How Albert Einstein Raised His Son
One of the most brilliant minds in the world, as was the scientist Albert Einstein. He opted for learning by doing as a method to educate his son. He rejected, mainly due to the results based on his own experience, methods such as memorization based on repeating the same phrase over and over again aloud until he retained the information.
Einstein against repetitive memory
Einstein used to correspond frequently with his children. In one of the letters, he confesses to his son Tete that he did not agree with the teaching methods that forced the children to repeat the information to memorize it.
Although this form of learning was common for the time and worked quite well for some children, the same was not the case with the young and restless mind of the scientist. Unlike the others, he got bored with this kind of methodology.
One approach that frequently shone through in his writings was the rejection of learning as imposition. Einstein studied seven years at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich, where memorism was applied as a learning method, based on repeating until retention.
Frustrated by the experience, he dropped out of school before finishing. Years later he would write the following on the subject of teaching: ” It must be such that it can be received as the best gift and not as a bitter obligation . ” This was reflected in a text called My vision of the world , in which it was evident that his passage through the classrooms was not the most pleasant for the scientist.
Einstein’s Tips for Education
When his son started taking piano lessons, the advice he gave him as a father was the following:
It can be seen that the highlight of this advice is the deep belief expressed by the physicist that the best thing a child can do to learn is to enjoy the task to which he is given himself: to enjoy himself so much that he does not realize that the time passes.
Regardless of the recommendations of others, and even established academic programs, we must do what we like to learn and improve with it. Einstein defended the type of teaching that favored individuality as a contribution to the community.
Education should be different according to Einstein
Machine learning, in Einstein’s opinion, creates automata and aborts individual talent, and in his experience he believed that this methodology creates submissives. It uses fear, strength and authority as its foundation. This treatment destroys the child’s strong feelings, sincerity, and self-confidence.
This genius proposed an education that advocates:
- Encourage force: Memorization does not awaken productivity because it does not bring out the psychological powers of the child, since it is easier for the institution to use force and awaken individual ambition ”.
- Be fruitful: The school should stimulate the child’s inclination for play and the child’s desire for recognition. Guide the child towards domains that are beneficial to society. Education would thus be based on a fruitful activity and recognition (…) and the teacher would be a kind of artist in his activity.
It takes work and activity
To achieve excellence, he put practice before theory: Great personalities are not formed by what is heard or said, but by work and activity. Consequently, the best method of education has always been that in which the disciple is urged to carry out concrete tasks.
This applies both to the child’s first attempts to write and to a university thesis, to interpret or translate a text, to solve a math problem or to practice a sport, he writes in My Beliefs (1939). Precisely the scientist used sport as an analogy to explain the difference between learning and education.
A historical personality such as this scientist could not be very wrong and far from reality. He was certainly a visionary man and father who was way ahead of his time. His teaching methods are the most recommended today in schools to educate children and maintain interest in acquiring knowledge through practice, which prevents infants from getting bored and leaving the classroom.
