Child(ish) Reads: The Learning Game

Obviously for #backtoschool, we’re going to review a learning title. I requested The Learning Game from NetGalley earlier this year.

Personally, I may have gotten to a point where parenting books are starting to be redundant. I don’t usually post bad reviews, preferring to just skip over them and share something better. However, I think I’m due for a little rant…

The Learning Game: Teaching Kids to Think for Themselves, Embrace Challenge, and Love Learning by Ana Lorena Fábrega.

Ana Lorena Fábrega is an edupreneur, writer, and Chief Evangelist at Synthesis. Growing up, she attended ten schools in seven different countries. She then earned her BS in Childhood Education and Special Education from New York University and taught elementary school in New York, Boston, and Panama. Today, Ana Lorena writes online to over 200,000 readers about the promise of alternative education.

I obviously am not a teacher, however I did work in educational publishing for 15 years. All of my authors worked in higher education and we had an entire catalog on teaching and learning, faculty development, student success and assessment.

While we love the research and theory that goes into books on education, the bulk of The Learning Game is a Cliff’s Notes review of concepts. She pulls from The Whole Brain Child, VARK, Inquiry- and project-based learning, learning styles, and healthy gaming habits. It’s all just plopped on a page to make you think your kid needs all the things in order to be special.

I am very familiar with the learning strategies and classroom management that Fábrega is trying to communicate. What I don’t understand is the overgeneralization and blanket statements she writes about the public school system. I also have a hard time trying to wrap my head around who this book is meant for, or what age group she is trying to discuss. If this book is written for teachers, chances are they already know how these learning models work from their own educational degrees. If this book is written for parents, then none of these learning models are fully applicable at home. Everything just feels very scattered and regurgitated from someone else.

I apologize if this review seems scattered as well. Normally, I would list out key takeaways or pull quotes that resonated with me. In this situation, I’ve mostly highlighted some WTF moments. So let’s get into it…

In the intro of the book, she says that she was able to spark the love of learning in her students, but then other teachers extinguished it the following year. This is giving “Everything is wrong and only I know how to fix it” vibes.

“Amongst the students who will be sitting for the exams is an artist, who doesn’t need to understand Math… There is an entrepreneur, who doesn’t care about History or English literature… There is a musician, whose Chemistry marks won’t matter. What if these kids had other ways to show their skills and knowledge? Standardized test results hardly represent any of these kids’ true potential.”

She then predictably goes on to list three billionaires that dropped out of college. It’s not that the book doesn’t have good ideas. Most of its principles are well known, like “play is the best form of learning” or “learning via video games can be very effective”. That’s all pretty standard. However, her claim that school is what’s keeping our kids from becoming exceptional mini Mark Zuckerbergs is a bit dramatic.

I personally don’t have a problem with standardized testing. Those results are more for state and teacher assessments, property values, and public funding. They don’t factor into a kid’s report card or their choice of profession. A high school diploma establishes a minimum foundation of knowledge needed to move on to either work or higher education. From there, a student should be able to pivot into a number a different professions or areas of study throughout their lives.

To say that teachers and tests aren’t unlocking a child’s true potential is a bit alarmist. Kids don’t know what they gravitate to until they have core experiences with that content. It’s not like teachers can lesson plan core experiences every day. The quote also forgets that parents are just as likely to give their kids core experiences outside of the classroom.

When I say “core experiences”, it’s moments where a kid is particularly engaged and moved. Like, if you were to bring your kids to a concert and they see a crazy awesome guitarist. One kid might immediately want to take guitar lessons because they are mesmerized by the music and the musician. The other kid might just get bored. To each their own, which makes planning passion projects for an entire classroom a futile effort.

“Walk into a typical classroom today. You’ll probably find a teacher lecturing about facts, figures, and formulas. We treat kids like computers.”

Here’s where I can’t really pinpoint an age group. I don’t see any teachers in my kids’ elementary school going full Ben Stein and just talking for hours while kids take notes. This is very much just playing to a stereotype.

Fábrega also goes into a school’s daily schedule, saying that we don’t give kids ample time to get into material and apply it in a practical way. Yes, we keep elementary schedules quick because kids at that age do not have the capacity to give something their full attention for more than 30-40 minutes. This also keeps kids from getting bored and affecting their behavior.

In middle and high school, there are rotating schedules or block schedules to allow for deeper learning as well as more specialized or advance course offerings. You also have long-term and research assignments for deeper learning. It is also expected at this age that the student advocate and bring ideas to the table themselves.

