My last post about building with LEGOs reminded me of a revealing passage in The Power of Play by David Elkind, Ph.D. The following passage comes from the chapter “Toys Aren’t Us”.
The need for hands-on play is now recognized in higher education. In the school of architecture at Stanford University, students are required to play with erector sets as part of the curriculum. Too few students have had actual experience in building real things, which is essential before they begin designing them.
Whoa! Did you catch that? It is fascinating and saddening, yet not surprising, that universities have picked up on this major gap in modern students’ learning. So now, when young school children are being rushed into academics too early, pushed to perform well on irrelevant tests, and deprived opportunities to build and create, university students are being required to build with erector sets and learn what they should have been learning all along!
Elkind gives another example from the dean of the school of engineering at Iowa State University, who believes that people who grew up on farms make the best engineers due to their first-hand knowledge of machines and how they work.
Given that engineering is a career that isn’t going away any time soon, I wonder how these universities can help us shift schools away from irrelevant rote learning (which only prepares kids for tests) and more towards engaging and relevant hands-on play which helps kids become innovative builders and doers.
