LEARNING IN A CHILD’S EYES

ARNIE B. MENDOZA

In the Bible, when Jesus was asked about faith, He answered that one should see it in the eyes of a child. Maybe this is why we are forgetting that in our haste of adapting with the changes in the education method, we fail to consider how learning is perceived in the eyes of a child.

When I was a child, learning to me was fun. Growing up, my parents incorporated television shows to my lessons. They, even if it was a fact that we were not one of the richest, bought us a TV set and allowed me to watch cartoons and other educational shows. During that time, we were proficient in English because most of the shows and movies were in English (compared to the dubbed ones in this generation). We were compelled to learn because if we don’t, we’ll never get to grasp the message of what we’re watching. Nobody was willing to translate them for us. There were Math and Science shows as well that managed to get us counting along and even had us dancing with them. The easy one to eight steps were fun for us, and they made learning such a fun experience.

Fast forward to yearas after (well, I am no longer a child), we find ourselves with learners who could hardly read or write functional English. As an educator, I always try reminding myself to ask the students what they think about learning. I do not want to have a stiff approach to instructing them because this would only prevent the actual knowledge acquisition to happen among us, it can also stop them from feeling comfortable about asking for explanations when they are necessary.

In our world, we realize that not everyone gets an equal chance at good things like others do. Even when I was a child, I knew that there are kids more privileged than I am because they have better toys and bigger TV sets. We often forget that one thing about learning is that it should be fun and as children, they learn something very eagerly when they find it enjoyable.

Living in a world of complexities, what actually matters in the end is that we have to take back the fun part of education for our learners to be more willing to go to school – whether to the formal one or not.