Does Learning Have to Fun?

by Beverley Paine, May 2023

The other day someone asked in The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling group "What would make your kids enjoy learning more?"

I can understand the desire to make learning fun because when kids are engaged and interested in something and are pursuing it with their whole heart, mind and body they usually look like they are enjoying themselves. But does learning always look like this? I question that assumption.

Some of my own learning hasn't been fun at all, it's been various levels of hard or difficult, requiring me to focus and concentrate beyond my comfort zone, it can be incredibly challenging, and at times I have to manage my fears and insecurities to keep on task. And I do it because I want to learn whatever it is, or I need to, and sometimes don't want to. And because I know that the objective or goal is worth the effort, that I will feel not joy but satisfaction when I achieve it.

Kids naturally set themselves learning tasks - that's how they roll in life. It's the basic tenet of an unschooling approach to home education and as homeschoolers we acknowledge and frequently take advantage of our children's self-directed learning.

But if we're setting educational activities for our children to do, if we want them to engage, be motivated to complete them, etc, it helps to pitch them at the child's current ability building on their current understanding and interests. And it helps to get your timing right too - interrupting something they are already doing and enjoying to get them to do a task or activity this is important to us but doesn't have any immediate meaningful to them might not be as much fun as you thought.

Learning doesn't always have to be fun, but it needs to be interesting to the learner, it needs to meet a need. Pitching education as entertainment isn't helpful.