Mitchel Resnick’s ‘Lifelong Kindergarten’
At the turn of the millennium, Mitchel Resnick was invited to a conference. Various thinkers were asked, What is the most important invention of the last thousand years? One said the printing press; another, the steam engine; and a third, the lightbulb. Resnick proposed that kindergarten was the most important. An odd response, right? We don’t even tend to think kindergarten was “invented” at all. The first kindergarten was opened in 1837 by German inventor, Friedrich Froebel, and it was a pretty radical departure. Froebel’s innovation was a shift from “broadcast instruction,” as many kids routinely still experience in school, to a more interactive approach. (He even created a set of construction toys to facilitate this.) Today, the idea that 6-year-olds need to move around a lot and play with toys seems like a no-brainer, but look back and recall Little House on the Prairie or Anne of Green Gables – stories showing one-room schoolhouses with all of the kids, little ones included, sitting at desks engaged in broadcast instruction.
In his book and TED Talk, Resnick argues that what we are seeing today is the opposite of what we should be doing. Driven by our desire to get going on academic achievement ever-earlier, kindergarten is once again becoming more broadcast-based and less hands-on. Several years ago, in a book-making project, I noticed that several of my seventh-graders didn’t know how to use scissors, not knowing quite how to even hold them. I mentioned this phenomenon on Facebook, asking my former primary grade colleagues (with a wink) if they’ve stopped doing craft projects. Though I was joking, their responses were not lighthearted. “Yes, I have mostly stopped, and it makes me sick. The academic pressure is so high now. The mandate is that every craft project we do has to have clear academic goals.” This from a kindergarten teacher.
Resnick’s compelling argument is that instead of kindergarten becoming more broadcast-based, everything else – school and the rest of life – should become more like Froebel’s kindergarten, driven by what he calls the Four Ps: Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play. This might be a good time to add that Resnick runs the much-lauded MIT Media Lab. His working group is called “Lifelong Kindergarten.” The Four Ps are the framework in which his students work, constantly iterating through what he calls the Creative Learning Spiral.
“We develop technologies and activities to engage kids in working on PROJECTS based on their PASSIONS in collaboration with PEERS in a PLAYFUL spirit.”
Resnick has worked with Lego to develop their Mindstorm line – lego sets with motors and coding to create working robots and other machines. (I have a whole separate blog post on Legos and Mindcraft, coming soon.) The MIT Media Lab has also developed the Scratch programming language, which has grown into a whole platform and community that fuels connection and iteration as kids work on their projects, share them, offer feedback, refine their work, and on and on.
Of course, all of this supports my growing conviction that school needs to change. Throughout my career, whenever I would get to squeeze in this sort of engaged learning, it was the most excited my kids ever got. And I would confidently say that this was when the most lasting learning occurred. We all know this. Kids will attest to it. Teachers will say they wish they could do it more. Parents will tell us how energized their child is. And most adults will point to example of this kind of learning as their best school experiences. And yet… we seem to lack the confidence and imagination to take the next steps toward making all of school – and life – more like kindergarten.
Look again at that quote. Doesn’t that sound exhilarating? Wouldn’t you have loved school to feel like this most of the time? Have you experienced anything like this recently as an adult? It sounds like it would be a lot of fun.