The Learn Nothing Day Headache

[Flo Gascon]

Learn Nothing Day was a fun day, right? We all get the joke and can laugh that we all failed at learning nothing. But it made my head hurt. Really.

Let me be clear: it was not the learning that was the problem. It was the awareness of it.

I was acutely aware of learning happening, all day long, in all of us. Reminded over and over again that we were learning. Then I decided to try to keep track of it all, you know so I could blog about it, of course. Bad idea. Keeping a running tally, then trying to recall that list was exhausting, especially since I was trying to simultaneously do all of the other things expected of me- make lunch, set up a game, read a book, pay the bills.

Imagine it: being reminded all the time oh, look what you just learned, and then this, too and look how well you learned it and isn't that great! Now tell me all about it. Tell me again but this time maybe from the third person perspective. Oh no, wait, tell me while standing on your head- let's see if you can do that! Oh, you just learned something again. You're awesome!

Oh my head hurt.

It made me wonder what it must be like for kids who are in school with exactly these conditions-

A) thrown information,
B) prodded to remember it,
C) reminded that they are "learning" and that's the reason they're there after all,
D) tested on it, which is just another reminder of what learning supposedly happened (or didn't),
E) praised for doing so well or trying so hard.

Reminded and quizzed by parents, teachers, strangers constantly. Good jobbed all the time. (Or better job next time.) What a sorry state in which to live.

So Learn Nothing Day made this very clear. I already knew that learning was readily available. Now I understand that there are side effects if not used as prescribed.

[Sandra Dodd]

Yep.

[Flo Gascon]

Yes, we had so much fun, too! I knew we were doomed before we even started.

I usually don't keep track of the day to blog about it. Since it was a special day I thought I'd post about the irony of it all. A lot of my blog readers are not unschoolers so it was a good opportunity to highlight the experiment and make a good point. I wasn't trying to find the source of any learning, I was just aware of it because we "weren't supposed to be doing it." ;)

So your example, Katherine, is exactly my point. Dissecting the doing can take away from its beauty and its power. I like your analogy to art.

[Katherine]

Oh I gave up before I started because I tried before we got to Learn Nothing Day. I just don't have the patience. If I blog it's mostly about stuff I'm thinking about and (not realizing that I'm) learning or it's pictures of things I want to talk about. Finding the source of the source of the learning, while not totally beyond a try, is something I don't do.

The good thing about art in college as a degree is that I wasn't fooled by professorial attempts to academize the art program. I had been in long enough to realize that art is doing and that the thought behind it (for me anyway) could be explained better in retrospect. We had art journals in a couple of classes. Mine had a whole lot of pictures with very few words because journaling art is not me. I did it for the course.

[Jane B]

he he he... maybe trying to keep track of it is what makes it so hard to remember it ...

[Ren]

Too funny! Some of my school baggage might have been good...I gave up.:) Knowing I couldn't go a day without learning meant I paid no attention to it and just had fun.