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By Edina Meiners.
When I was very young, everything interested me: learning to walk, to talk, to swing, and even learning to read. I would practice for hours just like every small child. Then I turned 5 and my love of learning was slowly taken away.
Going into kindergarten I was a happy-go-lucky kid who looked at everything with interest and eagerness. Learning was part of play. In kindergarten I had a playtime and two recesses, starting in first grade I had one long recess, by fourth grade it had gotten shorter, and in junior high I had none. My love of learning dwindled to nothing just as my recesses did.
I now see that traditional schools are very tricky: they take your freedom and interest away so slowly you don't notice them being slipped from your grasp. They slowly made all of my time and energy theirs. The worst part about it was that I almost gave up the fight. I went to classroom after classroom, just as cattle are led to pasture. I didn't care anymore and did most of my work half-heartedly. At the beginning of ninth grade I became sickly. It was at that point that I knew I had to get out of there. I talked to my mom about unschooling, but she said no, I didn't have enough natural curiosity. (I wonder why!) I came to The New School instead. It has been the best thing that has happened to me in a long time.
When I first started at The New School, I became bored easily. I wasn't used to being respected enough to be allowed to think for myself, and I had forgotten what interested me. It took two months of doing nothing to relearn the skills I was born with, to relearn the joy of learning. When I did, I looked at everything in a new light, and I found what really interested me.
I am now studying solar energy with Tom Lampros, a researcher at the University of Delaware who has given me many great resources which I am slowly but surely working through. I am studying permaculture independently and Junior Achievement at Newark High School. Here at school I have classes in grammar and writing, SAT Prep, and very soon I will be starting Chemistry and Algebra II. By organizing these for myself, I am learning responsibility and independence in real circumstances instead of through the artificial consequences traditional schools create by using grades, detention, suspension, etc.
There are so many other things I want to do, I find I don't have enough time to get through them in one day. The best part about it is there is absolutely no reason for me to try to do it all in one day. At The New School, I do what comes naturally in my learning. If I don't feel like studying one day, I don't, because I know that if I am tired or if I have already worked extensively on something all day for a few days, I won't understand it nearly as well as I could after a break. It also works the other way. Over the Thanksgiving Break, I studied solar energy and permaculture constantly. I studied, not because I was required to, but because I wanted to.
When I see my old friends who are still in traditional schools, I no longer worry about saying I like to learn. They are amazed at the very thought. To them it's still unthinkable to want to learn outside the school building or beyond the school day. It will stay that way for them until long after they graduate. But for me, The New School has taken learning away from just the time and place called school and has put it everywhere!
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