Why education should be messy!

“Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand.”

John Gay, 17th Century poet

Life is messy. It’s not compartmentalised into 10 or more subjects that we do for an hour a day. It’s challenging, it’s rewarding and at times it’s simply bloody difficult, but to get the most out of it, you need to get out of your comfort zone. It’s the same with learning. Central to this is letting kids learn by doing, educator John Dewey wrote: “The school must represent present life — life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground.”

We need to arrange the curriculum around big ideas, questions, and conundrums that resonate with young people. What does learning look like in this model? Well it could be to let kids travel to places, work with mentors, inquire about the world around them and perhaps use modern technology to empower them to learn whatever they want!

Teach them ‘how to learn.’

In a summary published on Edutopia, Brigid Barron and Linda Darling-Hammond reviewed numerous studies and found that:

1. Active-learning practices have a more significant impact on student performance than any other variable, including student background and prior achievement.
2. Students learn more deeply when they can apply classroom-gathered knowledge to real-world problems, and when they take part in projects that require sustained engagement and collaboration.
3. Students are most successful when they are taught how to learn as well as what to learn.

Experimentation!

In very young children, messy play, in that play that involves trying things out and experimenting, is key to cognitive development. It encourages children to set their own challenges, to problem solve and find out about cause and effect. As they get older, this shouldn’t change. Messy play, or discovery through doing, is central to the ‘Maker Movement’ which fosters respect, collaboration and empathy while encouraging independent thought to allow new ways of thinking and doing things. And, guess what? That’s exactly the kind of young people we want to bring into this world.

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This Summer we’re running over 60 workshops for young people in creative technology, from videogame design to squishy circuits and all taking place in our Brighton HQ. Check out more by heading to our homepage and scrolling down! Click here for more.