A Self-Determined Education: Who's Teaching?

Besides reading from books and watching documentaries at home for his military history study, Tiger and I have been out and about a fair bit, looking for a more hands-on experience, if that's possible.  We came across The Muckleburgh Military Collection one day, and decided to go in and take a look.

It is certainly one of those places that, had it not been for Tiger's massive interest in this subject, I would never have stepped into.  For a private collection, the number, range and types of military vehicles in it are very impressive.

The many historical artefacts are exceptionally wide-ranging and extensive.

The Anderson Shelter and signbaords from WW2.

Different countries' gas masks in WW2 and a photograph of nurses and babies in gas masks.

I saw many artefacts that I have not seen anywhere else.

For example:

1. Post WW1 souviner from Belgium and France.
2. Knives used by the Hitler Youth and the SS.
3. WW1 flare guns and pistols.
4. Modern guns.

The collection doesn't look very big from outside, so we were thoroughly surprised to find the exhibition halls packed with actual military weaponry and vehicles.

Even though the exhibits were displayed by category rather than by time period, the sign boards were very clearly written so I learnt a lot just by reading through each board, while Tiger raced ahead because he already knew all about the different artillery...

A 13-Pounder Field Gun, a mainstay of WW1.

Argentinian 155MM Field Gun, used in the Falkland War.

Then, in another gallery we were wowed by the number of artillery vehicles and tanks there.  For the life of me, I can't remember any of the names of those vehicles so I won't risk looking silly by giving them wrong labels, but there are many, many tanks!

Every now and then, I tried to test Tiger's knowledge by asking him what type of tank a certain one is, and which war it was used in (not that I knew the answers but I had the signboards for help).  What amazes me is that not only can Tiger correctly identify each tank, he can also tell me accurately their individual specifications such as:

• the type of ammunition it used;
• which war(s) it was used in;
• the firing range and firing power;
• which country designed or built it;
• which country used it;
• what its strengths and limitations were.

Here is an example of what Tiger told me:

1. Photo 1: AMX 13 Light Tank.  Post WW2, French-made, can take different types of guns but mostly uses the 75mm, very popular in Africa.
2. Photo 2: A41 Centurion.  Used at the end of WW2, powered by Rolls Royce engine, best tank at that time but slow at about 20mph and range of about 100 miles, British made, later also used in the Korean war, Vietnam war, and Yom Kippur war.
3. Photo 3: Chieftain Tank.  British made, to replace the Centurion, used in the Iran-Iraq war, best in the world until the Leopard tank were used by the Germans in the 1980s.
4. Photo 4: Panzer.  Swiss made but British-designed guns, used mostly in the 1960s and 1970s, secondary armament either a 20mm cannon or a 7.5mm machine gun.

To be honest, that freaked me out a little.  Nobody has asked Tiger to memorise anything.  Evidently, he has somehow remembered these facts from his volumninous reading of this topic and by paying attention to details such as the length of the guns that are mounted on each tank, the paint work that differentiated the tanks, the track designs, etc, whereas to me, every tank looked the same... (the difference between a Russian T-55 and a Patton tank, anyone?)

"The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners."

-- John Holt

I was further educated about the differences between a tank and an armoured vehicle...

Although we couldn't get into any of the vehicles, we did have a good nose around the interior whenever they were made available for looking into.

I have to admit that 90% of the time I really didn't know what I was looking at.  I have no idea what the buttons, controls, or gears are for, and Tiger had to explain to me what each does as we walked around the collection.

As if the collection so far wasn't impressive enough, there was even an anti-aircraft gallery!

At this point, I was starting to feel totally saturated by military weaponry but Tiger was absolutely in his element as he happily went around as my tour guide (we were there on a weekday so had the entire collection all to ourselves) and explaining what each machine does, almost as though he has been living in the collection all his life!

Anti-aircraft Search Light, used in WW2 during the blitz.

Rapier Missile, used by the British forces in 1970s, could reach 6800 metres.

I only intended for us to spend two hours at the Collection, but we spent an entire day there.  It is a treasure cave for Tiger, both inside the buildings and outside.  We were able to get really up close to the few displays outdoors.

