PLAYING CHILDREN!!!!!

                                                                                 

In my podcast episode entitled “Playful inventions and explorations” I listened to the speech of developmental psychologist Edith Ackermann  who is in the opinion that with their boundless curiosity, fertile imagination, and natural mastery of the art of self-directed learning, children have much to teach adults about creativity and innovation.

She was mainly impressed by Jean Piaget.She speaks about relationships between play, imagination, creativity, innovation and design.There are so many definitions of the word play that one  just will get lost when trying to define it.

Children may not have much experience or knowledge but they are sure born” with a knack to do the right thing”.They are experts of self-directed learning.Children are always busy figuring out their place in the world as a traveller, a newcomer that has to convey needs,deciding what to bring along and what to leave behind, decide who to trust and not to trust.For travellersit’s like a reexperiencing ways of handling uncertain situations.So we are to learn lots of things from children, how to evolve in the world that is complex and unpredictable for them.

At the beginning children are very fused with their world. There is no distinction between themselves and the world. And as they grow they become both socialized and individualized simultaneously. That’s why they like to play hide and seek very much. When children play hide and seek they just  escape and are isolated but with the same time they have the hope to come back and be always happy.

As they grow older and their experience expands the concept of now enlarges, they start to draw lessons from the past to project into the future.

Children have very coherent belief systems.Their belief systems are stubborn and are nor easy to shake.It’s not to say that children do not change or are not influenced when they interact with the world, their views are evolving but they are evolving almost a logic of their own.

Teaching is always indirect. People always assimilate what we teach them accorging to their belief systems.Learners need leads and offerings but they want to discover by themselves.

Plays are invented realities. It’s very peculiar to children to invent the reality of their own. They create a world and become inhabitants of that world. Role plays are very common to plays: The child says:I’m a papa,he is  talking with his doll, puts himself in other person’s shoes.