Learning To Learn

My wife teaches our two sons at home. It is a great deal of work, of course, but she likes doing it.

If you remove all the wasted time out of a public school’s school day, there might be three hours or so of education in it. I think I’m being generous there; I think sometimes there isn’t any. It’s all folderol and riding a cold bus. My son’s friends all have school-issued laptops, and they all fart around on Facebook and play Age of Empires on them during their classes. My son works when it’s time for school, and plays when it’s not. Actually, he likes to do his assigned schoolwork a day early. Then he learns other things that interest him.

Technically, I’m his, and his little brother’s, music teacher. But in reality, he’s just his own music teacher. He has learned how to learn — the only important thing in this life.

I hear him up in his room playing these days, and I can’t tell if it’s him or the recording he’s learning anymore. I have to go up and ask. When he was done with Tuesday’s Physics homework on Monday night, he wanted to learn a new song, and did. If you have an Internet connection, you can learn anything. Or you can idle your time away. I heard music yesterday morning and had to go see if it was him. It was.