Vad of Mars with his rockets for feet has become Edna’s first boyfriend.” We agreed that Vad wasn’t such a bad choice: that a powerful male who at the same time is nurturing makes a great combination. And we also agreed that modern science fiction fairy tales could lay the groundwork for basic attitudes that can determine later behavior – perhaps even who you will become in life.
Edna’s involvement in stories is typical, if not an essential part of child development. Involvement in stories represents an advanced aspect of make-believe play, the early stages of which is characteristic of most of the world’s young mammals. We see kittens with their sideways dance signaling that the forthcoming attack is make believe. The make-believe games of our human children, once they have learned to use and understand words, opens the imaginary world of those exciting stories that most of us remember from childhood. These make-believe stories are important because in their subtle way they introduce us into, and tell us about the real world. They have an emotional power without the dangers lurking in that real, that physical world. Many of us carry our fascination for these make-believe narratives into adulthood: the fiction we read as adults frequently serves a similar function that the fairy tales did in our childhood.
But as Myrna soon discovered with Edna, the dividing line between make-believe and true stories is not always readily nor easily understood or accepted. At age seven, Edna still occasionally confused make-believe with true stories. Such confusion should come as no surprise. Even the imaginary characters of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are presented as real to many children. And then there are the other claims we make to children: claims we know are not quite what we say they are.
Although rarely discussed, there can be a disconcerting aspect to childhood’s confusion as to what is real and what is not. I remember from my own childhood how when I was Edna’s age I had come to the conclusion that you never knew whether what the adults told you was true. So I resolved the confusion quite simply with. “Adults frequently lie – although that doesn’t mean you don’t love them.” How’s that for childish logic!
Eventually I began to figure out how to determine which of the stories adults told me were make-believe (false) and which were true. It was to use the testing concept of “If that is true, then the following should be the case.”
Here’s an example from my childhood. I had come to the conclusion that when adults claimed they could swim they were actually using their arms to walk along the bottom of the river where we went bathing. I was convinced that the adults were being liars – like usual. As a consequence I refused to take swimming lessons. Then one day when I had reached the advanced age of six we went “swimming” in a crystal clear pool, instead of in the river. It occurred to me that the clear water would make it possible for me to verify whether people were actually swimming. I went to the deep end of the pool. Checked out if it really was deep by holding on to the railing and trying to touch the bottom. When I couldn’t, I knew it really was too deep for walking along the pool bottom with your arms. Then I went to the side of the pool and watched adults as they navigated the water. There was no way they could be walking along the pool bottom and stay on top of the water. They were actually swimming. It was true. It was not a lie. I went to my mother and told her that I wanted to learn to swim. No, I never told her why I had changed my mind. Nor that I thought adults were liars. There are some things you don’t tell even to the most loving adult – if you could find the words.
By the time I was seven my journalist mother decided that from now on when I asked questions she would answer them to the best of her ability or send me to someone else with more expertise in the subject. The question whether Santa Claus was for real was answered with “If you want him to be.” When I persisted she said, “Have him be for real for another year.” I understood, although rather sad that such a lovely creation was not for real. But my mother’s answer served the function that from that time on I knew she would tell me the truth. In response to metaphysical questions she explained that there were different viewpoints which would produce different answers. Today we would say she was introducing me to the variety of human cultures. It worked. I came to the conclusion that my mother was not a liar. That made her different from other adults.
When years later as a psychologist I asked youngsters aged five to about eleven if they thought most adults were liars they almost invariably nodded “yes.” Some of the nodding signified an emphatic “yes.” However, when the same question was asked of their parents the usual answer went something like “Not really.” My explanation of the discordance in child versus adult opinion is that by the time we reach adulthood we’ve found ways to evaluate the veracity of claims and stories. We are not forced into the defensive position of childhood resulting from an inability to distinguish some make-believe stories (it’s a lie?) from true and factual ones. Curiously, when I asked the parents of the children who had indicated that they thought most adults are liars if that was the opinion of their children the invariable answer was “No.” The parents were quite sure that their children thought of them and most other adults as truth sayers. The parents had evidently forgotten what in all probability had been their own childhood opinion.
