Destruction of the Natural Learning Chain
I am a big fan of Peter Gray, a psychologist known for his work on the interaction between education and play, and for his evolutionary perspective on psychology theory. He is an advocate of a form of education called democratic education, which saw its implementation in the Sudbury Valley school in the US. The school has been around for many decades, proving over and over again that kids do not fail at life if allowed to freely choose what and how they wish to learn about the world.
One-age vs mixed-age approaches
One aspect of the Sudbury Valley education model is allowing kids to engage in mixed-age activities. It seems strange to emphasize that they are allowed to do so, but that is exactly what the modern school system tries to avoid. Kids in traditional schools are strictly segregated according to age, resulting in kids having the bulk of their experience interacting with other kids that are born the same year they were.
The result of such restrictions are that the children do not have much opportunity to engage in meaningful play with children that are older or younger than they are. I remember in my pre-school years playing with all age groups in my neighbourhood, something that dwindled down when school started. In school, I was put in rather homogenic context, not to mention discouraged from play as an activity.
The tribe
If I lived in a, let’s say, prehistoric tribal setting, my community would, ideally, consist of all age groups, not only children, but also adults. The childhood experience would not be shaped by school, and the activities that I would engage in would take many forms, involve any person that shared the same interest I had at that moment. I imagine myself learning from older children, them learning from the adults, but also being in a position where my experience would benefit the younger children. I would have someone (not to intimidating) to look up to, and at the same time serve as a role model to the ones that are little less experienced.
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A chain of experiences would form, translating and transferring from the adult world to the youngest member of the group. Each member of the group would be exposed to a whole range of information every day, only taking in pieces that are deemed important, and that are understandable at the stage of development that the child is in.
Consequences of the modern ways
Few things come to mind that could be a damaging result of doing away with age diversity in childhood:
Learning became difficult and intimidating.
The school setting consists of indisputable adult authority figures, and children who are supposed to make a conscious effort to jump to the required level of knowledge passed down by the adults. Learning from other children, incrementally, while feeling safe by ways of play, becomes unimportant and discouraged. Not only has learning become hard work from what was a natural process, but this is not the optimal way to go about it. There are many studies (some that look at language acquisition at an early age) that show that children learn best from other children, and that they are naturally attuned to other children much more than they are to adults.
Critical thinking and intrinsic motivation are wiped out.
Teaching critical thinking at a traditional school is ironic, to put it mildly. A natural learning environment, where the child is free to engage in any activity that they deem interesting (from Latin interesse ‘differ, be important’) at that moment, shapes a child that can develop a sound, connected worldview based on the sum of their experience. Their context, the children they engage with, help to slowly build this worldview, giving the child time to reflect, which is the basis of critical thinking. In the school setting, what is truly interesting is unimportant, because all of the important values have been chosen and defined by the adults in advance.
Children’s self-esteem and identity suffers.
There is a great sense of pride and self-esteem that you get from being in the position of the teacher or helper. The many years that kids spend in school, being taught by others, rids them of feeling of having much importance in their microcosm. They are forever behind in their knowledge of the world, never ahead. Their sense of identity and sense of where they stand in the world are rendered lopsided.
There are many more consequences to the limited-age group politic of education, I’m sure, as it is always when natural ways are artificially changed.
There is also that lurking feeling I always get when thinking about education: that these specific choices made to be implemented by governments on a national level, like compulsory schooling, had an ulterior motive. It scares me to think that everything I have tried to shine a light on in this article has been well known by the original modern educators, and that these changes to childhood, as they saw it, are wanted and beneficial to achieve whatever they sought to achieve with the society they had power over. In any case, we can do better moving forward, and maybe the solution is hidden in our (forgotten) past.
