Hi again friends,

A quick note before we jump into today's lesson.... I was planning to teach this one live like yesterday, but I woke up with a pretty miserable migraine this morning (anyone else on the East Coast suffering in this heat wave?! Whewwww. 🥵). I debated just pushing through it, but the irony of teaching about honoring our humanity while ignoring my own wasn't lost on me. So instead, I made myself a cup of coffee, sat down at my computer, and decided we'd have today's conversation this way instead.

Honestly, I think this is one of those things that's even better read slowly than watched anyway. You can absorb the information at your own pace!

Yesterday we talked about the fact that school and learning are not actually synonymous. (If you missed that, watch here.) School is one place where learning can happen, but it isn't learning itself. Once you clearly separate those two ideas, the next question becomes, if school isn't what causes learning...what does?

Believe it or not, there is actually a scientific formula for learning. In order to learn something, in order for our brains to process it and remember it and actually care about the information, we need two things: Motivation and Information.

Now, fortunately, information is actually the easy part, especially in today's world. You can find information anywhere, and public schools have actually become very good at standardizing this part. (This is where things like Common Core standards, standardized testing, benchmarks, and checklists all come from, by the way.) We've essentially said, "Every child in this grade should learn these things by this point in time," and then we've built an entire system around delivering that information.

And if information was the only thing we needed for learning to happen, well that would be great!

But that's not the case....

You need motivation.

Motivation is the innate desire to learn something or figure something out, and there are really three primary ways we experience it:

1. Sometimes we need to learn something because we have a reason right now. Imagine you're driving down the road, you get a flat tire, and you don't know how to change it. There's nobody around to help you. You don't have AAA. Right there in that moment is all the motivation you need to figure out how to change a tire. You're going to pull up YouTube. You're going to read the manual. You're going to flag someone down to help you. Call your dad to walk you through it. You're going to seek out the information because you have a reason to learn it.
2. Sometimes motivation comes from understanding that we'll need the information later. Maybe your friend tells you about how they got stranded with a flat tire, and you think, "Yikes...I don't know how to change one either! I'd hate to be in that situation!" So you decide to learn now because you know it may become relevant in the future.
3. And sometimes motivation is simply an innate desire to know something. Maybe you have just always really enjoyed learning about cars and how they work, so changing a tire is a thing you learned really early on in life because it was part of the experience of learning more about vehicles.

Three different people could all know how to change a tire, but they may have learned it for completely different reasons and at completely different times in their lives. That's what motivation is. It's intrinsic. It's personal. It's unique to every human being.

It's me with the psychology and science of learning. I've always wanted to know how our brains work, why we think the way we do, and how we actually learn. Nobody had to assign that to me. I sought it out because I was curious. It's my oldest with anything having to do with animals and water and nature. It's my middle son with soccer and geography. It's my youngest with dinosaurs and mythical creatures. We all have motivations, and they can't ever all be the same.

So what happens when we build an educational system around standardization?

We standardize the part that's easy: Information.

But because you can't standardize motivation, something else slowly takes its place.... (this is where the story gets dark)

We've made kids, and now generations of adults, believe that external validation is the same thing as internal motivation. Grades. GPA. Test scores. Gold stars. Behavior rewards. When we teach children to strive for those external markers and then tell them they should feel motivated to achieve them, we effectively replace human internal motivation with an external focus on validation and performance.

And that's where the formula breaks.....

It's no longer motivation plus information equals learning.

It's information plus performance (equals trauma 🫣).

And those are obviously not the same thing.

One produces lifelong learners.

The other produces people who become very good at performing until no one is watching anymore.

That's why all of this matters so much.

Ok that was a lot of learning! Time for some ACTION!

Your action item today:

Today I want you to reflect on motivation vs information in your homeschooling experience. Take some notes if it's helpful, but think specifically about how these have matched one another for your children. What are your child's primary motivations right now? It might be a lifelong passion (like my oldest son for anything related to nature/animals) or maybe a recent pop-up motivation (like my middle son learning about countries' unique cultures during the World Cup). Now ask yourself if the information you've been providing your child with is in alignment with those motivations? Are they wanting to dive super deep into learning how to set up the perfect aquascape in a fish tank and you're focused on a geometry curriculum? Are they constantly boxing the air because they're interested in MMA and you're pushing them to sit down and read excerpts from a textbook?

Look for the balance of motivation and information in your homeschooling journey.

Then share this email and The Revolution with a friend to spread the important message about the real science of learning with others!

Enrolled in Bridge Academy? Head over to the Portal for extra support and discussion on today's lesson!

Want to get even more out of this journey and be a part of our Bridge Academy family? Enroll your kids today for the 26-27 school year. ​

Tomorrow we're going to start looking at what real learning actually looks like. Not the version most of us grew up with, but the version rooted in curiosity, purpose, and trust. And I think once you see it, you're going to start noticing it everywhere.

🫶🏽 Leah