1. Photo 1: a 12-Pounder Naval Gun used on merchant ships in WW2.
2. Photo 2: a German V-1 Flying Bomb used in WW2, with a pulse jet engine.
3. Photos 3 and 4: checking out the Harrier jet that can go 735mph.

I often wonder whether our path might be "easier" if Tiger's passion were in something more conventional like science, maths, art or music, in the sense that:

• I know how to guide him in those areas whereas I'm totally out of my league and comfort zone with military history;
• I won't get so much stick from the PC crowd for allegedly encouraging and glorifying warfare; instead, I might even get lucky and be honoured for producing the next science/maths/art/music prodigy!

That doesn't seem to be the way for us, at least for the foreeseable future.

“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.” 

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lighting His Own Fire

Some of you may have noticed that things seems to have slowing down here, at least in terms of my blogging about it.  Specifically, there has been a 'mysterious' two week break between my post about the water cycle experiments and that of Henry III.

Something is changing around here.  We are not doing as much as we did before -- that's how it feels to me anyway.  It feels as though we are not producing as much or as quickly as before.  Are we becoming slow learners... gasp!?

Another clue: has anyone else noticed that Tiger seems to be wearing the same camo clothes in most photographs?

No, you haven't seen it wrong.  Tiger lives in his camos, although he has more than one set of camo clothes, mind you, so he is not wearing the same clothes everyday although that must be very difficult to tell because camo prints tend to look the same (to me, anyway).  He has:

• a camo rucksack
• a pair of camo boots
• a camo beanie
• a camo hat
• a pair of camo gloves
• several pairs of camo socks
• several pairs of camo trousers
• a few camo T-shirts
• a camo jumper
• a camo coat
• a camo scarve
• camo stationery (ruler, pen, pencil, eraser, sharpener)

The boy loves his camos.  Now I need to find camo underwear and camo bedsheets to complete the look and I am just waiting for him to ask me to paint his room in camo shades.

What does this mean?  Isn't it just a normal nine-year-old boy's fascination with camos?

I thought so too, until I tried to piece together other bits and pieces of observations I have been making since July, to understand why we are currently working in such a "slow" pace.

Come to think of it, the trend had started before the summer holidays but had only became obvious to me when I let go of having daily lessons so that Tiger could be more say in how he wanted to spend his summer.  Other than going on holiday and working through the Art Summer School, Tiger was most often engaged in the following activities:

1.  Build a personal library.

Tiger's ever expanding personal library

Tiger has a bookshelf in his bedroom which he has been adding to at an alarming rate.  The shelf used to be filled with books from BFIAR and FIAR booklists, to be read as his bedtime stories.  This summer, Tiger has been picking out war/weaponry related books (see photo above) that I have had to pack all the previous FIAR books into storage to make space for these new books that he actually reads before bed and when he wakes up.

Seriously, who reads books like these for bedtime stories?!  Being the skeptical mum that I am, I flipped through the books and asked Tiger random questions about some parts of the books, just to make sure that he has actually read them and not just fibbing by looking at the pictures in the books.  Unbelievably, the boy has actually read them all, not just once but several times, evidenced by his ability to reference the exact page number of certain pieces of information that he gave me.


2.  Teach himself.
This is not new.  We watch documentaries all the time, but Tiger seems to have taught himself modern history (at least the military aspects of it) by watching the following since the summer:

1. Battlefield Britain (the entire series)
2. Battle of France
3. Battlefield: Series 1
4. Battlefield: Series 2
5. Battlefield: Series 3
6. The Cu Chi Tunnels
7. WWII Weapons (all 10 parts)
8. The Top Secret Soviet Weapon in the Cold War
9. Battle 360
10. Patton 360
11. The Korean War in Colour
12. Greatest Tank Battles
13. Dogfights - Season 1
14. Dogfights - Season 2
15. America: The Story of the US
16. WW2: The Mediterranean and North Africa
17. The Art of War: Sun Tsu
18. Weapons of Victory: Anti-Tank Guns
19. Battle of Arnhem
20. Sinking the Tirpitz
21. World War I: Battle of Falkland Islands
22. 20th Century Battlefields (the entire series)

While watching the documentaries, Tiger reenacts the battle scenes and war strategies shown on the screen with his toy troops.

