I used to be sitting on a bench close to a playground merry-go-round watching our three and four-year-olds play. A pair of boys determined they wished a spin. They mounted the equipment, then considered one of them turned to me, “Trainer Tom, you push us.”
I answered, “Sorry, I am busy sitting right here. You may have to seek out another person.”
As the primary boy tried pleading with me, the second stated, “I will get my brother to push us. He likes doing the issues I like,” and jogged off within the course of the place their classmates the place enjoying. He referred to as out to them, “Who will push us?” They ignored him so he returned to the merry-go-round. As he mounted it, he gave it a bit push together with his foot and the 2 boys started turning slowly.
Because the momentum started to die, a few women discovered their technique to the merry-go-round. With out being requested, they determined they have been going to push it “quick.” The boys have been delighted. Working collectively, the women managed to get it in control, then the 2 of them jumped on as nicely. Extra youngsters started to reach in twos and threes, many pushed earlier than leaping on. One of many authentic boys, leaning into it, head tipped again, started to chant, “Oh yeah, it is spin time! Oh yeah, it is spin time!”
The youngsters started leaping on and off as they spun. Lots of them fell to the bottom upon dismount, most doing so deliberately. Often, considered one of them can be trampled as they lay there within the path of the pushers. A few of them cried out in objection, whereas others squealed with delight. It was the sort of wild, breathless enjoyable for which these machines have been designed, even when grownup imposed guidelines too typically forbid it.
They have been studying one thing, as a result of we’re all the time studying one thing after we play. I might write a listing right here of all of the issues I think about they have been studying, or exploring, or discovering. I might put these guesses right into a report of some type. Certainly, if I have been so inclined I’d have already filed dozens of experiences on the kids enjoying collectively on the merry-go-round going again to September. I might then take all these experiences and examine them to at this time’s report and use this information to fake that I do know what they’ve been studying over the course of months. I reckon I might even devise some type of pre and post-test that will enable me to match the kids’s progress, determine those that are behind and assign these poor children some merry-go-round homework so they might meet up with the others. I’d even resolve to rank the kids on numerous measures that I’ve recognized as essential about merry-go-round play, assigning every of them grades based mostly on my evaluation of the place they fall on an arbitrary scale of studying I might devised based mostly on information that I and others have collected over generations. I might then use this information I’ve amassed to plan a merry-go-round curriculum, one that enables me to “educate” youngsters the best way to play on a merry-go-round, think about myself an knowledgeable, seeing to it that every one the kids turned merry-go-round proficient . . .
That is ludicrous, in fact. I might do all of that and never solely would I be no nearer to understanding what these youngsters have been studying, I’d have wasted huge quantities of time that I might have in any other case spent doing one thing extra productive, like scratching my ass. Nobody can ever know what one other particular person is studying. Every of these youngsters on the merry-go-round are studying one thing completely different, one thing distinctive, one thing that applies solely to them and their lives, and even the particular person doing the training typically does not know what they’ve realized, and no quantity of testing, grading, or information assortment will change that.
That is the nice fraud of our academic system, this hubristic notion that adults can one way or the other measure studying, but for generations now we have put youngsters via the processing vegetation we name colleges, marching them into the take a look at rating coal mines, subjecting them to our experiments like lab rats. It is result in a grotesque narrowing and standardization of what we name schooling based mostly not on studying, however on what we are able to most simply measure.
I’m comfy understanding that youngsters are studying as a result of they’re enjoying, and that is sufficient. Certainly, I’ve no selection as a result of to consider in any other case, is to purchase into the lie that anybody can probably know what these youngsters are studying. It could imply that I have to participate in sucking the enjoyment from their lives and I can’t knowingly be a celebration to that.
“Oh yeah, it is spin time!” That is all I have to know.
