Little children have big ideas. If we provide them with the tools, and with the background, and the stories, they will amaze us with their capacity to understand so much more than we realize. The world is inherently interesting to small children–obvious to anyone who has observed a toddler crouched down watching an ant hill or a child making a wish upon a dandelion gone to seed. I am reminded of a paraphrase of Picasso stating that he spent his childhood learning to draw like an adult and his adulthood trying to remember how to draw like a child.

I hate to admit it, after a career in the schoolhouse, but frankly, sometimes we get in the way with our measurements and our drilling for skills development. We are so wedded to measurement and getting things just right that we miss the expansiveness of thought and the possibility of invention. We certainly put obstacles in the way of creativity as we manage the tick tock of the classroom agenda–the systemized movement towards those darned assessments.

What children need more than any other thing in school is time and space. Their growth is as unique as their thumbprints. Their views of the world are broadened by adults who hear their need to know about the big ideas. My little grandson wants to talk about Neptune being a windy planet and elephant seals that molt their entire skin once a year. He is no more curious than any other five-year-old or fifteen-year-old or fifty-year-old–he is all of us before we are weighted down by artificially constructed data points. We are born to learn. However, we are not born to be programmed like bots. Blessings on the children and those who work with them–and thanks to ish and Peter Reynolds.