For the first 18 years of my life I spent at approximately 5-10 hours per year in a swimming pool. Most of that time was during school swimming lessons and swimming carnivals. Needless to say, I was not much of a swimmer and I was actually afraid of the water until early high school when I discovered buoyancy was a real thing.
But when I left home to study at the University of Wollongong, I decided to start taking some interest in my general health and wellbeing. I felt I needed a good way to get more movement into my life and the student union’s heated pool looked like the place to get it. I took some stroke correction classes and began showing up every day. Before long, I could actually swim laps rather than just splash about like a drowning dog. I was never destined to be an Olympic record holder but the consistent practice got me from nothing to respectable lap swimmer in a matter of months.
Swimming, like all athletic pursuits, is a skill. I don’t think anyone would argue that raw talent and random practice is enough to make someone a champion swimmer. Indeed, if the practice is patchy enough, it is unlikely to even get them to be a swimmer at all.
Now most people don’t really think about it, but reading, writing and mathematical thinking are also almost entirely skills. True, there is some basic knowledge required, but overwhelmingly learning to read, write and do maths is largely about developing skills.
The thing about skills, is that many people believe that you’re either talented and can just “do” the thing you have a talent for (seemingly without any effort) or you can’t. But this is patently untrue. The most talented person in the world will get nowhere if they neglect to develop their talent and put it to good use.
Another way to think about this idea is in terms of muscle. If you confine yourself to bed and avoid all movement, you will very quickly become a cripple that is incapable of exerting even the smallest of physical efforts. But if you actively use your muscles they strengthen and become fitted for more and more work.
The exact same thing goes for developing the ‘academic’ skills of reading, writing and maths. The more you practice them, the better you get at them and this is true irrespective of natural ability. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that a talented person can’t ever do better than a less talented person who works hard but I am saying that effort matters more than talent in terms of how far you can go from your starting point.
I have seen it in my tutoring practice dozens of times. In fact, one of my very first clients was a girl who was actually very talented but her laziness far exceeded her talent. Her mother wanted her to do better at school and brought her to me for help. Even with my relatively meagre experience, I quickly realised that ability was not an issue and no amount of tutoring was going to achieve what the mother hoped because the girl was simply not putting any effort in at all. If she was to show up at my office these days, I’d probably play games with her to get at least some engagement happening and there might be a bit of progress.
Now some people might argue that no skill is compulsory and that children should be totally free to choose their own path through the education. I’m all for giving kids a say in their education. My own boys studied lots of things on their own with our blessing. One is even on the road to becoming a pilot. But, when it comes to English and maths, these are non-negotiables. Why? Because a person who can communicate and reason at a high level will find navigating an uncertain and ever changing future much easier than one who can’t.
My budding pilot is a good example. At one point we had a bit of an issue motivating him to do his school work and he proudly proclaimed that he could design an airplane (about the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement in his mind) without needing to learn any more maths than he already knew. “OK prove it!” we challenged. And, to his credit he tried. Hard. Before long, he realised that his engineering parents actually might know a thing or two about design that he didn’t and admitted that he’d run into some maths he hadn’t heard of yet.
At this point I’m hearing the poor, overwhelmed mum out there saying, “But I don’t want to be fighting my kids all day. I want them to grow up naturally and as freely as possible.”
I do, too. Really!
The nice thing about a skill is that consistency beats perfection every time. I was never going to become an Olympic swimmer with my half hour of laps per day but I did become a swimmer and that was never going to happen with random spasmodic (or even random herculean) efforts.
The same goes for learning to read, write and do maths. You don’t need to spend hours on this every day. In fact, in my homeschool, where I’m still guiding my “little one” (at age 8) we spend about half to one hour per day total on “academics” – and a lot of that time is him chit-chatting about the weather! Total time on task is probably half an hour. Seriously! That’s all it takes. It took me a very long time to accept that such a short burst of focused work was enough with my older two and we did way more busywork than I’d like to admit as a result.
Once I did realise it was that simple, we only had one rule in our homeschool: get maths and English done – then the day’s yours. My eldest really understood how to make this work. He’d get up early, do his bookwork and he’d be ready to welcome the day’s adventure before it had even started to get warm.
But consistency is crucial. My little one missed out on that consistency for about a year when my work circumstances changed and he literally went backward a long way on the reading front. As soon as I realised (or perhaps admitted to) what was happening, I made major changes to my work schedule so I could give him that daily hour consistently. After only a few weeks, the forward progress is almost unbelievable.
And, far from being a chore to get him to sit down, he enjoys his hour of “Mummy time” – in that hour we practise piano, do a Milestone Maths lesson and spend about 15 mins on a Milestone English lesson. And that’s it.
The rest of the day is open to whatever life or learning adventure, indoors or out, takes our fancy.
Parents are often daunted about teaching maths and / or reading to their kids probably because they associate it with the busywork that schools specialise in creating to keep the kids occupied. But it doesn’t have to be that complicated or time consuming. You really just have to be ready to show up for the half hour nearly every day.
The progress will astound you.
