Games for learning or fun?

The subject of games and gaming has been in my thoughts and conversations often over the past few months. Which games benefit kids; which ones can 'make learning fun'?

When people first find unschooling, a common theme presented is that we learn through games or that unschooling is about finding ways to *make learning fun* .  I get that saying we have fun learning is to counter the idea that we spend our days forcing our kids to learn a curriculum around the kitchen table. I understand the appeal of games as learning tools to make the point that learning need not be drudgery, that even when it looks like all we do is play all day, learning really is happening.  Sometimes, it's tempting to make that argument to convince others -- extended family, in-laws, friends who kids attend school, neighbors, etc -- that we really are responsible parents.

Today I was part of a conversation about learning games; someone asked about 'fun games to help learn grammar'.  At first I groaned, because I'm a lover of words and a lifelong grammar geek.  Around our house, words are fun, whether we're making puns (Gary is the master of bad puns!) playing with double entendres, singing songs, or telling stories or bawdy jokes.  The very idea that one would need a game to make grammar fun is laughable!

I understand how people get confused about the topic, though.  Anyone who went to school got the idea that some particular subject was both essential and no fun to learn.  For me it was math.  Really, though, that makes learning much more complicated than it needs to be, and we risk sucking the fun out of playing games.  Games are designed to be fun. When learning happens to happen along the way to enjoying or becoming good at a game, that's a bonus.  I say when not if, because you will learn something, even if it's not about the actual game -- we're big story tellers while games are played and many own childhood memories, as well as my kids' current stories, are shared over games.

Learning as the purpose of a game? I think that's just plain dishonest.The idea of *games that teach (insert subject here)* has always bothered me. When we do that we're separating out certain parts of life into subject matter, and assuming that one or another is hard to learn, so it's necessary to *make it fun*.  We're saying that this particular subject is not only hard to learn, but it's no fun at all, so we need to invent a *game* to sneak some learning into our kids.  We're saying that we don't trust our child will embrace learning something new.  Usually, that's a sign that what we think our child needs to learn isn't truly necessary to his life.  After all, if you're enjoying the way you spend your days, and you hit a point where you need more knowledge to continue your enjoyment, why wouldn't you want to learn that?

Several years ago, when Andy was 8 and Dan 4, I bought a couple of Mad Libs books, before a road trip thinking it would make a fun ice-breaker for the cousins (my sister's kids were 12 & 7 then).

We were at my sister's when I asked if anyone wanted to play Mad Libs with me, because I LOVE Mad Libs. Andy asked, "what's Mad Libs?" Before I could answer, my sister said "it's a game that helps you learn parts of speech." Gee, thanks. I could feel the fun being sucked out of the room. And with it my kid's trust. It was no surprise to me when no one wanted to play Mad Libs.

It was several years before I found anyone who would play Mad Libs with me. Andy had no interest in playing a *game* created to teach him something. We are people who love words, and we're grammar geeks, so words are fun in every other part of our life, but he wasn't going to play that game.

About a year ago, Dan discovered the Mad Libs books, and his best friend's Mom also had some around, so the kids played those. Now we play Mad Libs every so often, and even Andy joins and has fun.  It makes me sad to think we missed 3 yrs of Mad Libs fun. Sadder, though, is that for some time after that day, Andy was suspicious of any new game I tried to introduce, worried that each one was just a pretext for some kind of learning I thought he needed.

Life is fun! It's also messy, complicated, easy, challenging, confusing, and brilliant, in so many ways. Along the way, while living a full life, we learn whatever we need to know to navigate the life we make. If grammar or math or chemistry or history is necessary, and a person finds it's not just absorbed without effort, then be honest about making the effort to learn what you need to know to have the life you want.

If something comes naturally, then just let it flow and along the way other necessary learning will follow, just like a big sticky ball of knowledge -- often wrapped up with exciting trivia from our full day-to-day lives. It's dishonest to construct or choose a game specifically to teach a child a particular skill that you or someone else think a child needs to know.  Be honest, be real, play games for the fun of it.

What About.....

College? Math? Science? Algebra? their future?

