Peter Gray - Self-Directed Learning Fundamentals

Video made by Stomping Ground. An overnight camp dedicated to self-direction and growing empathy and possibility through play Dr. Peter Gray is an evolutionary psychologist that studies how people learn and a huge advocate of play. Learn more about his work at Peter Gray Chicago Ideas week These are the conditions that optimize children ability to educate themselves So the first condition is a clear understanding that education is the children responsibility. When children know that they’re responsible for their education they take that responsibility. When they believe, are lead to believe that someone else is responsible for their education and all they have to do is what they are told then they tend to do that in the minimal way and they don’t take responsibility for their education. Second condition: Unlimited opportunity to play explore and pursue your own interests. Unlimited time, not an hour a day not two hours a day, unlimited time. It takes time to try out different things. It takes time to get board, to overcome boredom. To find your passion and it takes time to become, to really delve into your passion it takes unlimited amount of time. You can’t interrupt that with bells and telling people constantly what to do and expect people to really develop a passion. 3 Opportunity to play with the tools of the culture to really play with the tools of a culture. In a hunter gatherer culture those would be bows and arrows, and knife and fire and digging sticks. In our culture of course the main tool is a computer. And it is not surprising that children everywhere in our culture love to play with the computers. They know in their bones that this is the tool of the culture, and they need to spend a lot of time with it so it becomes in a sense an extension of their own body. Access to a variety of caring adults that are helpers not judges. How important that last part is. Helpers not judges. The last person you want to go to to help you learn something is someone who is evaluating you. Your nervous about that person. That person is a person you go to in the frame of mind of trying to impress that person with how much you know, not to say I really don’t know this and I would like some help with this. By not judging the children the staff members are much more able to be helpers to the children. Free age mixing among children and adolescence. Absolutely key to the school the school would not work if it were children all the same age, because children don’t have much to learn from children the same age. They learn from children who are older and from children who are younger than themselves. 6 . Immersion in a stable, moral, democratic, community. Communities in which every child knows that their ideas and their actions influence the others involved in the community so they are growing up in a setting where the feel responsible not just for themselves but for the community in with in which they are developing and that is an extraordinarily important aspect of education.