According to economists, life is full of trade offs. One of those trade offs is between exploring and exploiting. Exploring things allows you to discover new ideas, to acquire knowledge, to get your hands messy. Exploiting knowledge lets you pay the bills.
Childhood is an opportunity for children to engage in protracted exploration without worrying about paying the bills.
This links in with the idea of evolv-ability. Certain species have evolved in such a way as to increase variability. Humans are one such species. Epigenetics plays an important role in how each child develops. Inputs from the environment determine which genes are expressed. Furthermore, some research suggests that some individuals are more sensitive to their environment than others.
There are daffodils and orchids Daffodils flourish in most environments. Orchids only flourish in particular environments.
Finally, brain plasticity. The brain is more plastic in the younger years, allowing children to adapt to new needs and environments. To slowly remake society to meet the needs of a coming age. As we age, plasticity decreases as we shift from exploring to exploiting.
At Reggio, instead of speaking about special needs, they speak of special rights. Simply put, we're not equal. If education is about allowing children to flourish, that means providing for those students that need more support -- both support those with learning disabilities and those that are gifted.
Children are not blank slates. They come with the same default settings. Our education system needs to stop treating them as if they do.
Finally, as a society, we have shifted away from exploration to exploitation. Just look at the budget. The vast chunk of our spending is non-discretionary. In the past, government spending was high in war years and lean in peace time. That is no longer the case. Has there been a side effect? Has our rate of technological innovation changed? Probably not. Indeed, if anything, people probably assume that the rate of technological innovation has increased by a lot.
However, there was an EconTalk a while back that said the something like general utility innovations come around once every 100 or so. Something to look up in the future/
Note to readers: this blog is going to be taking one more and more of a common book feel. I want to record readings and sources for future use. I want to also use it as an exercise in recall. This will mean more content, but that content will probably be less interesting or polished. Anyways, that's where things are heading here. You've been warned.
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