“The average kid has to follow twice as many restrictions as an incarcerated felon.”

I can’t even with this statement…

“While it may sound counterintuitive, studies show that when we go to sleep, our brain focuses on the most salient problem it was recently trying to solve (think The Queen’s Gambit).”

Yes, on a number of occasions, I completely outlined an AP Lit essay in my stress dreams. However, I think she’s forgetting that Beth Harmon was also an 8-year-old on drugs when she was developing chess strategies on the ceiling in this fictionalized series.

“A term coined by author Nassim Taleb, antifragility describes things that become stronger when exposed to stress and randomness.”

I’m gonna combine a couple things with this pull quote. Fábrega goes into antifragility saying that kids are being overprotected in the classroom. They need to be able to face difficulties like rejection, pain, and suffering to better prepare themselves for the real world. Again, a little dramatic.

She also uses terms like cognitive disequilibrium and the concept of desirable difficulty to reinforce that our kids are not fragile. They can figure things out on their own and in turn, this helps them understand material better. Yes, this is a real lesson planning strategy, but she also has an entire chapter on how video games make learning easy and we could pretty much teach our entire curriculum via video game. So are we trying to make it easy or hard?

This type of contradiction is throughout the book. At one point she is saying that we don’t need to be teaching kids what isn’t relevant to their daily lives, but then brings up ancient Persian history and the Stoics and wonders why we don’t teach them anymore. She says kids don’t need to memorize things they can easily Google, but they also need a rich, diverse learning diet. We should have our kids struggle to build character, but also give them the option to quit when they don’t like things anymore.

“Instead, we should aim to help kids develop the serenity to stay with the things they’re stuck with, the courage to quit the things they aren’t stuck with, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

How novel…

“In the game of school, you succeed by pleasing your teachers, getting good grades, and advancing to the next grade. You win if you follow the rules of order, obedience, and compliance.”

This seems like a very “good trouble” statement, but I have a hard time believing that the author went through her entire educational career just being a people-pleaser and not actually learning anything. The book talks about having students question everything they are told; and while curiosity does keep kids engaged, the tone of the book makes it sound like you can’t trust your teacher. It also kinda sounds like she is resentful that she herself didn’t find a passion until much later in life.

I know there are teachers who make snap judgements about students or who are very much stuck in their own methods of teaching. However, I would hardly condemn an entire school system. I think it’s also important to iterate that public school is a free public service. It is meant to give all students the basic education needed to be a part of society. “Unlocking passions” isn’t really something teachers are solely responsible for. Can you imagine complaining to a teacher about why they haven’t made your kid a savant yet?

Overall, I think this book is click-bait for parents who want their kids to be prodigies. Fábrega talks about wanting every kid to be exceptional, which is also contradictory. Play, sparking curiosity, practical application; these are all ways that kids can learn and many schools already employ these in the classroom. Teachers also do ample faculty development trainings to make classrooms both fun and challenging. The author unfortunately does not go into students with behavioral issues, family environments, school overcrowding, or state-mandated curriculums and policies that all have an effect on how a teacher teaches. Or how overbearing snowplow parents going full Karen affect job appreciation and morale. TBH, she doesn’t even bring up how education or students have changed since the pandemic.

The book also said that sending your kid to school is “outsourcing their education”. This is blatant bias against public schools, while the author pushes specialized schools, separate courses or homeschooling. In the same way that getting a nanny is outsourcing your parenting, it is shaming parents to believe that they are making mistakes and implying that there is no way for kids to succeed with a public school education. She specifically names Forest Schools, Montessori schools, and microschools as alternatives.

So who is this book really meant for? At the end of the day, parents cannot mandate or control their kid in the classroom, no matter what type of school they attend. They also cannot control what their kid’s teacher teaches or how they do it. Not every teacher is going to be Robin Williams.

What parents can control are the types of experiences their child is exposed to outside of the classroom. They can model behavior and show their own love of learning. They can help with homework and reinforce healthy study habits. They can help their child pursue their own passions, taking their lead and matching their energy. I didn’t need to read this book to know that.

If you truly want to take charge and prioritize your child’s education, go for it (whatever that means). You have way more options than were available years ago. If public school doesn’t work for you or you want something more challenging for your kid, then by all means grab your money and do something different. But if the real purpose of this book is to “teach kids to think for themselves, embrace challenge, and love learning”, then you should know that your actions and behavior as a parent are going to be far more impactful than whatever is going on in the classroom.