Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences has given rise to some remarkable insights and initiatives – almost enough to restore hope for the future of education.
The following, from the conclusion of Playing with the Multiple Intelligences: How Play Makes Them Grow, a research paper by Dr. Scott G. Eberle, Vice-President for Interpretation at The Strong museum of play, published in the Journal of Play (free, online), also reaffirms our belief in the relevance of play to, well, everything. And for those of us who are still engaged in mighty, frequently quixotic struggles to help people make the connections between play, learning and schooling; here are some sharp, well-researched thoughts for your conceptual quiver.
…Play enhances our skills and aptitudes and deepens our talents and capacities by exercising them in concert…And as it happens, studying play has proven key to discovering the ancient connections of mind and body. In fact, we are beginning to understand at the level of neuro-chemistry and neuroanatomy how humans instruct and develop our various talents by playing.
In spite of this revolution, recess withers in our schools, and a scripted curriculum replaces free play. This shift is peculiar since, until about age six, we trust children to learn the most complex human skills such as language, pattern recognition, eye-hand coordination, socializing, and so on—all by way of play.
…Because children learn best when they are interested, curricula should emphasize projects and investigations that spark student curiosity and embrace choices among all the intelligences including activities such as group storytelling, spelling bees, creative-writing exercises, speed sentence diagramming, and debates. Students should write and perform songs, sing in foreign languages, stage dramas, declaim poetry, reenact great trials and battles, imagine counterfactual histories, and compete in geography trivia and current-events competitions. They should play math games, conduct surveys, and count in base two. Teachers and children should engage in film making, designing exhibits and three-dimensional graphics, and solving computer-enabled math games and “braingames.” They should study paradoxes and brainteasers. They should cook, draw, build models, tune a bike, collect insects, and play at a hundred other difficult, instructive, and demanding intellectual errands. Learning, again, “must never be imposed as a task, nor made a trouble.” We should complete the revolution that began in the 1980s as a rebellion against IQ testing. Children should play to learn.
…Play does not merely depend on this kind of sensitivity and mutuality, play fosters it. When the motley, diverse playground crew builds tolerance for give- and-take through rough-and-tumble, it paves the way for a strength that derives from solidarity and understanding: it is easy to forgive a friend. Players hope to prolong the fun. And so by common (often unarticulated) understanding, they agree to sort themselves and restrain themselves. Playful equality figures into their mutual interest. This capacity for sharing play arises in the context of exercising diverse talents through words, sentiments, calculations, actions, tunes, explorations, and visual and spatial representations—the wandering expressions of our ancient endowments, our “multiple intelligences” at play.
“Children should play to learn.” O, yes. O, so very, multiply yes.
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