The Significance of Stories

“Are you crying, Mom?” Jane looked up from her book.

“What is it?” Elsie came back into the kitchen.

Benjamin, 3, walked over to me, quite concerned, and began rubbing the tears off my cheek (or, rather, smearing them all over my cheek) with a little fist. “Why are you trying, Mom?”

The kids and I were all sitting around the breakfast table a few days ago, reading to ourselves while sipping smoothies, when I started sobbing.

Okay, I’ll be honest with you—this isn’t an unusual occurrence; tell me a touching story and I’m a tear factory. But this time my sobs were a little more vehement and out-of-the-blue.  I decided to read the article out loud to the kids from the beginning, tapping into a fresh spring of tears.

The author was recalling the time when his 9-month-old son died from choking on a piece of chalk he found on the floor and the feelings of guilt, pain and anger that ensued. As I read, I experienced the same emotions he was describing, as if I had lost one of my own children. Yet the message was uplifting overall because the father found meaning and hope in his son’s death.

I then told them the story of how my grandmother’s 3-year-old brother Johnnie passed away in his mother’s arms, struggling for his last breath with his arms wrapped tightly around her neck. He had an open valve in his heart, a problem we can fix quite easily surgically today, and we had a tangential discussion about the anatomy and physiology of the human heart. My mother overheard me telling this story to rapt ears, and came out to help fill in the details.

“Great Grandma G. was 16 and dating your Great Grandpa at the time,” she added, “She cried in his arms on his porch swing when Johnnie died.”

Our days are teeming with stories, read silently and told aloud; poetry, prose and anecdotes; stories of ancestors, scientists, artists, mathematicians, leaders, and good men and women; fiction and non-fiction. Our own personal experiences are stories as well. Real Learning happens through stories because they ignite passion within a person, and inspire change.

Throughout history, principles, ideas, and family history were taught through stories—by an elder member of a tribe, or a travelling bard, for example.  Jesus Christ taught through parables. Even marketing gurus and Hollywood understand and use the principle of storytelling to communicate an idea, persuade or evoke change in a person.

So why doesn’t conventional education use or acknowledge this?

When information is divorced from its story, it loses its significance and emotion, and is therefore easy to forget. Even worse, it can stifle a person’s desire to learn. Learning becomes synonymous with boring.

Start telling stories and you’ll breathe life back into learning.

Johnnie, age 2.5, front left

The Jam

I was turning hot and bubbly sourdough pancakes onto a plate for breakfast one recent Saturday morning, when Lydia remembered The Jam. Not just any jam, mind you. The Jam. The Jam we made from the strawberries we picked this past June. She ran down to the basement freezer and came back with a glass mason jar, glistening with a thin layer of frost. We made The Jam with very little honey, so spread on layers of it thicker than the pancake itself.

Interestingly, we never ate jam prior to this past June. Yet somehow I found myself driving on a country road, between the crankiness of right-after-nap time and dinner time, to spend an hour paying to be a migrant worker.  Surely this is not cheaper or more efficient than purchasing jam at the store, I thought, but it must be healthier. Oh, wait, I forgot–we don’t even eat jam!

“It’s for the children, Angel [exhale]…it’s for the children.”

When we got home it was a race to make the jam and pour it into jars before they rotted in their cardboard boxes. Another hour or so passed before we were finally licking spoons and placing jars in the freezer with satisfaction and pride.

Five months later, as we were enjoying another newly opened jar of our homemade jam, Lydia said, “Every time I eat this jam I think of the day we picked the berries and made it ourselves. I love it. Let’s do it again next year.”

Was it worth it?

Every single minute and penny.

Some things are more important than efficiency:  creating something with your own two hands, experiencing the magic of nature, understanding history and how the world works, and working and experiencing life together as a family. Do you have to make jam to do this? Of course not.

Slow down to enjoy the journey and you’ll discover that you’ve already arrived at the place everyone else is rushing to get to.

The Role of Art

At worst, the arts are labeled as frivolous. At best, the arts are valued only in their magical ability to increase standardized test scores.

I’d like to make a crazy manifesto: that the arts are the PINNACLE of human existence, the ultimate in creative human expression; that artistic creation manifests itself in all fields, including mathematics (perhaps especially in mathematics), and is the highest form of expression in all fields. The arts articulate abstract ideas and feelings more concisely and powerfully than any other means of communication. And it is the ability to communicate clearly, wisely and powerfully that deepens and strengthens relationships, which is our greatest joy as humans on this earth.

