What things make life richer?

How then should we live?

I remember reading that title of a book a lot as a kid. It had a prominent place in my parents collection of books in our basement where we used to play. It seemed mysterious because most books had a title that gave a definitive answer to some problem. This was one of the few books that just asked a good question. 

I've been finishing up my unit planning and it is really interesting how that actually has made me think a lot about what is actually of importance in life. I get to choose how my class will use hundreds and hundreds of hours of their time. I honestly really love school, especially university, but it wasn't always that way. I often thought school was fairly boring and there were huge amounts of time when there wasn't much to do. If I get to lead the class in what we will do, then the deeper question is what then shall we do? Of what types of activities have the kind of importance that they can depeen and enrich my students lives? On top of that, how can I make those types of activities relevant enough that my students will enjoy them, engage in them, and let down their guards enough so that they can have their life changed? In light of all this the question running through my head is now 

How then should I teach?

Lesson planning is at its center entirely philosophical. I find that I'm constantly challenging a lot of the assumptions that I grew up with about education, I'm challenging the assumptions about what I learned about education in University, and then I'm challenging my own conclusions! Haha, and then the worst of it is that when it comes down to actually teaching I generally just do exactly whatever my high schools teachers did with me. I'm slowly working on it, but a lot of the practices that they did were there for pretty good reasons. It reminds me of Chesterton talking about young radicals who want to tear down the old order and just set everything free. 

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

I laugh at my own enthusiasm to do away with all sorts of things that were a staple of education in the past. Some of the things like homework, and worksheets have been shown to have extremely little value until students are much older. Other things like sitting in rows, waiting until the class is silent and so on, I have found to be very helpful and I brought them back after thinking they were outdated as well. Another thing that many have tried to do away with is rote memory. We want students to just explore ideas and not worry so much about trying to memorize specific facts. However I think most of that thinking comes from people who have gotten so good at memorizing naturally that they forget it is a learned skill. 

I remember in grade 3 I was in the Sunday school class of a man named John Tyler. He was an engineer and a great guy. He had us write down in our bibles "what is not memorized, cannot be utilized". Haha, it is a very engineer type thing to say. But I remember reading that quote over and over again growing up. It was probably one of the reasons I joined bible quizzing in grade 7 and ended up memorizing whole books of the bible. Being able to memorize well helped me a lot with school and life in general. It is a lot easier to learn to play instruments when you can memorize the notes on a scale and on a fretboard. It is easier to pick up a new language when you know how to learn vocabulary. It prepared me for an interesting life. 

Now that I am a teacher I put that quote up on the back wall of our classroom. I try to make lots of time for my class to memorize the multiplication table, key points in history simply for them to have something to compare other dates to, we are going to start to memorize a couple shorter poems too. If they ask "what are we going to use this for?" I can give them a lifetime of examples of the cool different ways that memorization helped make my life easier and more full. I think out of all things people might want to get rid of in the education system it should be the last to go.