Freedom to Learn

The roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning

Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College, is a specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology and author of an introductory textbook, Psychology. See full bio

September 17, 2008, Child Development

Comments on "Why We Should Stop Segregating Children by Age: Part II--The Unique Educative Qualities of Age-Mixed Play"

Why We Should Stop Segregating Children by Age: Part II--The Unique Educative Qualities of Age-Mixed Play

By Peter Gray on September 17, 2008 in Freedom to Learn

Age-mixed play is more playful than is same-age play. When children who are all nearly the same age play a game, competitiveness can interfere with playfulness. This is especially true in our current culture, which puts so much emphasis on winning . . . In contrast, when children who differ widely in age play together, the focus shifts from that of beating the other to that of having fun. They play the game more joyfully, in a more relaxed manner, modifying the rules in ways to make it both fun and challenging for all involved. A playful mood facilitates creativity, experimentation, and the learning of new skills . . . Read More

Children teach each other

Submitted by Linda on September 17, 2008 - 7:11pm.

Hello Peter Grey! I've been enjoying reading your blog.

I think you would find the following video interesting. It talks about how children learn best in groups and that they can teach themselves.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html

Sugata Mitra's work

Submitted by Peter Gray on September 18, 2008 - 2:03am.

Linda, thank you for bringing this video to everyone's attention. I had not seen it before; it's great. I am very much aware of Sugata Mitra's work on what he calls "minimally invasive educaation" (his hole-in-the-wall experiments). I've read his academic articles and have had some email exchange with him. I plan to devote a blog essay to his work soon. Mitra's work demonstrates beautifully the power of children, in groups, to educate themselves without adult intervention (except the minimal intervention of providing the tool, in this case the computer). Concerning age mixing, it's interesting, and not surprising, to see that the younger kids often learn first and then teach the older ones.

bullying more common in age mixed play?

Submitted by Lou Lieb on September 18, 2008 - 3:16am.

i asked a friend to read your last essay on age mixed play, and this is what she wrote:

"This means my small daughter (age 3) gets pushed around by older kids. I'll take age-mixed play only if it's CLOSELY supervised. Otherwise, the bullies take over. Exception: some older girls can be quite gentle with younger girls. But if a "big boy" shows up (and that's basically any boy over the age of 2--Naomi is smaller than they are), WATCH OUT. This article was written perhaps by someone who enjoyed recess and has no idea what a nightmare smaller people (including me) experience during "age-mixed play."
"...I was a small child (and am still a small adult) and let me tell you, the fear of big kids just JOSTLING me accidentally was a real thing. No, I'm not traumatized or anything, but let's just say that recess with a mix of ages was a dreaded time."

i realize that Sudbury Valley and similar schools have extensive protections against bullying. however, the question remains: is bullying more common in age mixed environments where those protections are not in place?

Bullying

Submitted by Peter Gray on September 19, 2008 - 4:36am.

Lou, good question. Like your friend, I take bullying to be a very serious problem. In my Sept. 3 post on the qualities of the ideal environment for self-directed learning I included "freedom from bullying" as crucial. I will talk more about bullying in two weeks, in a post on the role of age mixing in social and moral development, and your question here leads me to think that a full post on bullying might be a good idea at some future date. Let me now, however, outline how I would respond to your friend. 1. First, your friend's concern about her (his?) 3-year-old daughter being hurt by other little kids in unsupervised play is certainly legitimate. I, too, think that an adult should be closely present during play among such small kids. Sudbury Valley and other schools like it don't accept children under four years old, and hunter-gatherer bands generally keep kids close to adults until they reach the age of about 4 years old. That seems to be the age when children have the capacity for self-control that is required to avoid danger. I wouldn't put this concern into the realm of "bullying," however. With little kids, I think the problem is one of their not having the degree of self-control needed to keep them from hurting one another (or from getting into danger in other ways). My guess is that your friend realizes this, as indicated by the mention of "accidental jostling." And boys, on average, develop this capacity for self-control later than do girls. 2. The settings that I am talking about, where age mixing seems to greatly reduce bullying or even eliminate it completely, have the following characteristics: (a) Age mixing occurs over a wide span of ages--there are big kids who are much bigger than the little kids. (b) The kids all know one another and identify with one another. In such settings--which includes Sudbury Valley type schools, hunter-gatherer bands, kids at extended family picnics, and close neighborhood groups (of the type that sadly are rare today), my observation is that the older kids are very protective of the younger kids and step in if they see anyone bullying someone else. A warning from a somewhat older kid about bullying is, in my observations, far more effective than a warning from an adult. 3. I agree that recess at conventional schools can be places of much bullying. For some kids, recess is a time of terror if there are no adult supervisors around. I don't know if this is more or less true in "age mixed" recesses at such schools than in age-segregated recesses. It seems to me quite possible that "age mixing" in this case increases bullying, because (a) the kids don't really differ very much in age (it's probably two or three adjoining grades having recess together); (b) the kids are coming from age-segregated classes, so they don't know the kids from the other classes--which means that they act toward them as if they were invaders; and (c) the age-graded school confounds age with status. A third grader thinks he is a "big shot" compared to a second grader, and may be intent on proving it.

