“For this week’s activity, read Seymour Papert’s essay on the “Gears of My Childhood” and write about an object from your childhood that interested and influenced you. Share your story in the group.” – Learning Creative Learning Mooc, Session 2
When I think back to my childhood, I must admit that memories from my earliest years are sketchy at best. Seymour recalled the influence of gears on his development of models from as early as to years of age. I can’t do anything remotely similar.
Image Credit: Ianus Keller, Flickr
However, I do recall the influence of Lego on my development. I spent hours building,
tinkering, creating. I remember craving more pieces and new pieces that would allow me to create what I was imagining in my mind. Sadly, my parents missed this and didn’t work to develop the materials that I needed… that I craved. This is likely due to the fact that they spent no time with me in pursuing my interests here. They just didn’t understand. They missed it. Let me just say that I’ve remedied that oversight with my own children who have both developed an incredible tinkerer/maker mindset and ability. It some sense, it validates for me the importance of making “making” available to children and spending time immersed in the activity of making – in whatever form it might be.
But back to me. My earliest experiences with Lego and making many things led to making many more things, understanding and using tools, and the ability to tinker – even at the expense of breaking things. Yes, I broke many things. My parents weren’t always “embracing my failure” here… It progressed to mechanics – a snowmobile, a first car (a junky VW Beetle), woodworking/construction, and just this past year… fixing the clothes dryer (much to my wife’s dismay – she really wanted a new one). I think it developed a mindset of tinkering – a confidence that even if I don’t know how to solve a problem at the outset, I’ll be able to figure it out. However, I have begun to notice that my willingness to take risks seems to have decreased over time. Perhaps some of that can be chalked up to wisdom. Likely some of it can be attributed to a more “grown-up” mindset where anything just isn’t possible, where there is not always a guaranteed positive outcome, and that failure is bad. I think this gets in my way sometimes, and I KNOW it gets in the way within the context of K-12 schooling and classrooms… the very place and time where everything should be possible; where imagination is allowed to run rampant; where failure is just an acceptable part of learning; where “dirty hands” and messiness are signs of engagement.
It may not be gears that our children are interested in (as Seymour wisely points out), but it does speak to the importance of necessary conditions for models to develop and for assimilation and transfer of ideas to occur. I love that MIT named its learning space, “Lifelong Kindergarten”. Sadly, some of what has been so important to the development of children at this level is being squeezed out by standards, accountability, assessment, performance,… The notion of “play” as an essential component to learning and developing critical models and mindsets is becoming a counter-narrative to that of current education policy.
So, I ask, what are the necessary conditions for critical, developmentally appropriate model development in children… and how do we go about protecting and promoting those?
Below are just some of the ideas that I processed while reading Papert’s introduction. I have come to realize that unless I do something active in the process of reading, I don’t get as much out of it. So, I’ll likely be doing a lot of mind-mapping as I read.
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February 18th, 2013 at 11:30 pm
I love the mind map you created; it provides a great summary as well as your questions. What tool did you use?
February 19th, 2013 at 8:44 am
I used Inspiration (http://www.inspiration.com), but you could easily use a host of free tools available online like MindMeister, for example. http://www.mindmeister.com
For me (and I suspect most others), when reading dense or sophisticated texts, the reader needs to be active in the process, as reading is an active process. I find taking notes or working visually with notes, ideas, and relationships with mind mapping tools really helps, both with comprehension and retention. I tell my students that the default highlighting of text while reading is largely ineffective – although it makes us feel like we are doing something useful
February 19th, 2013 at 10:11 am
Thanks for your follow up response Stephen, I appreciate it!
February 19th, 2013 at 10:23 am
I’m going to run with the Lego theme as I too played with Lego as a child (until a much older age than I probably care to admit). I have purposely chosen the word ‘played’ instead of something like ‘used’ or ‘built with’ because I think that ‘played’ denotes a less rigid mindset. I didn’t have the Lego kits that are sold now (I don’t think they had them back in my days) – you know, the kits where you build something particular (castles, the Death Star, etc.).
The Lego sets I used were simply sets of pieces with which I could build whatever it is I imagined. And once I was done playing with whatever I had built, I could take it apart and use the pieces to build something completely new. The sets today (http://www.lego.com/en-us/products/) are, in my opinion, less about creating things from the child’s imagination and more about putting the whatever together and then playing (or not) with the finished product. My nephews have plenty of them: Star Wars, sets, knights-and-castles sets, Super Heroes sets, monsters sets, pirates sets, etc. I think these Lego sets somewhat stifle creativity – they are more of a puzzle to be assembled. Sure, there’s something to be said for practicing fine motor skills. But having a finished product to build limits the choices for these ‘toys’.
