Isn’t it a wonderful thing when you witness someone doing something they were just designed to do? Think of masters of their art: musicians, actors, singers, dancers. Or in sports, think of people like Michael Jordan. There seems to be a match between who they are and what they’re doing, such that the lines between the person and the activity get blurred. You stop seeing a person doing something and start seeing a single phenomenon, beautiful in its purity. There’s no part of the art that isn’t engaged by the person and there’s no part of the person that isn’t engaged by the art. They’re doing what they were made to do. I’m sure you can think of lots of examples.
In every case that I can think of, in addition to the aspect of full engagement, another essential element is play, or playfulness. This is sometimes more explicit in the case of improvisational arts. But even in highly structured contexts, such as a pianist performing a piece of classical music or an actress performing her lines, there is so much that can be improvised, if not the notes or the words themselves. The master has a freedom that they’ve built up from their talent and discipline and hard work, such that now it looks effortless, and they can experiment in the moment, playing with possibilities, trying things out, exploring new pathways.
Another aspect: seemingly endless reserves of energy. These performers just keep on going and going. Encore after encore. I have a neighbor who is studying tap dancing in New York City. He was made for his art. I can’t believe how long he can keep dancing in a single evening. His shirt might be drenched with sweat, but he keeps going and going, drawing energy from the enthusiastic crowd.
So how does one reach one’s full potential? How can we help kids have experiences like this? How can we find out what activities, or art forms, or sports, or careers will match up with who they are? More important, how will they find out what fits them, what they enjoy doing, what they’re good at doing?
First off, practice makes perfect. More specifically, if you can create experiences like the above for yourself, you should keep on doing it and let it develop fully into the particularities of who you want to be and what you want to do. If we can identify moments like the above in the lives of children, we should see to it that they keep on with it. They’re on the right path to mastery. They’ve captured the structure of the experience, even if they’re still exploring what details will ultimately work best for them as they approach adulthood.
Article comments
1 - Bob Lloyd
I think you're right that schools constrain kids sometimes in undesirable ways, especially in steering them into the acquisition of skills that are deemed important for work. Unfortunately, they really are important for work. Literacy and numeracy are essential, not something we can assume kids will pick up for themselves. It is more than likely that these essential skills won't compete for attention successfully with the exercise of play.
I've seen, and taught, kids who have been through a very free, play-centred, education and they were several years behind in literacy and numeracy, so wilful that they couldn't apply themselves to anything for more than a few minutes, and so self-centred that they always put themselves first.
So you're right that we need to channel that inventiveness and creativity, but we also have to temper it with the acquisition of basic skills. One damaging aspect of education that I've seen is the relatively arbitrary division of kids into studying either arts or sciences, branding the kids creative or logical from an early age. That arbitrary separation of mental activity is damaging for the kids and limits what they might feel able to do.
Excellent article, very thought-provoking.
2 - Lenz on Learning
Hi Bob, thanks for your comments.
I agree that self-centeredness is not a good thing. Although I have warm feelings about homeschooling (especially "unschooling"), parents have to be careful they don't lead their kids into thinking that they are the center of the world. That's one of the reasons I'm so big on Sudbury schools--where kids are not only responsible for their own education, but they're held accountable to following the rules and being respectful of everyone around them.
If we apply the same schedule and criteria to all kids, there will clearly be kids who are "behind" in certain skills. But the idea that all kids should learn to read at the same age assumes that they grow at the same pace. Not a good assumption. I blame illiteracy on premature attempts to force kids to read (and the negative psychological impacts such attempts have). You can't get very far without learning to read (at least in today's world). Kids are not dumb; they can see that.
Re: "applying oneself." There's a huge difference between applying yourself to something you're interested in (and see value in) versus applying yourself just because someone told you it's important. Kids have good BS detectors, but most have succumbed to just swallowing the BS.
3 - Nina
Great article, thank you. I admire your courage to speak out so firmly about an idea our society finds hard to be open to. As a culture we have a death-grip on our belief that kids must be taught x, y, and z or we're all doomed. Those industrialists did a good job of selling their agenda to the masses! I am sure more and more people will decide to give up on compulsory education, and Sudbury and unschooling will eventually meet with less objection, we just have to be patient and let the outcomes speak for themselves. My oldest is 16, has been at the Hudson Valley Sudbury School for 7 years, and was unschooled previously. He's never had to study or take tests. He decided he wanted to be a lifeguard for summer employment, took the course and passed all the tests easily! He did it all without reminders or help. He just recently got a 100 on his driver's permit test after studying on his own for that. No one has ever "taught" him how to read or do arithmetic or how to study for a test, and he is competent in all those things, and is a whiz on computers - especially with Photoshop. All this without formal instruction - entirely by his own motivation and effort. He has demonstrated that he can learn whatever he wants to learn, whether it is on his own or by seeking assistance. We have been underestimating our children in this society for so long that we no longer trust in what is, in fact, natural - kids naturally want to learn and to challenge themselves, unless it has been trained out of them.