After the pizza party

When I was growing up, I could earn a certificate for a free personal pan pizza for reading a certain number of books. So I would read because it meant an afternoon at the local Pizza Hut with my friends.

You, too?

I wonder: did you keep reading after the pizza party was over?

I didn’t. When I aged out of the program, I stopped reading in my free time.

When the jam to disguise the medicine was gone, what got me opening books again? One good book after the next: The Story of My Life, Robinson Crusoe, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Treasures in the Snow, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Yearling, Treasure Island, and  Fahrenheit 451 are just a handful of what I have read here and delighted in at Ambleside
This begs the question: how do we really view children? 

Judging by mainstream America’s standards of education, one would assume children are not curious, uninterested in learning, and incapable of working without some external reward to incentivize them.

Do we think they view knowledge as detestable? That we have to invent gimmicks, do songs and dances, and give prizes to “disguise the medicine?” 

Or do we think they find knowledge delectable? That educating them is as simple as placing before them something that is worthy of their attention? 

Without sitting down and thinking through these questions, we as educators carry out our methods from one of these two camps, whether we know it or not.

A quick glance around any school or classroom would give you the evidence you need to see how that school or teacher views children. A classroom with sticker charts and regular pizza parties on the calendar may be trying to make learning fun because they think students would not want to learn otherwise. 

But when schools view children as hungry for knowledge, they leave off the gimmicks and prizes, and focus on the texts and tasks they are putting before them. A well-chosen text and a worthy task are consumed hungrily. The teacher’s role is not entertaining with song and dance but with equipping the students to successfully tackle the questions and ideas presented.

Children are capable of so much more than we know, and that’s the premise upon which Charlotte Mason built her educational practices. They don’t need cajoling or arm-twisting to appreciate a good book or a quality work of art. They sit quietly and listen to a classical composer’s symphony and make intelligent observations afterward. They give their attention to a forest of pines because it is lovely, not because there’s a popsicle waiting for them at the end of their walk.

Our aim at Ambleside School is for children to keep reading after their time with us is completed—not just at the end of the day but also at the end of their schooling. Pizza is great, but it is temporary. A good book, a beautiful painting, or a touching piece of music can stay with us forever.

“Therefore, the selection of their first lesson-books is a matter of grave importance, because it rests with these to give children the idea that knowledge is supremely attractive and that reading is delightful.”

― Charlotte M. Mason

For the children’s sake,

Krise Nowak, Ed.D