Joy as a Learning Concept

12/26/2016

Treat people as though they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of being.
Goethe

"The American kindergarten experience has become much more academic—and at the expense of play," wrote Timothy D. Walker in his October 2015 Atlantic article, "The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland."

"Finland requires its kindergarten teachers to offer playful learning opportunities to every kindergartner on a regular basis, according to Arja-Sisko Holappa, a counselor for the Finnish National Board of Education. What's more, Holappa, who also leads the development of the country’s pre-primary core curriculum, said that play is being emphasized more than ever in the latest version of that curriculum. 'Play is a very efficient way of learning for children,' she told me. 'And we can use it in a way that children will learn with joy.'

"The word 'joy' caught me off guard—I’m certainly not used to hearing the word in conversations about education in America, where I received my training and taught for several years. But Holappa, detecting my surprise, reiterated that the country's early-childhood education program indeed places a heavy emphasis on 'joy,' which along with play is explicitly written into the curriculum as a learning concept.

"'There's an old Finnish saying,' Holappa said. 'Those things you learn without joy you will forget easily.'"

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