And this may be a stretch, but I think these sets are indicative of an educational system that tells kids what they should learn from or take away from an experience – “THIS and only this is what you should learn from xxx. There’s one ‘correct’ goal and you can see the picture of it on the box. We’ve done the thinking and creating for you already.”
February 19th, 2013 at 10:41 am
Istvan, I think you make a great point about the Lego sets of today. My sons have many of these sets. They love building the models, but I am constantly trying to encourage them to create something from their imagination. When they do build something that is not ‘scripted’ you can tell that they get a real rush out of it.
February 19th, 2013 at 11:10 am
Istvan, that is a great observation. I wonder how much of such potential stifling of creativity is related to personality. For example, my older son will build those kits, but after a few days, take them apart whereby the pieces get added to the big bin and are repurposed for whatever he wants and can imagine. My younger son never wants to take the kit that he put together apart (mostly if it was a really nice one that he wanted). He sees them as final products to be displayed… and I think possible that is what Lego marketing may be banking on… getting parents to buy kit after kit rather than those kids going into a larger imaginative creation stockpile. Whatever the case may be, I do think there is something to your observation and concern here. As parents, we have a role in playing, I think… in modeling creative play and construction… in encouraging our children to start from scratch… and yes, even to take apart those kit final products and repurpose them.
Like many aspects of technology that do impact behavior and culture, it is easy to simply lay culpability on the technology (and the marketing) while forgetting that as humans, parents, models,.. we play a role in how we respond and how we help those in our care to respond. We need to be willing to get on the proverbial floor with our kids and get our hands dirty with them – whether it be with Lego, social media, paining, music, sports,…
As my kids have gotten older, I think I’ve made the mistake of letting them build on their own without getting my hands dirty with them.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Dr. Ransom: I agree that personality plays a part in which type of set appeals to kids and that Lego is banking on parents buying set after set after set. And I’m definitely not laying the blame on the company – a company’s got to what a company’s got to do. And they sell what WE buy, right?
I suppose I drew the analogy to classroom/education/life-in-general creativity because I am having a difficult time recently with coming to terms with mandated standards and setting goals for kids (they need to learn THIS, not that!), while we sometimes forget the truly open-ended inquiry model, the process not the outcome, the end product. I think BOTH are important and we too often focus on the latter at the expense of the former. I’d add that I’m sure some personalities are more comfortable with creativity than others, but…. I am reminded of the TED talk from Seth Godin (http://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc), where he extols us as educators and as members of society to ask “What are schools for?” I’m really, really struggling with this idea recently.
Finally, it saddens me to know how many adults have forgotten the joys of playing (with the demands on our time of “adult life”) and that we model this for our young. And I’d say that many of us recognize that loss: we smile and perhaps longingly wish we had time for that when we see other adults playing. Personally, I’m NEVER going to stop getting my hands dirty! You can pry my toys out of my cold, dead hands!
February 19th, 2013 at 1:55 pm
Couldn’t stop thinking about this: “where he extols us as educators and as members of society to ask”. Extol is definitely the wrong word.
What word was I looking for?
February 19th, 2013 at 8:34 pm
I think the word you were looking for was possibly “exhort”?
I like your thinking here, and your observations and feelings are right on, I think. Sometimes we get so caught up with “teaching” that we forget about “learning” in the process. We get so focused on outcomes, on standards, on ratings and scores, on rankings… that we loose the wonder and humanity that so naturally belongs to the process of learning.
I think you’d enjoy this short video clip on connected learning:
https://vimeo.com/37639766
February 19th, 2013 at 10:42 pm
(a) That is the word I was looking for!
(b) The video you shared describes precisely the questions I am continuously asking myself and struggling with as I go through my graduate program. Connie Yowell hits the nail squarely on the head for me at 2:50, when speaking about focusing on content/outcomes v. the learner: “How do you create a need to know in a kid?”
February 20th, 2013 at 8:52 am
Yes, exactly. That is one of the ideas that stood out for me as well. It requires a completely different approach than one of “covering” curriculum. It requires a much more student-centered, project-based approach to learning, where learning is situated within rich and interesting contexts and where students have a wide variety of tools and learning resources at their disposal to create meaningful things that represent their world and the concepts that they are exploring. Colleague of mine, Gary Stager, writes about this fairly frequently and passionately. If you look through his blog beyond his latest post here, http://stager.tv/blog/?p=3032 , you’ll find this as a thread throughout.
Along the same lines, friend and colleague Chris Lehmann, principal of Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, just published a post titled “School Must Be Real Life” http://practicaltheory.org/blog/ . Read the 3 or 4 posts that came before that one, too, as he unpacks some important ideas regarding the place of computers in schools.
Although such thinking may seem rare, there is a growing cadre of educators working hard to create this counter-narrative. Many are on Twitter as well, sharing ideas, resources… having conversation,… (nudge nudge)