Teachable Moments

Everyone knows about teachable moments--the times when a kid is curious about something and you are there to teach to it right when it happens.

There are teachable moments in school, too, but think about having 30 students. One kid's teachable moment mostly passes by without anyone having the time or attention to be able to teach to it. The times when all 30 kids are curious about the same thing happen, too, but they are rarer. There are time pressures, too. You might have a teachable moment 2 seconds before it's time to leave for music and that's that.

Parents have teachable moments more often. When you take a kid out of your sphere of influence for 40 hours a week, though, you are passing by a lot of teachable moments.

A few weeks ago Mi'ita and I went to the state capital building as a field trip. I had arranged for a guided tour, but our guide had car problems and we ended up with a "self guided tour" pamphlet. We wandered around, looked at pictures of our governors, saw the empty senate chamber, looked at the empty office of our local rep, ate pancakes at their cafe, bought a doodad at the gift shop and drove away. It wasn't really much of an experience.

On the drive home, though, we had a two hour long teachable moment about government. We talked about how it all works, of course. Mi'ita was not so interested and said that she didn't care for politics much. I don't either, I said, but when you don't participate you hand over the reins to people who do care enough to participate. We talked about gay marriage, mostly, because it is a current issue that we both care about. Both of us have gay and lesbian friends, or friends whose parents are gay or lesbian. We talked a long time about civil rights, what the right to get married means legally, the protections afforded to families that are denied to gay and lesbian families, etc.

During the drive home I thought about how this was a great teachable moment. It probably would have happened eventually if Mi'ita was in school because I've been meaning to take her to the capital anyway.

The thing is, this happens several times a day now. When Mi'ita was in school, we might have a teachable moment once a week.

I think this is why unschooling works.