It all started with a piece from the NY Times Review section titled “Let the Kids Learn Through Play.”
New York Times Opinion piece.
Curious, we stopped to give it a read through. The head scratcher is why the discussion is centered around “kids” with an emphasis on pre-schoolers and kindergarteners.
It is time for an active exploration breakout — make it rated “E” for everyone, because every can benefit from more “play” and active exploration on a daily basis.
The didactic approach reminds us of Charlie Brown’s teacher (lots of wah wah wah wah wah), which means the receiving party probably isn’t learning anything.
Truly didactic.
The words just wash over like ocean waves hitting the shore.
The Opinion piece, by David Kohn, mentions how teacher-led learning (AKA didactic) can impact the 21st century citizen:
“…that kind of education will fail to produce people who can discover and innovate, and will merely produce people who are likely to be passive consumers of information, followers rather than inventors. Which kind of citizen do we want for the 21st century?
Curious, we decided to Google the phrase “active exploration.” The results seemed very academia-focused. We’d like to change that thinking. In fact, what we’ve been touting in these AWSI Musings is a move for more proactive exploration leading to serendipitous discoveries.
And we re-iterate — this is for Everyone.
Our colleague, X, was all over the “grown-ups don’t understand” and “they are too busy with matters of consequence.” He admired the curiosity of children. We say, it is time to ignite the inner child and let that child play — daily!
From “The Little Prince”
If you are a regular reader, this isn’t a surprise or pivot. We’ve always advocated more play and more active exploration.
In Part 2 of this post, you’ll see some of our discoveries that resulted from OUR active exploration.
Thanks for reading! Stay curious!
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