[dropcap]I[/dropcap]’ve been thinking about the idea that learning is best accomplished when education is entertaining. In my post on Herbartian unit studies, I said that entertainment is not the same thing as learning. I can see how this could be interpreted to mean that I think learning must be dull and lifeless.
Or something.
So let’s discuss this a bit, shall we?
It will help if we define our terms, because there is a very good chance that I have a very specific definition of entertainment while others might have a very broad one and that, in describing our terms more specifically, we will find that we have no disagreement after all.
Here is the pertinent entry in The Collins English Dictionary:
entertainment {ˌɛntəʳˈteɪnmənt}
— n
1. the act or art of entertaining or state of being entertained
2. an act, production, etc, that entertains; diversion; amusement
Dictionary.com says something similar:
en·ter·tain·ment /ˌɛntərˈteɪnmənt/
noun
1. the act of entertaining; agreeable occupation for the mind; diversion; amusement
Do you see the major difference between these two definitions? It’s the little phrase agreeable occupation for the mind. I think that might be where we get tripped up. If I say that entertainment is not the same thing as learning {and I do}, it might be assumed that I mean that learning is not an agreeable occupation for the mind. But that’s not what I mean.
The Onus is on Whom?
If I am trying to entertain you, I am trying to get your attention. I might use gimmicks. I might appeal to your passions in some way, which means that if I am your teacher I might bribe you with prizes and grades or scare you with punishments and penance. But teachers often use entertainment rather than other inducements — flashy pictures, videos, dramatic inflection, whatever it takes. We live in an entertainment driven culture and everything is vying for our attention, is it not?
So here’s my point. When I teach, I believe that what I’m teaching is actually interesting, all on its own. I don’t think I have to dress it up and make it look good. I don’t need to attract my students with some sort of magnetic personality. I don’t need to add a special project or offer a treat for paying attention. I myself am interested, so I suppose it could be said that I model it, but that is about the extent of it.
Additionally, it is the student’s job to direct his own mind, pay attention, and learn. In entertaining our students, we seek to catch their attention. It becomes our job, as the teacher, to earn it — or divert it — in some way. In the classical economy, though, ideas are a valuable treasure, and the student pays attention as the homage he owes to something that has great value.
When I am teaching something that I know is worth learning {and loving}, what happens when my students don’t respond? What happens when they don’t act very interested? I don’t mean practically here, because that would be another post entirely, but I mean in my head. As the teacher, what goes through my mind? That I must need to gussy this up a bit?
Another option is that we can assume there is something wrong with the student.
I mean that in the vaguest way possible because there are a variety of options. Among them are that the student is thinking about something else and so didn’t really catch whatever it was we were studying, or the student is hungry and also needs to go to the bathroom {been there, done that}, or the material was something the student was not yet ready for.
It is also possible that the student’s affections are out of order and he does not yet love something that is worth loving.
I teach Plutarch to 4th through 7th grade boys on every-other-Fridays. Last Friday, one of them announced at the end, “Well, that was boring.” I think his mother was horrified, but I wasn’t offended. In fact, I was trying very hard not to laugh. We are all born not loving things we ought to love (and also loving things we ought not love) and the task of education is to learn to love rightly (thank you, C.S. Lewis) and, frankly, if we teach, we must also learn to put up with students not loving as they ought because if they already did, they wouldn’t require teaching in the first place.
Does Entertainment Increase the Love?
The logical question, then, is what sort of impact entertainment has on love. Does it encourage children to love rightly?
I would say that it doesn’t, and this, my fellow afterthinkers, is why I say that entertainment and learning are not the same thing. I don’t want my children to learn to love a sideshow. I want them to love the real thing. This is a hard fought battle, I know, and it isn’t always easily done, but I truly believe this is the goal.
In his opening talk for the 2010 Society for Classical Learning Conference, Ken Myers tells a fascinating story about a man who was running for public office. He took his young son to visit various churches in his precincts in order to learn about his constituency. When they entered a church with a band and lights — where everything was very entertaining, like a show — his son adored it. He wanted to go there every Sunday.
On another Sunday, they went to a church that was very solemn and quiet. There were no bells and whistles. This time the little boy whispered to his father, “I think God must live here.”
Myers makes the joking observation that perhaps the boy’s affections had not yet been trained to love rightly, that he had not yet learned to want to be where God lived, every Sunday. And of course the audience laughed.
But isn’t there a bit of truth in this? The entertaining church appealed to his flesh — it was stimulating to his senses, delighting the eye. The church where God lived needed no adornment, but it did require maturity to love it.
And that’s the point.
Mature Love
Lately, I see some signs of maturing love. I see a seven-year-old who, last year, thought she hated school (because she would rather be outside) getting her books out with joy (ALMOST) every single morning. I see a ten-year-old who, last year, really, really wanted to shirk the work involved in Latin, and now says he hopes to learn Greek and Spanish, too, please. I see a five-year-old falling in love with geography; she’s getting there.
I also see a four-year-old who loves his trains more than his Bible. (We are all born disordered, you see!)
These are little fruits along a path that I believe is headed in the right direction. The direction is one of learning to love things for their own sake, rather than requiring bells and whistles to pay attention.
I believe in a learning based upon love rather than entertainment. This love really will result in joy, and there really will be laughter. It just happens differently, and also spontaneously.
The Dividing Line
What all of this come down to, really, is how we define education. If we define education as acquiring a certain number of facts and skills, then education can be accomplished using entertainment. I can sing a song that teaches you your math facts or whatever (that is not meant to be a slam on using songs, by the way). But if education is learning to contemplate ideas, to have the ability to identify which are good ones and which are bad ones, to have the wisdom and desire to throw out the bad and cherish the good — to learn to love and desire the house where God lives — then and only then do I question the place of entertainment in education.
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