The Right to Learn

It was one of those days when that challenging student decided to act up. I stopped the class and addressed his misdemeanour, determined to win the power struggle. I prolonged the agony, giving him an earful, and sending the message that I could do this all day.

With each minute of admonishment, I could see his brain melting behind his eyes. While I was winning the battle of attrition with this one student, I noticed that the rest of the class was either enjoying the show sans popcorn, tuned out or just annoyed.

Can’t See the Forest for the Trees

I was a younger teacher then, but I realised two things that day.

Firstly, there’s a very finite window of time to teach. The second and most valuable ah-ha moment came when I asked one of my students why she looked visibly annoyed. She responded that that boy had wasted all their time when they could be learning something.

On the contrary, I realised that I was the one that had wasted their time. By focusing on correcting that one errant student’s behaviour in class, I had robbed the rest of my students of the opportunity to be enriched with learning. I found it ironic that, as a teacher whose job and passion is to help children to learn, I never considered this truth before – some children actually want to learn.

Learning is Fun

I listen to and watch quite a bit of Neil Degrasse Tyson and Malcolm Gladwell. When I listen to Dr Tyson talk about the universe, I can’t help but feel that knowledge is pretty cool. In fact, it’s downright sexy. Watch a couple of his videos and you’ll see what I mean. Malcolm Gladwell has an incredible talent for putting a spin on conventions that we take for granted. I highly recommend his videos on ‘spaghetti sauce’ and ‘David and Goliath’. For both of these men, there are no fancy visuals or gimmick in their presentations, but I am thoroughly engaged nonetheless.

More importantly, I become smarter, wiser, and look at the world with new eyes. I grow as a person. I don’t think it is unimaginable for children to also desire this.

I find that learning, and by extension the whole school experience, is often viewed as work. It’s thought of as difficult, unpleasant and energy sapping. In almost every context I can think of, learning seems to be a chore; something that is a necessary evil to better oneself.

I would argue it doesn’t have to be that way, both for learning and for work. I believe that learning can be fun, and I don’t mean by repackaging it as play or delivered using IT. I believe that learning itself is its own reward. I’d liken it more to a runner’s high; or putting in that final piece of the jigsaw puzzle; or for those who work out at the gym, looking in the mirror to appreciate your ‘gains’.

Symbiotic Expectations

These revelations have changed my pedagogy. I, as the teacher, am not the only one who has expectations. It goes both ways. The students also have expectations of me, as well as of my lessons.

This motivates me to deliver lessons that engage and enrich. I want all my students to walk out of my classrooms smarter, wiser and looking at the world with new eyes. I want to fill them with more than exam strategies and answer keys, but with a hunger to absorb, parse, meaningfully reconnect and make sense of the world around them.

Given how freely accessible education in Singapore is, it is not enough that our children understand the need to learn; they should want to. In fact, they should demand to. Education is not just their privilege. It is their right.

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