Why No One Needs Another Course on Plastic Hammers
Updated: 8 hours ago
Notes on toys and learning and reality
I have a lot to think aloud about. Much of it comes from things I've already been thinking about for a while. I keep coming back to metaphors that have become familiar to me, but it might be helpful for me to spell them out here so I can reference and link back to them while I think around them in other posts.
Babies and pram toys
We assume so much, don't we? I've always thought so. We take for granted our ways of seeing have traction, and our connections with the past are a thing.
We give voice to the nature of reality. And we think our words make sense and matter.
Take babies.
A baby sitting in their pram with a series of objects threaded on elastic in front of them. Plastic shapes that squeak and spin and are nice to stroke and…
Or out of the pram, given a red plastic ball. They try to eat it. They throw it, laughing. Someone brings it back.
They throw it screaming, along with a plate of spaghetti.
Throw it and call because now its gone and where's everyone.
In doing so, they're learning language. Physics. Maths. The whole curriculum. Quantum Physics. How to drive a car — the very basic basics (gravity, friction, collision). How to be a leader — who comes when you yell, who doesn't come when you yell.
Rocket science, football and the rest. Oh, and identity.
Faith.
Hmm.
Have we stopped playing yet?
Or do we just think we have?
Playgroup and plastic hammers
Day one. They gave me a hammer and nails. All plastic. I was screaming, by the way. No one had told me I was getting left there. On the floor, facing the door, given a hammer and nails. Bang, bang, bang, then turn it over again. What fun. But my dad used a real hammer, real nails, and real wood.
Made sheds, boxes, shelves, and I helped him sometimes.
Watched him, anyway. He said it was helping. I think he liked the company.
What's the point of plastic being hammered, turned over and hammered again. Mental chewing gum. A repetitive playpen. More useful to them than me. I refused.
School and shapes made only for school
What's this?
Plastic shapes.
What are they for?
Learning tesselation.
Where did they come from?
They belong here at school.
Yes, but where are they actually used?
What were they made for? School.
Yes, but — what were they really made for?
School. Made. Designed for. School.
What—? How— surely… no one spends their day at work making these…?
And — why are you teaching us to use something we'll only ever find at school?
As a trainee teacher
Wow, that's imaginative! What course did you learn it on?
No course. Made it up.
No course? Well we call that 'creative curriculum'. You could run a course on it. In fact, would you, please?
Uh, what do you mean, run a course on it. What are you seeing I'm doing that you don't do?
You're using what's around you — anything you can find — to teach life.
Er, Isn't that just — life??
Masters Research (Education)
Schools that teach phonics, for example —
versus schools that (used to) provide books, books, books, books, books… Children learning maths from classroom hypothetical examples —
versus children that learn maths from working in the family shop, as part of family life on a Saturday…
Bible thinking
God disciplines those He loves. Calls us His children.
Perhaps we are living — not a simulation, but not the real thing entirely…
Perhaps we are living in an 'anthropomorphic environment' designed to interface us with the learning conditions of spiritual reality that we could not possibly grasp.
So much more to say.
