I ‘heard’ something on twitter yesterday that made me stop in my tracks…
“Why do schools do such stainy activities? It’s not like we’re sending them in scrubby clothes! #yeesh”
WOW! From my perspective, I salute the schools actually encouraging “stainy activities”!!! It tells me that they are engaging children, allowing them to experiment and actually LEARN something.
I realize that it’s taking time for schools to understand the obvious… words don’t teach… life experience teaches!
So doesn’t it make sense that we celebrate the schools that are providing life experience… which inevitably leads to messy things? After all, we live on a big dirt ball!
Maybe our kids would be better off if we did send them to school in ‘scrubby’ clothes. I know that during the years I was operating my childcare I asked parents to bring their children in their scrubbiest clothes. That way, none of us, including the children, had to worry about the occassional stain here and there. In fact, I kept a box of pre-stained clothes readily available for any child worried about soiling the clothes they wore from home.
The kids seemed to love it and so did I… that way the focus of our day could be directed to satisfying our curiousity and exploring our world instead of worry about keeping our ‘special’ clothes clean and stain free.
Imagine if we adopted this notion in our schools. Think about the benefits and savings…
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I watched this interesting animation yesterday about changing the education paradigm. It’s well worth the eleven and a half minutes. (I’ve included it below so you can easily watch it yourself. I’d love to hear what you think about it!) It really ramped up my awareness of WHY today’s educational system simply doesn’t work.