Hearing Myrna’s description of how Edna was having trouble with determining which are true stories and which are make-believe ones made me recall scenes like the swimming one from my own childhood. So I suggested: “Edna needs to be shown how there’s an interesting way she can begin to figure out whether a story is make-believe or for real. This figuring out is done with the concept of the hypothetical game. In this game you ask ‘If that’s true, then the following should be the case, or should happen. And if there’s no hard core evidence showing that it is indeed the case, then in all likelihood it’s not true.’ But also tell Edna: ‘This is not an easy game. You may have to do a lot of investigating and a lot of reading in order to find out the various parameters involved in this hypothetical game.’” I laughed at seeing Myrna’s look at my suggested use of advanced vocabulary for Edna. But when I said “Edna will like those big words and will want to investigate them,” she too laughed and agreed.
“She’s so like Ralph. He too would have loved that kind of challenge as a youngster. That’s what was wrong with that school. They didn’t challenge the kids with interesting stuff. Just rote work all day long. You’d think those teachers would realize that the kids they’ve labeled ADHD have no attention problems when it comes to complicated computers and those out-of-this-world instructions. Those same kids when they’re at home concentrate for hours on their computers. Kids like a real challenge.”
When Myrna called again some days later she was jubilant. “Edna just loves the hypothetical game. She’s been spending days mulling over the ‘parameters.’ Sometimes Ralph joins her in one of the hypothetical games. They have spent hours looking things up in our encyclopedia or on the Internet.” Then Myrna laughed. “Ralph says that the two of them are having an intellectual feast.”
My response was “And that means that Edna is now ready for the next intellectual feast, which is the introduction into science, the other hypothetical game. Presenting hypotheses as a subcategory of make-believe serves as an interesting and meaningful entry into science. The hypothesis game is what we scientists do (play) all the time. We test the veracity of a concept by saying ‘if that concept is correct, then the following should be the case or should happen.’ Hypothesis testing is one of the ways we determine whether a story is a true story or very important, a false story. (Note the similarity of the scientific method to the technique I used as a child to determine whether people were actually swimming) When a hypothetical story is scrutinized via the scientific method it can give us accurate information about how our world is organized.”
Myrna’s response was an incredulous, “But Edna’s only seven. She’s not ready for science.”
My reply was a simple, ”On the contrary. That’s the time when we’re most interested in science, before those horrid school textbooks squash that interest and we’re expected to memorize meaningless out-of-context details. Just think how much kids enjoy those science programs on TV. They find them fascinating. That’s because as children we want to find out what goes on in the world around us, how it is built, how it is put together. Science allows us to comprehend and to participate in a fabulous story!”
Myrna's initial reaction was incredulity. The intricacies of science struck her as much too complicated for seven-year old Edna. However, to her surprise it was Edna who initiated the first scientific question when she asked, “What’s electricity?”
Her father’s response was to point to the electrical wiring in their house. He then proceeded to describe how the lines from the power plant spread over the neighborhood. Edna listened with interest but continued to be dissatisfied. As far as she was concerned that did not explain what electricity was about. Myrna understood: they had to dig deeper. And that’s how Edna was introduced to the beginnings of atomic theory.
Myrna’s astonished reaction was that their investigation into what constitutes electricity was: “Amazing. Really exciting! I had no idea that atomic theory could be interesting and what all it would explain about our world. Surely I must have learned some of this in school. But I remember none of it, except that it was a horrendous bore. How could schooling make something so fascinating so boring?!”
Some time later Myrna elaborated on the exhilarating dinner conversations that had become a part of their lives. And then she declared: “The schools are missing this sort of dialogue. You know, most of the teachers at Edna’s school have no idea how interesting their jobs could be. I remember from my own school days there was one teacher who understood. Of all things, she taught poetry. And to this day I love poetry and read it on my own. Thanks to that teacher. That teacher understood what Ralph and I found out in homeschooling Edna. It’s not just Edna who has enjoyed learning so much. But we, her parents have learned even more. I never thought that in many ways we would be even bigger beneficiaries than Edna. It’s been a marvelous intellectual feast all around – for all of us.”
Copyright © 2007 by Renée Fuller
About the author:
Dr. Fuller received her M.A. in experimental psychology from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in 1963 in physiological psychology from New York University.
In addition to developing the Ball-Stick-Bird reading system, and the story-as-the-engram theory of cognitive organization, Dr. Fuller has published widely in the field of clinical physiological psychology. At present she is continuing her work in developing learning programs and writing books and articles about how children learn. She is consultant to numerous school systems, universities, and departments of education, as well as to homeschoolers.
Visit her web site:
http://www.ballstickbird.com.
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