And I began to wonder, where do we see this pure joy in our schools? When do we see kids just being kids without us intervening?
We see far too little joy in our schools, whether school is face-to-face or virtual.
Joy. SpeEdChange.at.Medium | by Ira David Socol | Age of Awareness | Medium
Instead of metric fixation, joy fixation. Learning goes where intrinsic motivation leads.
Measurement kills curiosity, joy, and intrinsic motivation.
Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”.
We might argue that a ‘traditional’ school, even for the students who say they love and do well in it, is a process of limiting learning and an interference in the learning of life skills. And, joy is often very hard to find. It also limits curiosity, and curiosity is not just the essential ingredient in childhood and adolescence, but a huge component of joy as well. Trying something and getting it for the first time is always joyful — and it is always the cognitive reward for being curious.
Joy. SpeEdChange.at.Medium | by Ira David Socol | Age of Awareness | Medium
Step 1 of motivating learning: Restore curiosity and joy. Stop measuring everything.
What if all the reductionist scientism of “the science of” frameworks were replaced with “the joy of”? That change of framing would serve us far better, including when teaching STEM.
So, as we reimagine our learning structures, let’s make sure we build around joy, and build around curiosity. Because, joy is what all of our children need.
Joy. SpeEdChange.at.Medium | by Ira David Socol | Age of Awareness | Medium
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