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Messing About
December 26, 2013
Children laugh with each other in a way that we have forgotten.
-Gigi Schweikert from her book, Teacher Tips

"If education were defined... to include everything that children have learned since birth, everything that has come to them from living in the natural and the human world, then by any sensible measure what has come before age five or six would outweigh all the rest," declares David Hawkins in his book The Informed Vision (New York: Algora Publishing, 2002).

"When we narrow the scope of education to what goes on in schools, we throw out the method of that early and spectacular progress at our peril.  We know that five-year-olds are unequal in their mastery of this or that.  We also know that histories are responsible for most of this inequality, utterly masking the congenital differences, except in special cases.  This is the immediate fact confronting us as educators in a society committed, morally and now by sheer economic necessity, to universal education.

"To continue the cultivation of earlier ways of learning, therefore, to find in school the good beginnings, the liberating involvements that will make the kindergarten seem a garden to the child and not a dry and frightening desert, this is a need that requires much emphasis of the style of work I have called 'Messing About.'  Nor does the garden in this sense end with a child's first school year, or his tenth, as though one could then put away childish things.  As time goes on... 'Messing About' evolves with the child and thus changes its quality.  It becomes a way of working that is no longer childish though it remains always childlike, the kind of self-disciplined probing and exploring that is the essence of creativity."





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Comments (1)

Displaying 1 Comment
Laura Friedman · December 26, 2013
Creativity in Learning
Cumberland, ME, United States


There is not enough space or time here to respond fully to this very brief introduction to David Hawkins. Volumes will still be written about his work AND about the work and influence of his life partner and wife, Frances Pockman Hawkins. Frances, in her own right, was an amazing observer, and translator of children’s action.

Personally I knew neither David nor Frances, but I have been traveling with both for about a decade now, having found them through my study of the ongoing educational project in Reggio Emilia, Italy and through my advisor, Ellen Hall. My compelling draw to both the experiences in Reggio Emilia and to the Hawkins work is due to the validation and support each has shown for very young children’s competencies and abilities to construct meaning and understanding—to learn —through open and welcome interaction with ‘other’—materials, people, environments.

My own work has also been validated. I have been a “messer about” throughout my life. What I learn through experience and solving problems relates to my interests and inquiries, stays with me, and influences aspects of my life well beyond the initial experience or problem.

I am grateful to have found the Hawkins and to be an active follower and participant, along with many amazing friends and colleagues, of the Hawkins Centers of Learning (http://hawkinscenters.org).

Suggested reading?

From Frances: Journey with Children: The Autobiography of a Teacher, and The Logic of Action: Young Children at Work.

From David: The Informed Vision: Essays on Learning and Human Nature and The Roots of Literacy.

And Betty Kellogg’s recent work: David Frances and The Pond Study.

Oh…and the incredible story by Robert Persig, a must-read that strongly relates: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.



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