Saturday March 15, 2003
The Lessons
of Volition
Play Teaches
Ownership and Choice at Fairhaven School
Several months ago a Talkabout was held at Fairhaven School, the topic of
conversation being play. Play
is a very important idea when talking about Sudbury model schools, but not
just because a lot of it happens constantly and that the prevalence of it
makes Fairhaven look different than any other school most people have
seen. It’s important because
the relentless quality of play at Fairhaven is the key to what makes
Fairhaven kids learn faster and more efficiently than their conventionally
schooled counterparts.
During the Talkabout, a fascinating concept began to take root regarding
the supposed differences between “work” and “play” that sprang
from the realization that most of the “play” taking place at Fairhaven
looks an awful lot like “work”. Based
on this, what we realized is that whether something is called “work”
or “play” has nothing to do with whether we like doing it.
What determines our level of satisfaction in an activity is whether
we have a choice to do it or not.
After all, the only real difference between a student learning math at
Fairhaven and a student learning math at a conventional school is probably
that the Fairhaven student is doing it voluntarily.
If “play” equals satisfaction and “work” equals
dissatisfaction then nobody would ever “work” at Fairhaven, because no
one’s going to force them to! That’s
why volition (whether a person is doing something voluntarily or
involuntarily) is the single most significant factor influencing
human behavior, not just at Fairhaven, but in the world.
Why is this factor so central? Ownership
and choice are what make volition the most important principle
governing human behavior.
In our “work” lives, the principle of ownership in of itself
virtually always governs whether a person likes or dislikes his or her
job. Imagine two people both
working for the same organization. The
first person flawlessly performs all tasks assigned to him, but is tightly
managed and only performs work he is required to do.
The second considers the minimum requirements of her job to be a
point of departure, assumes responsibility far beyond the extent of her
assigned position, and has a boss that encourages self-motivation,
creativity, and empowerment.
While the first person is possibly an excellent and trusted employee, the
second person has a stake; she is an owner.
Her sense of responsibility is driven by her stake in the
organization, which is in turn driven by her sense of responsibility.
The precious byproduct in this self-propagating equation is that
our second employee is almost certainly feeding off a very high level of
job satisfaction.
During my career in the military, my colleagues and I smile when we hear
someone in the middle of a four-year enlistment swear they will get out at
the end of their term. Almost
invariably, as they approach their moment of freedom and choice is
once again a factor in their career decisions, they will “re-up”,
almost as if a switch has gone off in their head.
What is flipping that switch is the only difference in that person’s
life from mid-term to end-of-term: choice.
We as humans derive pleasure equally from work and play only to
the extent that we feel free to start and stop whenever we choose.
Having mentally “let go” of the job, our colleague looks around
him at his career choices. It’s
when he sees continuing in the military as just another one of his choices
that the job appeals to him in the manner that brought him there
originally. He can now choose
to “return” to the job.
Most folks think that kids play video games because they are fun; however
anyone who has really sat down and played or watched the complex strategy
games of today knows they are quite simply work.
The work my son has to do to move to the next level bears no
resemblance to play: in order to progress he must slay a monster to get
through a door which reveals a series of doors that will either have more
monsters behind them or the key to open the door to the “boss” monster
that must be vanquished in order to proceed.
The truly ironic truth is that sitting at desks 18 miles apart, my son and
I essentially do the same thing all day: in order for me to move on to my
next task I have to gather information from a variety of sources (some of
which are available, some I have to leave messages for, some of which are
dead ends). From this research
I craft a document that undergoes several rounds of edits before it can go
to the “boss” for approval (unlike my son, however, I am not required
to defeat my “boss” in combat).
Clearly what my son is doing is work: grueling, frustrating, and
repetitive. So while skeptical
neighbors or family members raise an eyebrow at his daily regimen of
computer games, Lego, and freeze tag, I marvel that he has learned
something that most people three times his age haven’t: to work really,
really hard with no regard toward obstacles and setbacks.
So the truly beautiful thing about Fairhaven is not that it teaches Latin
or sewing or video editing, the truly valuable thing is that in the
Fairhaven environment a student can possibly never realize that there’s
a difference between playing Diablo six hours a day and writing a
million-dollar computer application in C++.
At Fairhaven, the object of the lesson is ownership and choice, and the
ruthless nature of grueling, frustrating, and repetitive “play” is the
teacher.
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