Meaningful, purposeful learning

As a qualified Occupational Therapist I'm a real believer in the importance of meaning and purpose in the activities that we engage in on a daily basis.  I only have to spend a few minutes with my 11 month old son to see the pleasure this brings - challenging himself to test the very limits of his abilities over and over again, and take huge delight in this learning, whether it's a new hand grip, or a discovery of the power of mimic and laughter, it's a joy to behold.

So at what point does this innate drive get quashed?  And moreover just imagine a childhood without straight-jacketing structures based on grade levels and charting progress as if the numbers were the whole purpose of learning?

I enjoy Richard Gerver's blog and was taken with the emotion of his latest post.  Words aside, we all know instinctively when something is inspiring.  We only resort to words to try and describe the feeling to others who weren't there.  It rarely does the original event justice. . . .'You had to be there!' being an all too often used phrase.  And of course why would it be otherwise?  True moments of inspiration are felt deep, and with all the senses.  If they were able to be simply written down and experienced to the same degree then this would be the death of all live events.  Thankfully words, as wonderful and varied as they are, have yet to fully convey felt moments.

And that's words, never mind numbers (not that I've got anything against numbers per se) but why on earth do our education systems seem drawn like a moth to a light in heading straight for the numeric reduction of learning to a set of numbers.

So as we approach the season of parents evenings and endless 1:1 encounters with teachers informing us that our child is at level 4a, 5b or whatever, let's try to keep sight of the real purpose of education; to inspire and challenge learners to become all they can become in every way that they are possible of becoming.  As long as we recognise that a lot of this potential is something we can't even imagine we might be on the right track.

The expectation for my son as he approaches his first birthday is that his exponential learning is just a phase and soon it will slow down to a manageable pace.  One question. Why?