The Power of Interest Based Learning Part 1

When a student is driven to learn by the natural passion underlying an interest area amazing learning occurs. This is universal wisdom. Kids know it. Educators know it. And parents know it.

Yet, as a culture we struggle with reconciling this wisdom with our belief that there is a predetermined path of content knowledge and skills each student needs to be considered "educated," or "meeting standardized requirements."

During the first five years of life, we rarely ruminate whether it's okay for children to spend their time engaged in personal interest areas. Somehow, we just know that young children will only engage in activities they find interesting. We pay quite a price when we try to force fit uninteresting activities into their little lives. We discover that they just won't pay attention to what we want them to. In the end, we accept this because they are just "little kids", and they're supposed to be this way.

Then, traditional school starts and everything changes. The emphasis shifts to a predetermined curriculum, leaving little or no time for interests. Overnight, we go from accepting that it is natural for children to grow and develop while immersed in what interests them, to expecting them to become fully engaged in what we've decided they must learn. Before long, the consequences of this rapid shift in our expectations starts showing up in our children: attention issues, ADHD, students with reading and writing problems, math failure, social anxiety, behavior problems and the list goes on and on. Our response? We look at the children and ask, "What is wrong with them?" Instead, perhaps we should look at ourselves and ask, "What is wrong with us?"

More times than I can count, I've had a parent say to me, "My child does fine in school as long as they're studying something they are interested in! " Or "My student reads fine as long as it's a book he has picked himself. "

A couple of scenarios at Brock's Academy illustrate this point further:

We're working with a boy who just can't sit still at school and isn't meeting grade level reading expectations as a 1st grader. His teacher has indicated she's concerned about his "distractibility." This is code for "I think your child may have ADHD. Go do something about it." This same young man shows no signs of "distractibility" at home and he is so passionate about reptiles that he reads and researches about them, so much so, that he's developing into a full-blown reptile expert.

Another 4th grader was struggling with the classical 4th grade curriculum, hated the homework, and just wasn't having any fun at all as a 4th grader. He had been identified with a learning disability in reading. Yet at home, his bedroom had been transformed into a museum about the history of the railroad business. It included an extensive library of railroad books he'd read, and yards of tracks built around his room. Over the years he'd become an expert, historian and collector on all things railroad. Of course, there were no signs of reading problems in his interest area.

Dr. Melodee Loshbaugh

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