Structured v. creative learning
This struck me as an appropriate follow-up piece to the news post below regarding left and right brain activity. I mentioned that I thought that it was possible to learn to be both creative and utilitarian simultaneously. In fact, those that learn this skill tend to be more productive and come up with more innovative solutions that those who merely “think inside the box” (to reuse that horribly overused phrase). But I think I might have jumped the gun, and pre-emptied myself just a little bit. Children think creatively, using both sides of their brains; they are not bounded by an artificial reality — conformity to social standards dictating the use of a given object for a given task.
‘Children of this age learn to make friends as well as to use their imagination through role play,’ says Dr Rogers. ‘We know that they are capable of sustained and complex imaginative play and that capturing and engaging their interest is essential. Unfortunately, pressures on time and space, as well as the need to teach literacy, means that playing at shops, pirates and hospitals is difficult to fit into the timetable.’
It struck me that it would make an interesting experiment to take 50 children and conduct a longitudinal study, comparing “traditional” teaching methods where there are structured recess breaks and classroom times to a more free-flowing approach to education: allowing children to work or play as they say fit with minimal structured time to only teach children the absolute basics, such as reading. It would be interesting to see after ten years which group of individuals has “accomplished” more. Who are the better readers and mathematicians? Allow children to explore what they like on their own time and guide their own learning. I have no doubt that doing this would result in children who are exceptionally gifted in certain areas while astonishingly deficient in others. But what would the net result be of the group as a whole? By not establishing any status quo, would the free-wheeling group be more “capable” than those in a structured environment, or would we end up with a group of lazy kids who don’t want to learn or do anything except play?
Anyway, I’ve rather gotten off topic, but the study did show some other interesting aspects regarding the difference between the sexes.
The favourite theme for both boys and girls was ‘playing castles,’ although their drawings were strikingly different. The boys drew gory pictures of fighting and chopping off people’s heads, while the girls focused on princesses and ‘mums and dads’ and often embellished their pictures with colour and detail ‘to make it look prettier.’
The research highlights a number of gender differences in play. For instance, although girls sometimes combined traditional and less traditional roles, such as mum and astronaut, they more often chose to play domestic/maternal or nurturing and emotional caretaking roles. Boys, on the other hand, preferred to be robbers, superheroes or policemen in predominately action roles, despite teachers’ efforts to ‘de-gender’ role play.
I wonder if this is “hard-wired,” or if it’s a result of observing parental interaction and social dynamics at home when they are not at school. To answer that question (ethically), I think, will require studies of those children raised by same-sex parents. I believe that children raised by two parents of the same sex offers a whole host of insights into child behavior and development not previously available to researchers.
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I am interested in the gender-specificity of the roles children choose in their games. In considering the question of whether they are ‘hard-wired’ or environmental, consider the human animal in a natural or feral state. Males would naturally gravitate towards hunting and other aggressive, defensive, supportive roles because of their greater strength. Conversely females would bear children, and along with a physically weaker body would tend to fill less of the aforementioned ‘male’ roles. This much we know already, or intuitively, so why do I say it? Because it is an important example of the effect that taking away one source of influence in attempt to isolate natural behaviour might expose another — in this example our feral children are free from social influence but are forced into gender-specific roles by necessity. I like your idea of examining the behaviour and gender-identity of children of same-sex couples; however one must be wary of the influence of having progressive homosexual parents and the social influence that would bring. To my mind this might be a much stronger influence on gender identity than conventional parenting as homosexuality is intrinsically a large distortion of normal gender roles. A study involving the children of single parents might be interesting though, although I’m sure that too would have its pitfalls.
Comment by Dom Howells — September 8, 2005 @ 3:59 pm
My partner (wife) and I are lesbians who have, from the start, chosen to home-school — mostly because of the quality of local schools, but also because when we first looked around we found that some educators were less than receptive to treating two women as equally “moms”.
The end result is this, our 7-year-old son has had the two of us as exclusive company for nearly all of his socialization (other than the rather superficial and infrequent engagement with kids at the playground). And, without really intending to, we’ve consistantly left him on his own to come up with gender ideals.
It has been fascinating to see how his gender-identity has shown itself: his interests tending towards more traditional male-interests (he likes military history and watching NBA games, etc.), but shows a quite unusual emotional sensitivity and expressiveness — typically considered more feminine. We’ve always tried hard to be supportive of both his interests and his emotional life, however they might develop
Of course, like all of us, his personality displays an impenetrable fusion of genetic predispositions and socialization. So there’s no way to rule out his simply being biologically disposed towards a certain emotional manner.
But I do begin to wonder if we wouldn’t find, generally, a far greater variety of masculine-feminine “mixes” in people if they began life, like our son, without such a steady diet of normative gender guidance.
I’ve got no theoretical axe-to-grind, in spite of being a lesbian ;) I just find the way he’s turning out to be beautifully quirky, and I start to see the possible virtues of being left alone long enough to develop a self that is unconstrained by the usual social pressures.
Sorry to go on here; just thought my experiences seemed relevant.
- Lauren
Comment by Lauren D — February 12, 2008 @ 2:22 am