How to Get Your Kids to Hate Learning

May 11, 2014

I'm going to tell you exactly how to get your kids to hate learning.

I think I'm perfectly qualified to teach this. I mean, not only have I been homeschooling nearly 15 years, but I also got a kid to hate learning in my early days of homeschooling.  


GO ME! 



A step-by-step instructional post on how to get your kids to hate learning, written by a mom who has successfully done it.
Original Photo Credit

Oh, I won't take all the credit. That would be selfish. I'll give a good amount of the credit to the public school system. They had six years of working on my son before I brought him home. They had all but killed his desire to learn.


Then I got hold of him and finished the job. 


Here's how you can do it, too.



Turn your home into a mini-version of school.

Certainly being held prisoner to the same principles, methods, and format of the public school system will kill your child's desire to learn. Teach subjects in 45-minute increments in the same order day in and day out. 

The boredom alone will numb your kid's brain.






Never consider your child's learning style.

Get everyone state-approved textbooks for their grade level. Teach from those books and never consider the idea that there may be a better way for your child to learn. 

Just bore him to death with dry textbooks, comprehension questions and tests.



Don't be creative.

Texts, texts, texts. And then a test. That's the drill. Day and day out. 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. every weekday.
  • No hands-on activities.
  • No project-based learning.
  • No trips to the zoo, museum or the local state park for learning. (Well, not on a regular basis, anyway. One or two per year should do just fine.)

Argue when your child isn't happy with the system.

Be sure to use these types of responses:

"Of course you don't want to do school work! Who does? But you have to do it, like it or not."


"Fine. Don't do it then. You'll be grounded until you do."

Firmly implant your child's mind that you don't care about his what he needs. Sure, you'll be setting him up for failure. But you - YOU will be successfully killing his desire to learn

And isn't that the goal here?





Never let your child have any input.

Tell him what he'll do and leave it at that.
  • No asking him what he likes and dislikes.
  • No coming up with creative or fun things to do.
  • No asking what works for him
This is important. Ignoring these suggestions may result in a child who loves learning!


Be critical.

I haven't tried this one, but I'm certain it would work. 
  • Spend your days pointing out all the child's mistakes. 
  • Make sure your pushing him too hard. 
  • By all means, tell him he's not trying hard enough.
I'm not good at that critical thing, so that's all I've got.

Constantly making the child feel foolish or even stupid would crush his spirit. Learning is not for losers like him!





Don't take breaks.

Wear him down. No fun. No games. No impromptu activities or research. No fun field trips. You know what they say about all work and no play.


How this worked for us.


Between what the schools had previously done and what I did in that first year of homeschooling, I was able to successfully get my son to hate learning. 

Fortunately, we overcame it. 
He learned to love learning again as I learned what homeschooling really meant.

At the time of this post, he is 26 years old. He seeks knowledge for the sake of having knowledge (one of my homeschool goals) and is currently earning his B.A. 


Of course, this is a tongue-in-cheek post. I'd never encourage you to do these things. If you are doing some of these, there is time to fix it. We all make mistakes.


Be encouraged. The good news is: even if you mess up, it can all turn out all right.






2 comments

  1. Lovely post and I think every homeschool mum eventually reaches the same conclusions and we are so blessed to be able to alter the way we do things.
    You could practically repost this post be reversing everything and changing the title to 'how to get your children to love learning'!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly! Positive is always good. But I was going for tongue-in-cheek this time. Thanks for stopping in, Angelic.

      Delete

Join the conversation!