Education is not a manufacturing process. It doesn't matter if the learning actually happens, only that we have worksheets completed and a lesson plan created and disseminated whether or not the children truly understood it. We got the data that suggests that it might have. If the true goal is learning, then we can't rely on worksheets and lesson plans which are neatly linked to the appropriate "learning objectives."
Learning is a messy process. So many resist the idea of learning being messy because it appears so inefficient and chaotic with no way of really measuring milestones and standards in a very clear and neat way. There are no straight lines. Many might like the idea of self-driven learning, but they can't bear to look at it in practice because of all the wasted time and the mess.
Majority of people believe that in order to create learning, an adult must give out instructions with lectures, tests, and children receiving grades. We think that this simply a waste of the time of children who are innately capable of complex critical thinking and is simply not the way true learning works.
"Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners." -John Holt
Learning is the product of the thinking, being, and doing. There is no way to predetermine how any one gets from one point to the next, the path is unique to each individual. As guides, the best thing we can do and practice is to observe, to take the stance of a researcher -not to assess whether they are right or wrong, not to tick boxes or assign grades, but rather to understand, to strive to know what a child is thinking about which is the only true guide to what a child is learning and what they need from us.
How can we, adults (parents included), not get in the way of the process of real and authentic learning? Instead of being the obstacle- be an observer? Imagine what children might be able to learn.