This essay overwhelms me. It overwhelms me with how powerful this learning method is. And it overwhelms me to know how easily any child across the country could develop skills and confidence about their skills in non-punishing, enriching environments.

I believe when a child is told they are wrong too often, indirectly or directly, it destabilizes their capacities to organize information and make decisions about that information in the ways that make the most sense to them. They become cognitively confused and then anxious when they are too often being met with the implications they are in the wrong, not trying hard enough, or not achieving up to their ability. I believe these messages are more damaging than has been discovered yet and I believe these messages can lead to damaging kinds of mental destabilization.

That any child should not have their voice respected is the issue we should perhaps be addressing above all other issues. The problem is we educators all have a different idea for what respecting a child’s voice means because we have no reliable or universally applied theories for how behavior and cognition interrelate.

When we see the kinds of teaching methods that work both for achieving learning goals and for promoting healthy personality/brain development, we should study the methods to inform our theories of education and child development to universalize non-damaging teaching practices.

The project-based learning here is a perfect example of how to create a learning environment that is optimal for both learning and healthy personality/brain development. I would love to see the ideas here become an integral part of our country’s educational theories.