All people want to learn.
All people want to create.
All people want to dig into ideas and discover what life has to offer.
All people want to experiment with materials and visions of what can be.
All people want to play.
This is not a school thing. This is a human thing.
But what happens in school? As kids get older, this kind of exploration gets less relevant, because it gets less emphasized. Play disappears. The goal of learning shifts from doing, experiencing, and being active to watching, recalling, and being passive. A disconnect develops between being a learner and being a student, as if the former has nothing to do with the latter. It seems like schools stop viewing kids as people with natural curiosity, maybe even to the point that students stop trusting their own curiosity. The idea of play, so important for kids, is no longer considered to be a critical feature of the learning process.
Growth measured with tests, understanding quantified with a number, success and failure determined by a letter: these are the conventional ways to define learning. Ultimately, this status quo undermines the messy, exciting, intrinsically rewarding process of learning. After all, it's no longer about process; it's about the tests, the points, the grades. It ultimately makes me wonder:
Educators, parents, students: we all have a stake in considering this question.
