CogTools - Learning From Afar Is Not Far From Learning

Learning from afar is not far from learning:

Happy eighteenth birthday, Hotel-November.  I love you.  Trust in the Lord, you are smart and you press yourself and I know you will go far.

My journey as an adult learner has been particularly enriched by the blessing of having two daughters.  I have both a sophomore and senior in high school.  In addition to all the parental learning (and learning of myself and who I am,) over the last eighteen years I have had the wonderful experience of learning from and through my children as they explore and thrive in their learning experiences. 

From the time until my older daughter was eight and the younger was 5, they grew up as military brats.  While I detest that term, I use it only to denote that their experiences in their younger years were a mix of moves and up-rootings from schools along with the social and family stresses that come along with their sacrifices for military service.  We were able to send them to private school until they got older.  Regardless of how one may feel about private schools, we were able to appreciate two distinct benefits.  

First, their schools were private Christian schools which we feel provided a positive atmosphere of faith and caring in addition to learning. (Both their Mom and I were blessed to have attended private schools growing up and we wanted to provide the same for our kids, Mom = Lutheran, Dad = Catholic, but it’s all good. ;) ).  Secondly, private schools offer a more concentrated student to teacher ratio which can be very beneficial to depth of learning.  

Now they attend a large public high school and they both are both in primarily honors and A.P. classes with classes of limited size and (largely) limited to students of a similar level of intelligence.  Specifically, I mention this because they both are learning many concepts I have never learned.  The expectations of their projects and writing level rival the organization and depth required of my work at a junior college (and some undergrad work,) from twenty years ago.  The requirement of them to utilize technology and grow with their teachers in challenges to learn more is astounding.  The most significant point of all of my mentioning of this is that they are up to the task.  

Today’s children and youth are up to such a high level (through technological prowess and manipulation,) that in many ways they are begging to learn even more.  In the past, I had believed that one had to be soft when teaching youth, to take your foot off the accelerator from teaching them and let them relax from learning all the time.  While it is certainly important “for a kid to just be a kid sometimes,” I am finding that I reject my former perspective more and more each time I learn from my girls.