I am quite amazed to see him finding his own hands-on way to engage himself in his learning.  I would not have been able to lead him to this due to a lack of expertise and interest on my part.

"A person's freedom of learning is part of his freedom of thought, even more basic than his freedom of speech.  If we take from soneone his right to decide what he will be curious about, we destroy his freedom of thought.  We say, in effect, you must think not about what interests and concerns you, but about what interests and concerns us."

-- John Holt

There is no curriculum for this, as far as I can tell, not for a nine-year-old anyway.  Hence, all of this is done oout of Tiger's own initiative.  He decides for himself what he wants to learn (i.e. which documentaries to watch - after seeking parental approval for each documentary), when he wants to learn, and how he learns best at the present moment (through staging the battle scenes rather than writing reports).


3.  Find ways to apply knowledge.
It is still an ongoing process, but I find it interesting to see what Tiger does with the information he is absorbing from the documentaries and books.  When his deep interest in military history became glaringly obvious in the summer, I was slightly concerned about whether Tiger was watching the above documentaries for entertainment, likened to brain-deadening TV watching.

However, my fears are allayed when I see how Tiger is finding different ways to apply what he is learning:
a) Through different strategy games
i) Battleship

ii) Axis and Allies starter set

iii) Chess
Tiger continues to attend his weekly chess club where he is coached alongside county players.  Even though chess has long been regarded as a strategy game, I was still surprised when Tiger explained to me, after a particularly successful session when he was the Undefeated-Champion-for-the-Night, that he applied the battle strategies he has learned from the books and documentaries to defeat the county players.

b) Through reenacting multiple battles
The first thing Tiger does on most mornings before breakfast: battles.

When there's  a break in-between lessons at home: battles.

If he's not doing something with Tortoise after dinner: battles.

c) Extending activities through battles.
I should know better than to second-guess the value of play, but when Tiger spends most of his time playing at the battles (which helps to explain why we aren't getting much else done in terms of "tangible output"), I feel I need more than blind faith to know that he is not simply wasting his time.

Luckily, when an adult looks hard enough and pays close attention to the child at play, she is very likely to find meaning in all of it.

i) Maths
How does maths come in?  I wasn't expecting to see this either, but Tiger has learnt the relationship between speed, distance, and time through his battles.  As his play becomes increasingly complicated -- with his invention of complex rules of engagement -- he needs to know how to calculate accurately the distance between his missle launch and its reach, how quickly troops can move before they engage in a face-to-face combat, etc.

Precise calculation is crucial in this case because an inaccurate move can have dire consequences, such as having to suffer the intolerable humiliation of being defeated by one's mother in a military showdown...

ii) Cartography
Tiger doesn't always use the maps that come with the soldiers sets.  Instead, he often prefers to draw his own map for the settings of his battles.

iii) Photography/filming
When Tiger is not too busy fighting battles, he takes photographs of the scenes with the intention to turn them into a stop motion film.

4.  It matters to him.
How do we know that it is a passion and not just a flight of fancy?  Besides the slightly obsessive, all-consuming nature of the child's engagement with the activity, probably the most revealing key is that the activity means a lot to the child.

"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire."

--- Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch,

Supreme commander of Allied forces, World War One

Several weeks ago we were scheduled to attend a full-day history workshop.  The night before Tiger had a sudden fever so I decided that there was no way he would be well enough to go anywhere the next day.  As expected, Tiger was very upset as he went to bed that he was going to miss the workshop.  The following morning, he woke up unusually early (at 6am) to get himself ready to attend the workshop.  Unfortunately for him, the fever persisted so he had to stay at home.  For two hours he tried to convince me at 15-minute intervals that he was well enough to go. The poor boy burst into tears when his hardhearted mother said a resolute "No, you have to stay at home and rest."  I don't know of many children who would cry about missing a day of school.  Do you?

This post is linked up to:

1. Look What We Did 
2. History and Geography Meme #96
3. Collage Friday - A Productive Week
4. Entertaining and Educational - Learning with Music
5. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with the Battle Against Illness
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {October 26, 2013}
7. Hip Homeschool Hop - 10/29/2013