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Learning to Love Learning

Lyndsay Lambert

THSC Association REVIEW © February 1999

I have believed for a long time that if you teach a child to read, to write, to work with numbers; train him in character; and give him a love of learning, he can then educate himself.  Reading, writing, and working with numbers are the tools of learning.  Character is also important, because a lazy child will not put out the effort to educate himself; a proud child will not see the need to seek further learning.  The love of learning is necessary for the young person to be motivated.

After 14 years of home schooling, I awakened one day and realized that I had only two more years to go.  I began to think back over my home schooling years and became discouraged when remembering all the things that I had wanted to teach my children. But wait!  What was my philosophy?  Oh, yes… read…write…work with numbers…character…the love of learning.  My children are good readers, they are becoming good writers, and they can work with numbers.  They are not perfect, but they exhibit godly character, by and large. 

However, had I communicated the love of learning to them?  How do you teach that to someone?  When did I begin to love learning?

My formal education lasted for 17 years.  Was it during that time?  No, I can assure you that it was not.  I remember that in one of my favorite classes when I was a senior in high school, our teacher read us a quote that went something like, “School is the greatest interruption in your education that you will ever experience.”  Well, the class laughed and hoorahed at that pearl.  Now much older and so much more aware of what I do not know, I have come to believe that statement is too often too true.  I learned to read, write, and work with numbers in school, but I did not really want to learn until I began teaching my own children.  One of the benefits of home education that I did not expect, but have come to appreciate, has been how much I have learned in the process of teaching my children.  However, my desire for my children was that they would not have to wait until they began to teach their own children before they experienced this joy.

As I sought the answer to my question and asked the Lord for guidance, I thought back over my home schooling years.  What had been the difference between my school years and the time of teaching my children?  Why could I now remember the years the Civil War had taken place--when before I could not have even told you the decade, nor did I care?  I do not know about others, but it seems to me that most of my history teachers in junior high and high school were coaches.  Somehow, history was not their first love.  The history books were dry, and the tests were over what-day-what-war-began.  So what made the difference for me? 

I remember that one of the first books I read when I began reading for pleasure as an adult was The Scarlet Pimpernel.  What fun I had reading that book!  However, I had to go to my husband, who had minored in history in college, and ask him to explain the French Revolution to me.  I was a college graduate, and I did not know about that important event in world history!  Reading that book gave me a desire to find out more. 

Everything I read about home schooling in those early years said, “Read, read, read.”  I had not been a reader when I was young; I had grown up in the heyday of the television.  I had never heard of The Chronicles of Narnia--though I later found out that there had been a hardback copy of the series in my home. I did not know what to read with my children.  When I heard about the book Honey for a Child’s Heart, with its 59-page bibliography, I immediately bought a copy and began to use it.  After that, we always had a book we were reading.  We had a subject in school called “reading-and-folding-clothes.”  While one of us read, the others would fold the clean clothes.  Around Christmas, we would get an audio book and listen while we wrapped presents or finished gifts.

As I looked back over the years of teaching my children, I realized that I had begun to develop my enjoyment of learning from my experience with these good books.  For example, in the process of home schooling, I began to understand that history is made up of people and God’s dealings with them over the years.  I had begun to learn things that I had not set out to learn--such as when the Civil War had taken place--in the context of someone’s life about whom we had read.  Reading Cheaper by the Dozen helped me understand what was happening in our country as there was a change from courting to dating, although that is not the main point of that book.

I started thinking about how interesting it would be to take a world history book, read it together, and stop when different people came up to read a biography about them or read more in depth about the time period.  I wanted not only to give my students a better view of the big picture of God’s dealing with mankind through the centuries, but I also wanted to have that understanding myself.  I wanted especially to learn more about the 20th century, because I do not remember getting that far in the history books when I was in school. 

I realized that we could not start in the 20th century; one needs to know what went on before, that led up to that point.  We could not start in the 19th century or the 18th.  It just logically followed that we should go all the way back to creation and start there.  However, what books would we read?  Once again, the Lord came to my rescue.  Two weeks before I was to start my 15th year of home schooling, when I was still not sure of what I was going to do for all of school that year, I went to a book fair at which a small, unobtrusive book seemed to jump off the shelf at me.  It was Let the Authors Speak; A Guide to Worthy Books Based on Historical Setting by Carolyn Hatcher. Again, I had found a book with a great bibliography; only this time, the bibliography was in chronological order, starting with—well, almost—creation.  Actually, I already had a Book that went all the way back to creation, so we could start with that.

When I read the preface to Let the Authors Speak on the way home from the book fair, I realized that the book had been based on Charlotte Mason’s ideas of reading “good books,” not “twaddle,” with your children.  I had read of Mason’s philosophy years ago in For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay.  Thinking back, I realized that this was how I had been learning and loving it over my home schooling years---by reading good books.  Maybe this was how I could communicate to my children a love of learning.

I was now ready to start my experiment.  My class (consisting of my twins and a friend) began to meet two days a week.  During this time, I would either summarize what I had read in the high-school-level world history book, or we would watch a video1 about the country or time period we were discussing.  Sometimes there were opportunities for field trips.  The local hands-on science museum had an Egyptian display that we went to see when we studied Ancient Egypt.  My class went to Medieval Times in Dallas when we were studying the Middle Ages.  (All right, that is rather a stretch, but they had a good time and got to see some of the dress and weapons of the time period.)  In the meantime, my students were each reading a different book (their choice from the chronological bibliography) about the time period we were currently studying.  They would share with each other book reports, either oral or written.

Was it working?  Were we making any progress in the area of the love of learning?  We studied world history through the Renaissance and Reformation the first year.  One of my students gave me one of the greatest compliments when, after the first year of this history class, he graduated but opted to return to the class the second year to learn “the rest of the story.”  When discussing the plan for school this year--my final year--with my son, he specifically said that he wanted to continue the history class.  I was beginning to have some hope!

This year, we have added literature to the class.  Each student is still reading his own book about the time period, but everyone is reading the same literary writing about the time period as well.  I have never been very good at analyzing literature, but I have found some very helpful study guides. We are now reading The Scarlet Letter, and the guides give me helpful questions for discussion in class. 

I have also added Internet research to the class.  Each week everyone is to come to class with information they found on the Internet concerning the time period we are studying.  They are also writing a paper a week, either on the book they are reading, on the current time period, or some other topic that is agreeable to the teacher. My students do not know it yet, but we will be doing a research paper this spring as well.

My only regret is that I did not start this earlier.  As we covered from creation to the Reformation in one year, and a century a month this fall, slowing down to spend the spring on the 20th century, this is definitely just an overview of history.  However, we are all going to come out of this class with a much better understanding of God’s hand in our world and why we are where we are now.  We are learning that history is made up of people just like us and that these people are what make history interesting.  I have come to understand that, although history is made up of people and their actions, wars and dates are pivot points, and the outcomes of those wars did make differences in the directions of the peoples and nations.

Best of all, my students are learning to enjoy learning.  Their schooling is not going to be only an interruption in their education, but an introduction to the world that God has given them.   

Bio at the time of first publication of this article:

Lyndsay Lambert homeschooled her four children for 16 years.  She currently serves on the editorial board of the Texas Home School Review and as office manager of the Texas Home School Coalition, helping the president, Tim Lambert, her husband of 27 years.

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