Is there really such a thing as age-appropriate learning?

 I went perusing the education literature a few days back, and once again, I was struck with the thing. The thing I  always forget about between jaunts into the education literature world:

The assertion that kids learn differently, than adults, and must therefore be especially catered to.

I  don’t believe that  assertion to be true, but there it was again. An article asked me to accept that different age groups should  be exposed to  different aspects of nature—endangered species, activism, animals themselves—differently. I got the gist of what they meant, and they didn’t have a bad message:

Research  has  substantiated  that  an empathy  with  and love  of  nature,  along  with  later positive  environmental behaviors  and attitudes,  grow  out  of  children’s  regular contact with  and play  in the  natural world.

But that fact that I had to decode around age groups and grade levels was discouraging.

I believe—and no, I don’t have any but anecdotal data regarding this—that we all learn the same. Sure, some of us are locked in buildings—aka public schools—with our subjects chosen for us, and perhaps we have no interest in learning for that very reason, but I still maintain we learn the same. Namely, we develop a love of a topic, and the intrinsic urge to know more about it. And yeah, if that is in fact how we learn, then yup, educators had better come up with some fascinating techniques if they’re intent on picking the subject for us. Not amazingly, always choosing the subject won’t work in conversations with your  family, your friends, your  date next Friday, or much of anyone else, but our public school system seems intent that in this one place—K-12 education—a person, an educator if you will, can finally choose the subject and just ram it into the craw of other people.

Tellingly, the authors asserted their belief that children could not succeed in learning about nature in the way ‘adults’ do as follows:

A problem  with  most  young  children’s  environmental education  programs  is  that  they approach  education  from  an  adult’s,  rather than  a  child’s  perspective.  Teaching  nature abstractly  in the classroom  does  not  lead to  pro-environmental  behaviors  in  later life (Schultz  2000).

While the authors—and apparently, also, Schultz—have identified an important issue, they’ve mistakenly associated that issue with an age stratification. I  would proffer that teaching nature abstractly in the classroom is not the best direction to take for anyone. Sure, it might work for adults, sometimes. It might work for anyone that had an intrinsic motivation, (‘I love nature’, ‘I need a job’, “The city’s loud’... and so on), but beyond that, are any of us going to have our best learning experience sitting in a classroom discussing something that’s just not there? I’m not.

The article continues on with generalizations that are rooted in the assumption that the learner is, in fact, stuck in the classroom. The intent was good, some of the messages were ridiculous. When the authors said they didn’t think young  children should be introduced to endangered species, for example, what they meant was that young children—and by my extension, anyone, independent of their age—don’t enjoy being trapped in a chair and pontificated to.

In  my experience, young children in and of themselves are quite alright with the concept  of endangered species, outside of a lecture, even if they do find the whole idea a sometimes annoying encumbrance. Case in point, the 9, 8, and 5 year-old gang were exposed to endangered bull trout after endangered bull trout this summer. They appreciated the fish's status, understood we needed to toss them back so we didn’t loose a species. They even understand the necessity of biodiversity that played into not losing a single species if we could avoid it. But they were still rather miffed that after fighting and fighting to get a fish to shore, we’d still have to wait for the next—hopefully not bull trout—fish to come along

The trick—somewhat obviously—is that the  kids weren’t in a classroom… ever. As a bunch of unschooling kids in the middle of the pandemic near a forest with rivers and lakes, they found themselves constantly surrounded by the ‘topic’ of their ‘studies’. I use those educational terms loosely to provide a contrast. To put it in more natural phrasing, the kids learned easily the lessons that were there, in front  of them, in their  lives. They learned those lessons not because someone told them to, but because the context of their lives presented the material. They learned just like every adult—more precisely, just like every person who isn’t compelled by another to do something—does. And  they learned without me, or anyone else putting any special thought into how old they were.