Hands-On Learning

Yes, I know what the tree looks like, but I need to feel it!

Why I shouldn’t jump off stairs and other lessons learned through touch.

My bedroom is in the basement of my house. The doorway over the bottom of the stairs is a normal height. I have a habit of jumping the last few stairs on any staircase, especially when I’m in a hurry (which is always because I’m always running late). The problem is that a doorway that is a normal height at the bottom of the stairs is lower than head height when you jump off the third step. Which means that I have hit my head on the top of the frame.  More than once.

Finally I got into the habit of reaching up and touching the door frame as I pass through. Why? Because that touch lets me know how far away my head is from another bump.  I don’t know in inches how much space there is between my head and the frame, but if my hand is touching it I know intuitively how far away I am.

That’s the power of hands-on learning.  It links the world around us directly with our minds, without having to go through the translation of words or even pictures.  We touch something and immediately our mind forms an idea of what it is and how we relate to it.  We can later put words to it – soft, poky, scaly, bumpy, whatever – but at that moment, immediately, we know something about it, without words, without explanation.

Hands-on activities open a new door to the world.  We no longer just hear about things, we really experience them.  I learned in elementary school that a prism can split white light into a rainbow, but I was still fascinated when a few years ago I actually played with a light and a prism for the first time.  I had seen pictures.  I had seen demonstrations.  I had seen a rainbow in the sky.  But until I actually held the prism and moved it myself and saw the light move and change, I didn’t realize just how cool that one simple principle was.

One of the core principles of IdEx workshops is that the participants must manipulate physical variables.  They must have something to touch, to move, to pick up and examine.  Regardless of the subject matter – science, math, even social studies and history – hands-on learning is an essential component of exploration and learning.

Freedom: The Greatest Idea Worth Exploring

Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was signed 236 years ago.

IdEx is based on the assumption that life is exciting and the world is full of ideas that are worth exploring, experimenting with, and learning more about.  Today the United States celebrates the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a pivotal moment in our country's history where a few men risked "(their) Lives, (their) Fortunes, and (their) sacred Honor" in exchange for the chance to explore the idea of freedom.

Education experts like to talk about the importance of being willing to face failure, asking questions, and being proactive in finding solutions.  To our founding fathers, these were not abstract ideas, but a way of life.  Their pledge of life, fortune, and honor was not just a pretty phrase.  They were very well aware that their actions put their property, reputations, and lives at risk.  They knew that the ideas they proposed - liberty, democracy, equality - were radical ideas that had never been implemented successfully by any other nation at that time.  They didn't know if the government they established would even survive their lifetimes. 

Knowing failure was likely, the founding fathers pressed forward anyway.  They used the best resources they had - the smartest political and military minds in the colonies, great works of literature from other countries, and the the determination and spirit of the people themselves.  Their conventions featured hotly contested debates on the specifics of the new government and way of life they wanted to create.  The freedom they proposed was an untrod path, democracy was a "great experiment."  As much as any scientist or discover, our founding fathers had to search and pave the way through uncharted territory.

Thanks to their hard work and the tenacity and courage of all those who came before and after, the spirit of freedom and exploration is part of American culture.

"America is an experiment. From the time of its first white settlement, America has been a place where people came to experiment with doing things differently. It’s been a place to gamble, to see if you could be one of the lucky ones who became landowners or lawyers or independent merchants. You gambled on the weather, politics, your own skills, and your own ability to commit to the experiment of living in America, and being an American." - from the blog The Great American Experiment

This option to experiment would not be possible if our founding fathers had not been willing to undertake the "great experiment" of democracy.  Today as we remember the origins of our freedom, I am grateful for the men and women - military, politicians, and civilians - who have fought and argued and defended our freedoms.  Freedom is more than just an idea to explore or to experiment with.  It is the idea that lets us be free to explore all the other ideas.