The longer we're at this unschooling life, and the older our boys are, the more I hear these questions. The questions come from extended family, or folks new to unschooling, and sometimes from those who choose to use a curriculum (or several) to homeschool their child because they wanted him or her to get more education, to be better prepared for "the real world"; essentially so their child can be ahead of the game.

Honestly, I've never understood the desire for a child to be 'ahead of the game', or the appeal of a child scoring above grade level in a test, for example, or having the best grades in his class.  Is there some kind of race no one told me about? Is there proof that the faster a person learns something, the better he'll be at it; that somehow knowing everything a year, or two, or several, before his peers will guarantee success in life? 

I've always thought it more likely that information crammed in at a faster rate is more likely to be forgotten at a faster rate.  That's absolutely how my brain works. Well, unless I'm learning something I consider valuable, something I can use today and tomorrow and the next day. When I'm learning something that matters to me and improves the quality of my actual life today -- not just the potential quality of my life in some far-off future day -- I can pick it up like wildfire and remember all I need to know. 

Learning something that might someday help me to be more successful -- to take on more work -- in a topic that really doesn't interest me? I can cram enough info into my head to answer enough questions to pass a test and get the piece of paper showing I learned the material. After all, I did manage to graduate high school, and I can assure you that what I learned in Algebra and Applied Chemistry was learned in just that fashion.  Do I remember enough of those subjects to pass a test today? No way!  I would look like a complete idiot on a high school Chem exam today.  That's because in my day-to-day life, the curriculum of that Chemistry class is useless.

People ask me "how do your children learn math?" (or science, or whatever subject it is they've been told is both essential and hard to learn -- usually something they themselves didn't take to quickly or well. Hence the fear.)  My first instinct is to ask them how much of that subject they use in daily life. If their grasp of that subject is good, then they don't need to worry their child won't learn it.  If their grasp of the subject isn't as good as they've been told it should be, it's likely because they don't need that subject in the depth schools attempt to teach. They've forgotten (or never really learned it) because it has no value in their life today.

Higher math isn't a big deal for many people in their everyday lives. And really, it's not even something we as parents worry about. Our boys can do all the math they need for day to day life. If and when they need to know more math, we're sure they will learn what they need. We will be there to help them find the right classes, the right books, to help with homework if they want our help. Most importantly, we give them our confidence and trust that they can learn whatever it is they need to know.  Our reason for that confidence is that, so far, we've all managed to learn whatever we need to know to have the life we want; so far they've learned all they need to know (and along the way, their learning has taught us a lot, too!)

People spend our whole life learning new things; at least we should expect to learn new things for most of our lives. So why all the rush to have children learn everything they'll ever need in the space of 18 or 24 years? Does a child walk any better because he learned at 9 months instead of 17 months? Does someone read better as an adult if he learned to read at 4 than if he learned to read at 8 or 12?  Does a person become good at math only if he started learning math at all the 'right' points in childhood? Does someone become a good writer of great novels only if he learned to write well in high school, or college?

For me, the real core of unschooling is trusting, coming to know in your bones, that you, your child --- that people everywhere -- don't need to know everything, and we certainly don't need to learn those things on the same schedule.  What we do need is the confidence that we can learn whatever we need, to handle whatever life throws our way.  Our children need the confidence that they can learn anything they need to learn, when that learning will support the life they want.

So often, people have this idea that somehow all these subjects taught in school, often the same subjects we struggled with ourselves, must be *important* and our children must learn them now, or at least on the same schedule as all the other children.  Many people have the idea that homeschooling should make children better educated, that they should be better prepared for college, academically advanced. I think, too, that we risk making our child's educational success very important in validating the choices we make, and whether or not we're good parents.

It's not that it's less important to me that our kids be successful, just that I define success differently. I also have different ideas about what kind of education is important for a person to have. I define success as happy and capable, strong and confident.  I think lifelong learning is more important than completing an education. 

I'm not raising my children to win the race for learning in 25 years so they can spend the next 50 years resting on their laurels. I am instead supporting, enjoying and instilling confidence in them that they can learn whatever, succeed at whatever they love, do whatever makes them happy and whole, no matter what life throws their way.