I think as humans, we naturally love to learn. I see it in my children all the time.
Yet, as a teacher, I’m surrounded by kids who don’t want to learn.
How would you get a kid to dislike learning?
Force them to learn something they find useless, and do that enough times.
I would condition them Clockwork Orange style, by mixing learning with lots of unpleasant things.
For example, I would restrict bathroom breaks and meal time and insist on unnecessarily early hours to cause sleep deprivation.
I would also make learning as hard as possible, focusing more time and effort on things the children find too challenging.
Did I take the bait?
What bait?
Teach him/her (through words and action) that geeks (learners, thinkers, readers, four-eyes, etc.) are sissies that no one respects and everyone beats up.
Can’t you be a learner, thinker, and a reader without being a sissy geek that nobody respects and everybody beats up?
The original post read to me like an invitation to characterize state schools. Mission accomplished!
I see.
Yes, but you underplay that possibility if your goal is to make the kid dis-like learning, as requested in the OP.
Learning what?
If we are talking about what I’d call “formal education” (Formal sciences, Physical sciences, Life sciences, Social and Behavioural sciences and Applied sciences) I don’t think there’s a way to make people like all of them.
I do like the idea of classical education: a good teacher, some expository tools, interested students and rigorous testings. If that bores some people to the point that they don’t want to study anything, they can always go mow a lawn or some other thing that doesn’t require formal knowledge
As stated by the troll above, by associating learning with unpleasantness. I agree, people are naturally curious and eager to learn. By forcing learning on them you associate negative things with learning rather than positive. By telling them to finish their homework before they can play you are associating restriction from play with learning. Repeat this pattern enough and you build a hatred for learning.
“As stated by the troll above, by associating learning with unpleasantness. I agree, people are naturally curious and eager to learn. By forcing learning on them you associate negative things with learning rather than positive. By telling them to finish their homework before they can play you are associating restriction from play with learning. Repeat this pattern enough and you build a hatred for learning.”
Oops, didn’t mean to be a troll. I actually agree that state schools function as propaganda centers, with lessons in obedience and our civic religion eclipsing any lessons in utility.
Yeah, I get it now.
Troll? Why are you calling me that? I think that what I said is pertinent and actually adds to the discussion.
Playing brings a set of benefits and doing the homework brings a different one. It’s up to you to choose. If you think that’s possible to understand bank credit by playing monopoly rather than studying carefully and rigorously Huerta de Soto’s Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, that’s ok by me, but don’t complain when you get less knowledge than I.
Honestly, the idea of someone wanting to study in depth , for example, Rothbard’s MESwPaM through music, youtube videos, jokes, or some other non-classical method sounds like a preposterous joke by me. I’m not dismissing the power of some of these tools to spread knowledge, but in depth knowledge can only be acquired by sitting down, reading/listening to something carefully, taking notes and checking if you got the facts correctly.
Most public schools should do the job.
Sure. I was smarter than any other kid in my high school, and also managed to be pretty damn fine and get laid a lot. But everything’s a trade-off. If you spend more time reading, that’s less time to spend having a social life. If you spend more time philosophizing, that’s less time to spend prettying up. The key is to just be naturally slim and attractive – then you can devote all your free time to being a geek, and get a date whenever you want.
maybe you teach an uninteresting subject
I like the classical model, too, but I am not sure how appropriate it really is for learning to do most jobs. It’s more a humanities and possibly technical school, but for money making education I think that a twelve year old will learn a lot more working in a saw mill than he will reading about management.
The classical model is also highly dependent on having good teachers who can actually discuss (not parrot or prosthelytize), which is not exactly a common thing.
@OP
Send child to public education.
That wasn’t directed at you, it was directed in jest at another poster regarding his comment of “taking the bait”. It seems the humor didn’t come across.
After many years of not being forced to learn anything I have finally rekindled my natural curiosity. Now I study in depth on a wide array of topics ranging from physics to biology to economics. This natural curiosity for these topics was taken from me during my public education and I can say from personal experience that it is possible to desire education for curiosities sake alone.
Giving a point to studying also helps a lot. Learning to do multiplication for the sake of doing multiplication seems pointless to a child. However, if they are naturaly curious about some other topic that requires multiplication to understand they will be more likely to want to learn how to multiply. If I want to run a lemonade stand to make some extra money to spend on video games I need to be able to add/subtract with relative ease. This gives me a reason to study arithmatic. In school though we are often just told, “you’ll need this one day” without any real explanation of when. Often we really don’t need those skills one day which just exasperates the problem. I learned calculus in college and even as a software engineer (a field that originated in mathematics) I never use anything more than basic algebra. History facts: I haven’t used a single one of the dates I had to memorize.