Recently I had lunch at a restaurant with friends. A 12-year old girl at the table said she didn't like school.
If a student says that he or she doesn't like school it suggests that educators and/or parents have failed to stress the relevance and importance of learning. We have also failed to make learning fun where we can.
We need to be talking to our children about what they like and don't like about their learning opportunities in school. Sometimes we just have to get them interested in something. Anything.
In this case, (don't ask me how this came up), I asked the young lady if she knew how old Batman was. She didn't.
She guessed about 40.
I said, "I think they created him in 1938. Let's figure it out." I wrote 2014 on a piece of paper and 1938 underneath it. I said, "Subtract that and we will see how old Batman is."
She eagerly started doing the simple subtraction problem, just as she had been taught in school. Bear in mind that she had already indicated she didn't like school, but she started doing the arithmetic simply because she saw how math could help answer a question.
She soon told me that Batman must be 76. In the meantime, I had looked up Batman on the Internet on my phone.
"Whoops!" I said. "It says here that Batman first appeared in comic books in 1939. We will have to recalculate."
She was glad to do this and soon we knew that the character of Batman had reached the ripe old age of 75.
The young lady then asked a simple question: "Is Batman real?"
"Not really," I said, "but he's still been around a long time."
Wait a minute. Is the question, "Is Batman real?" a valid one to consider?
The short answer is that Batman isn't real. He is a fictitious character. But on the other hand, if we really want to help our children develop deep thinking skills, we could have them debate such questions.
Is Batman real? For many of us, for a couple of hours during a movie, he is a reality in our minds. For a number of different companies, the idea of Batman brings in real dollars on the bottom line.
We should encourage young people to think for themselves. If someone isn't real, can that individual still be a source of revenue?
Can a character in a book or movie, such as Batman, Indiana Jones, Captain Jack Sparrow, or Darth Vader, be a real idea but not a real person?
If students get interested in things they are familiar with, it isn't hard to imagine how they might transfer some of that enthusiasm towards their school work.
As my conversation continued with the soon-to-be seventh grader, some Van Halen music began playing in the background.
I asked if she knew the group that we were hearing. She didn't. I told her it was Van Halen and asked if she had heard of them. She hadn't.
I asked if she wanted to guess at how long Van Halen had been in existence. I said I thought they were formed 40 years ago and that their first album was in 1976.
By then her mother stepped in to prove me wrong. She was looking at her iPad and said Van Halen couldn't be 40 years old because she wasn't yet 40 years old.
She read to us that Van Halen started in Pasadena, California in 1972 and released their first album in 1978.
I stood corrected. Van Halen has indeed been around for more than 40 years but I was wrong about the first album. But for the sake of the 12-year old at our table, I hope she learned that any topic of interest is worth exploring and can be a resource for enriching our learning.
"You need to tell your teachers," I said, "that you should get to learn about things in school that you might find interesting like Batman and Van Halen. Tell them I said that."
"They won't do that," she said. I replied, "Tell them a principal told you that you should learn about Batman and Van Halen."
"Okay," she said.
As you read this, you may be thinking, "Now he's gone off the deep end," but you may be missing my point. Quite simply, we've got to get our children talking and thinking and asking questions and figuring things out. That's what education is all about.
And we can use whatever vehicle is necessary. We don't have to rewrite curriculum to include Batman, but we had better be willing to meet our students at a point where they find interest.
David Wilson, EdD, is the associate principal at Jefferson City High School. You may email him at [email protected].