4-H and Twaddle

The 4-H Motto is:

I pledge my Head to clearer thinking,
My Heart to greater loyalty,
My Hands to larger service,
My Health to better living,
For my club, my community, my country, and my world.

This is our second year doing 4-H projects, so I can't speak from a viewpoint of one who is experienced with years of 4-H. This is my view as a relative newbie and a homeschooler.

My kids are hands-on learners. The love to pick things up, investigate things with their hands and eyes, take things apart, and put things together. This part of their 4-H projects is great. They get to create things and investigate things and turn them in to the fair for others to see. If they do well, then they can earn a ribbon for their efforts. 4-H projects give them deadlines and rules so that they learn to work within real life parameters, and that procrastination is not their friend. What I don't like about their projects is the twaddle paperwork.

For example, Sami is doing an herb project. Growing herbs is great, as is learning how to harvest properly and how to dry/preserve them for later use. In order to turn in her project, though, she had to complete five of seven requirements, which included a word search, regurgitating answers throughout her booklet of what was just read in the previous paragraph, and answer trivia questions that weren't even in the booklet but the answers were on the next page and the kids just had to copy down the answers.

For a kid who is just learning writing skills, this was torture. She was literally in tears trying to complete a project that normally would bring her joy. Doing the twaddle work was like bringing a party pooper to a celebration. Like creating a painting that your little brother smeared with mud. Like playing at the park and getting knocked down by a bully. Sami was learning, excited, smiling, asking questions...and then came the joy killer. It took the joy right out of learning.

It's been forever since I was at public school myself, but I remember doing twaddle work. Read something, memorize it, regurgitate it, and forget it. I think for 4-H to be autonomous from public school, it needs to quit modeling its projects after public school assignments. Kids don't need busy work. They need to learn and have a joy of learning.

Where in the 4-H Motto does it say that they need to pledge their Head to memorizing and regurgitating? Clearer thinking...loyalty...larger service...better living...no where does it say to waste time doing twaddle. It's counter productive and opposite of the 4-H motto.

This is why I've turned to unschooling and put away the workbooks for now. Kids need to love learning, not just regurgitate facts on a piece of paper. There will be time for that later in life.