Here’s an even crazier manifesto: Standardized test scores are not the pinnacle of human existence. Or childhood. They are not a valid measure of intelligence or ability and they do not predict a happy, healthy adulthood. In fact, the only thing standardized test scores are able to predict is…future standardized test scores. (And the only thing GPA measures validly and accurately is how well a child conforms to authority.) Yet here we all are sacrificing the arts–sacrificing childhood itself–at the altar of the Gods of Standardized Tests, who might as well be the Great and Powerful Oz.

I have chosen to make the arts the FOUNDATION of our family’s education by immersing ourselves in them—first to enjoy and understand, then to develop our own ability to express ideas.

To hell with the test scores.

Marie’s Take on Genius

Marie Curie

Marie Curie understood that everyone has a Life Mission, fulfilled through the development of his or her own unique genius:

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”

The “something“: Our Life Mission, our unique role in changing the world for good.

The “gifts“: Our passions, talents, and knowledge that will contribute to and form the basis of our Life Mission, if we choose to develop them.

“At whatever cost”: No matter what other people think; giving up less important things.

“Must be attained”: Total obsession (think 13-yr-old girl with a crush).

“We“: meaning everyone; Marie doesn’t consider herself above the rest of us.

This is a Real Education: Discovering your Life Mission;

Marie Curie in her lab

developing the talents, skills and knowledge you need to fulfill your Life Mission; then, when the time is right, unleashing it to the world.*

 

*The philosophy of Life Mission and Real Education are from Oliver DeMille of A Thomas Jefferson Education

The Genius Turk

When my girls, 7 and 10, and I were learning about computers last year, I was surprised to discover that the first known computer was built in 1770–an automaton known as the Mechanical Turk. The Turk won almost every game of chess it played against a human being, and riveted audiences for 50 years. An automaton that could think was beyond their imagination, and this one was brilliant. The proof was right before their eyes.

In 1820, the Turk’s secret was revealed: there was an ordinary human being inside the box, underneath the chess board, controlling the Turk’s movements.

The Secret of the Mechanical Turk

Today we have Genius Turks: brilliant and creative people who are seen as superhuman, unlike the rest of us.

We can expose the secret to our children, and ourselves, by reading biographies–they reveal the normal  human being behind the enigma, working hard to feed an obsession.

Biographies are a necessary tool in our family’s survival pack as we navigate our own paths through the jungle of Real Learning. They are the map that shows us the way.

Nourishing Genius

“Don’t look at the sun or you’ll go blind!” I can still hear my mother’s voice echoing in my mind every time my eyes get within 10 degrees of the sun. Little did I know this was all thanks to Isaac Newton.

When Newton was a young man, he performed one of his lesser-known experiments. Notebook at the ready, he stepped outside and looked directly at the sun to find out how long he could stare at it and what would happen.

Much to his surprise, he was rendered completely blind for 2 days.

When he regained his sight, he recorded the groundbreaking results in his notebook:

“No one should ever look directly at the sun.”

My daughter and I giggled about this for days.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” she said with a grin, “but were they really that…stupid back then?”

This seems so commonsense to those of us in the 21^st century. But in Newton’s day, people didn’t even understand the nature of light. The conventional wisdom was that objects gave off their own light, as opposed to reflecting the sun’s light. This experiment challenged those beliefs, and raised new questions, leading to further hypotheses and experiments.

The “intelligence is genetic” myth commandeered the American mind in the beginning of the 20^th century, sparked by Darwin a generation earlier. It was packaged as “scientifically proven” when the IQ test was invented in Germany as part of the eugenics movement.¹ The test was quickly adopted in the US, where it was used in schools to keep the social classes separate (and in their place), and poor test results were deemed legal grounds for forced sterilization. Thousands of poor, blind, deaf, and mentally ill people were successfully sterilized, often without their knowledge, right here in the United States of America.²

Although forced sterilization is now illegal, many of us still define genius as a genetic intellectual capacity; the only alternative to the belief that “You can do anything you put your mind to!” which is also a myth.³

I’m advocating for a new definition of genius; one that acknowledges that genius may manifest itself in an infinite number of ways; that it starts out as a tiny seed inside each human being born into this world. If this seed finds fertile soil, and receives adequate sunshine and water, it will grow, of its own accord. Our job is not to force the seed to grow, but to discover what kind of seed it is and provide the right kind of environment for it. Blueberries prefer acidic soil, peas need a trellis, and tomatoes need extra calcium.  When the environment meets the needs of the individual genius, it will produce fruit (or shade or beauty) to give to the world. Each of us has a unique mission in life that will change the world if we choose to nourish that seed of genius in ourselves and our children.

The seed can be planted at any time; it’s never too late.

I choose now.