Green Fruit

Picking fruit before it's ripe yields a hard, sour harvest. The fruit needs more life-giving sunshine and gentle rain, but is cut off before it's time. Harvesting fruit too soon prevents it from becoming the sweet, juicy morsel it might have been.

That happens with children quite often today. We have what I term "galloping curriculums" that present large amounts of material at high conceptual levels very fast. There's little class time for extra practice or even for the enjoyment of newly learned skills. Waiting for the readiness of the students before moving on is an option that few teachers have these days. Even very young children have to pass periodic tests, so teachers feel pressured to present all the lessons that will be tested. Occasionally a teacher will wonder aloud why children have to know so much before they leave elementary school.

There seems to be little that parents, teachers, or even administrators can do about galloping curriculums. Elementary schools have to prepare students to succeed on entrance tests for high school and then college. Fast presentation of material appears to be a characteristic of modern education that not even homeschoolers entirely escape.

Moving on to learning at a higher level before the student has fully integrated learning at a lower level is like picking unripe fruit. The harvest is hard and sour. The unready student feels discouraged and may rebel by refusing work. The child who keeps trying, on the other hand, resorts to rote memorization without understanding, or, even worse, to random guessing. Overloaded children, like computers with overloaded RAM chips, slow down more and more until they finally freeze and need educational repair.

Fortunately there is much that can be done to counter this sad state of affairs. Parents, grandparents, older brothers and sisters, assistant teachers, and tutors can provide extra teaching and practice so that the fruit is mature and ready before harvest time. They are often able to track assignments and test times by accessing teachers' websites. CD's that accompany textbooks are increasingly available. The Internet puts information on every conceivable topic at our fingertips. The textbooks themselves have beautiful pictures and diagrams that contain much of the information in the chapters. Educational toys, videos, and computer games abound. Of course, all of these resources have to be presented and supervised. That takes time and effort.

The luscious fruit of true learning makes the time and effort worthwhile. Recently, I met with a student who thought she couldn't understand place value to the billions. She had become overloaded, tried to memorize and guess, then finally froze up. With her mouth turned down and tears in her eyes she slowly began to respond to my teaching. When we got to the hard place that had always blocked her, she panicked briefly. To see her catch on that day was a memorable experience. She smiled and worked faster and faster. I kept on giving her harder and harder problems until I couldn't make them any harder. By this time she was smiling broadly. When I saw her the next week I asked her about place value. She grinned, and I knew she'll never have another problem with place value.

The challenges of modern education needn't produce hard, sour fruit. We can use our modern resources, put some of ourselves into it, and reap sweet, luscious rewards for a lifetime.

Mary Sue Laing, M.Ed.
Resource Teacher, St. Ambrose School
newskill7@msn.com

by Mary Sue Laing, M. Ed., New Skill, Inc. Academic Tutor