Kids innovate when you leave them alone
I was with my kids at Build-A-Bear, engulfed by toy-marketing genius, when I misplaced my iPhone and left the store without it.
My mom called to tell me.
I lose my iPhone all the time, and no matter where I lose it, people search the contacts for Mom and call her. Such a wide range of people have done this. People think alike.
But this is a super fun video from kids who found an iPhone. They found the iPhone in a park, and they used the Instagram account on the iPhone to post a video that tells the iPhone owner where to find the phone. The owner followed the instructions in the video, went to the park, and picked up his phone.
What is remarkable is that the kids could have sold the phone, but instead, they used a completely innovative way to get to the owner.
What is also remarkable is that adults could have never taught kids to think like this. Because kids are more innovative than adults, especially in this particular category of community interplay.
We don’t know what kids will do when we leave them alone. We can say with 100% certainty that if kids go to school and do what we tell them, then they will definitely not surprise us with their innovative choices. Because they won’t make any.
The important takeaway for me from that video was the kids were skater boys. My 13 year-old son is learning about the world through his love of skating. He spent the summer waking up late, rendezvousing with friends, and exploring Los Angeles via bus and skateboard. This included trips to the Venice Beach skatepark, where he once told his visiting aunt, “Hold your breath at this part. There is a lot of pot smoking around here.” My feeling is that he is learning some important life skills by stretching his tether on his skateboard. Interestingly, when he got back to school, the word on the street was that “the 8th grade skater boys spent the summer smoking pot.” When the video you link to went viral, I thought, “See. Those skater kids are actually pretty cool.” It’s nice to have validation.
For a brief bit Zehavi was a skater and I was really impressed by how self-directed skaters are. There is no set curriculum, no levels to pass, and the classes are sort of dorky. So it’s kids deciding what they should learn next and then figuring out how to learn it. It’s a great way to see how self-directed learning works because there’s really not another way to do it for skateboarding.
Penelope
I absolutely love this! it makes me so excited!
this is a cool story have good moral to learn. The video was awesome, very inspiring kids and model to others especially to those people doesn’t even know the word HONEST!
This is exactly why Montessori for elementary grades works so well. They are constantly working together to figure out a task or problem without any teacher or adult telling them what to do.
You should do a little more research into Montessori to see how much they do without adult supervision and how much time they DO spend outside. The whole philosophy is that the classroom is the whole city or town you live in. I believe that’s pretty spectacular for busy boys and girls.
Plus, what is so wrong with expecting kids to use an indoor voice when they are indoors?! Please explain why they shouldn’t be able to do that. It’s called respect!