How we are Wired To Learn!

I found this on a message board, but it is truly clarifying. I love it. I want to read it again to more fully understand it. I am intrigued by the human brain, and how it works.

Life doesn't come in boxes. Life is stuff all jumbled together. From
that chaos we focus on what we think is cool.

While it makes more sense that we should learn better by isolating
what we are interested in so we could focus on it exclusively, that
isn't how we're hard wired to learn. We're hard wired to learn in
context, to see how what we're interested in connects to other
things. To see other things we're interested in relate.

While it would make more sense if kids learned one word at a time,
that isn't how kids learn. They're immersed in language and get
excited when they recognize something familiar in the chaos. And that
familiar thing connects to other things around it which become
familiar. And then there are more familiar things to catch our
attention in the chaos.

We *want* to pull familiar from chaos. We want to create our *own*
order from the chaos. *That's* how we're hard wired to learn.

Learning from boxes is like following someone else's instructions on
which puzzle piece to put where into the jigsaw puzzle. It's someone
handing you the solution to and crossword puzzle for you to fill the
boxes in from.

We want and need to discover things on our own. We want and need to
make the connections for ourselves.

Children need to feel safe and secure. They need to feel they can
depend on whatever makes them feel secure. What that actually looks
like in practice will be different for each child.

Some kids need to know what the day is going to be like. Some kids
enjoy surprises.

Check out Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

This is what we need to grow. If the lowest needs aren't met, we
can't attend to the higher needs. No where is there structure on the
list:

Basic:
Breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis (maintain optimal
body temperature), excretion

Next level:
Security of body, of employment, of resources, of morality, of the
family, of health, of property

Next level:
friendship, family, sexual intimacy

Next level:
self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by
others

Top level:
morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of
prejudice, acceptance of facts.

Most child rearing practices view
children as though they were some species other than human. Children
are humans. They are more dependent on others to get their needs met,
but they have human needs and they react as humans to having their
needs thwarted.

Humans don't need structure to feel safe and grow. Some humans do
like to structure their environment. Some humans will even freely
gravitate towards someone else's structure. But no healthy human
wants others to dictate the structure of the environment for them
without having a say.

Conventional parenting tries to make life with kids more convenient.
We treat kids in ways we'd *never* treat a fellow (adult) human
being. At least not ones we cared about!

We do huge amounts of damage to our relationships with kids in the
name of forming them into better people, and into making life easier
for ourselves. And most parents' relationships with their teens shows
it! Society thinks teens are naturally snarky and rebellious. It's
not true. Respected kids grow into respectful kids and respectful
teens.