The younger kids teaching the older ones

Submitted by Linda on September 19, 2008 - 12:21pm.

Firstly, I apologize for misspelling your name above.

The concerns about the bullying aspect is valid, but I do agree that it would not be such a problem in the tribal- or family-like setting you described.

Regarding the younger teaching the older (as pointed out in Sugata Mitra's video), do you think that is due to the fact that the younger the child, the more eager and open they are?

Do you think this applies to all of us in general, and not only children? - the more information that is pre-existing in the brain, the more biases we accumulate, and more reluctant we are to accept new ideas?

The child-like wonder, the child-like mind that we so often refer to... the blank canvas... do you think it is true that the less one knows, the faster they can grasp new information?

And I may be reaching, but here are two more TED videos about education that made me think:

http://www.mindblink.org/2008/09/learning-to-shift-our-preconceived_10.html

http://www.mindblink.org/2008/08/sir-ken-robinson-do-schools-kill.html

Child-like wonder

Submitted by Peter Gray on September 21, 2008 - 4:05am.

Linda, thanks again. You've given me a lot to think about. I greatly enjoyed these TED videos. One thing that is missing from these speeches, however--and from many similar speeches I have heard--is how to solve the problems that are referred to. There is wide recognition that education is not working well, but too often the message that people walk away with is that we can fix things by tinkering with our present system. For example, people conclude that we just need teachers who know how to challenge students' existing mental models; or we just need to add new courses, such as dance, to the curriculum. My solution is that we need to get out of children's way, education-wise. We need to provide the opportunities but not the impetus or the direction. Kids are built to learn and we need to let them do it. Part of providing the opportunities is providing an age-mixed environment.

Concerning young kids teaching older ones, another realm where that commonly occurs is in language learning, especially in the situation where a group or family are suddenly immersed in a new language environment. Perhaps the kind of technology learning that Mitra observes, in learning to operate the computer, makes use of parts of the brain that are involved in language learning.

However, I also agree with your point about the value of coming to a new realm of endeavor without too many preconceptions about it. It is interesting to note that many great discoveries and inventions in science have been made by people who were new to the field, too naive to know that what they were trying to do was impossible.

Proximal Development

Submitted by Andrea on September 22, 2008 - 5:44pm.

The ability to comment on the proximal development installment seems to be disabled. I am replying to that posting.

As an example of proximal development from my own life, I would like to submit to you my personal development. Beginning with the first time I was tested (at age 6), I consistently tested at five grades above my dictated grade level. Now, I am of above average intelligence and an IQ test at 12 placed me in the exceptional range. I do not credit my grade level skills to this (or simply this).

See, I have a brother that is five years older than myself. I recall many times during my childhood my brother coming home and teaching me what he had learned in school that day. My own school experience was boring, to say the least as I entered first grade with all the appropriate knowledge for a fifth grader.

Sadly, when my brother reached his junior year in high school, he became less interested in imparting his knowledge upon me and then he was all to soon off to college. My own time in the governmental institution came to a "disappointing" finish as I graduated high school with a 1.25 GPA, in the bottom 15% of my class.

I've attempted college a few times, but at some point (between middle and high schools) I lost my zest for learning. I still have a strong drive to learn, but feel little motivation to actually accomplish anything. Perhaps because I expect it to look like a class? I haven't tried a mentoring version of acquiring new skills. That may work. :)