Common Core: The Lego Kit of Education
I always hated kits.
My Cub Scout career lasted two meetings. The handbook for knot tying was so much less interesting than my own efforts to hang the dog from a low branch, only to have the slipknot slip. I wasn't an animal abuser. He was the only nearby heavy object with a collar. Fortunately, my knot experimentation came to fruition later, when I learned how to suspend a backpack with cheese in it from a tree branch so as to save my dinner from the bears. I invented the clove hitch. (Although modesty requires that I admit that I was probably not the first).
I hated model airplanes. I did like the smell of the glue, so my dislike of the kits probably saved me from a serious addiction. Anything with numbered parts and instructions continues to irritate me. When assembling various toys and appliances over the years, I try to put things together by sight and logic and refer to instructions only when stymied. I know . . . it's stupid. Kits and instructions are convenient and save time and trouble.
But not in education.
It's a lovely thing to have childhood biases confirmed. My innate inclination was affirmed by the recent report on the relative benefits of Lego kits vs. Lego "free play."The findings were not surprising to me from either an innocent child or skeptical educator point of view. Children who play with piles of Legos, inventing and building as they wish, exhibit far more long-term creativity than children who build things from Lego kits. It is clear that rearranging Legos from a messy pile is a better learning experience than working from a kit with directions (unless you're in a hurry and hope to use the finished Lego product as a household appliance).
In the political cacophony over the Common Core, this fundamental understanding is seldom, if ever, heard. The Common Core and other iterations of standardized expectations and assessments turn the powerful joy of discovery and experimentation into the model airplane kits of 21st century education policy. (Unfortunately, the glue part too, as too many adolescents self-medicate to avoid the tedium and stress of current school practice.)
Most folks who study child development recognize the importance of play. This is widely understood - if not broadly enough applied - in early childhood education. But as is true of most things in education, a little understanding is turned into a lot of kits. In our commercialized educational culture, the simple idea of play is monetized, with very intentionally designed materials and sequences of "play" packaged in colorful, highly promoted "innovations." This is profitable, but unnecessary. Good nursery schools, pre-schools and kindergartens provide raw materials with which small children construct knowledge, exercise the fantastic and create marvels that adults might never imagine.
This understanding of discovery, exploration and imagination is endangered in today's early education environment, threatened by pre-academic work and developmentally inappropriate expectations. That's bad enough, but discovery, Common Core: The Lego Kit of Education | Steve Nelson: