After volunteering about ten hours so far, I’ve started thinking about various aspects of childhood education the Discovery Center addresses. In addition, I’ve been looking for connections related to my research topic of relating the culture of learning to our culture of teaching. I’ve found numerous examples of children engaged in an exhibit demonstrating learning through trial and error: that didn’t work, maybe if I do this? I’ve seen parents take on the role of teacher by reading the posted signs and explaining the complicated subject matter to their children. I’ve also seen very bored and inattentive parents “enduring” their visit. All of this in an environment that is literally filled with tools for education; it would seem an incredible waste to squander that time, however natural curiosity sometimes wins out prompting exploration of exhibits almost entirely unsupervised (I’m about fifteen feet away).
It seems that the end result of a child’s dedication to learning is dependant partially on the dedication shown by the adults in that child’s life. It would be possible to draw a link between the desire to learn and explore and the examples from the authoritative influences in a child’s life: parents, teachers and immediate family. The sum interest in self education, I believe, is the combination demonstrated by these different elements.
As much as we would like to isolate a single cause for behavior, or a single person to blame for problems, the adage that is takes a village to raise a child still holds weight. Any adult who is present in a child’s life, no matter how minor a role, has influence, sometimes quite profound, over the end result.
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