Children's Habits are Changing - For Better or For Worse?

Lego, in recognition of the 15^th anniversary of its Mindstorms robotics toy, commissioned a study on the transformative changes in children’s play.  While I haven’t read the whole report, the infographic found at http://www.lmsces2013.com provides more than enough food for thought.

My primary concern is that children are spending 20% less time outdoors.  Richard Louv, in LastChild in the Woods, makes a compelling case that children need to be outside for their health and for our collective future.  He makes connections between the rise of Attention Deficit Disorder and the fall of children’s opportunities to connect with nature.  Most telling, he points out that children are just having “less fun” locked in the boxes that we call school.

I’m also concerned that children are, in increasing numbers, creating online personas and engaging in virtual relationships rather than those that are face to face.  The happiest teenager I know has no active email address, does not participate in virtual networks, can go days without using the internet, and has one of the island’s fanciest tree houses.   Sadly though, the number of friends that join him in outdoor and authentically creative (versus online creative) pursuits has dwindled as they find themselves drawn to the screen. 

Alan November, a major promoter of tech-driven education and one of my favorite education personalities recently tweeted about a boy in Bali who said that “Google is preventing creativity”.  While the internet may be a tool for individualized learning and sharing, it can also become a crutch that stops creativity.

Most educators will argue, with good reason, that we need to accept that most of our students will be found online and that Minecraft may be the best way to get them creating.  Virtual creation and virtual relationships may be better than no creative thought or relationships at all. 

However, to accept this argument would be to accept things the way they are.  I would rather provide an opportunity for children to be outdoors, to prefer face to face communication over virtual relationships, and a chance to simply have “more fun”.  It will take a complete transformation of the education system and we may even have to create our own schools, such as Bali’sGreen School, to do it.  Out of those schools will come self-reliant children in touch with nature and their true selves (rather than tech-reliant children living primarily through a virtual persona).  They will be uncommon… they will be happy.

“Some men see things as they are and say why – I dream things that never were and say why not?” – George Bernard Shaw