FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL
T
his last September, I had the pleasure of addressing parents on the subject of games during Orientation Day activities. We began with the following excerpt:
A game is composed of freedom, barriers, and purposes. That’s easy enough to see. What’s trickier to see is how this comprises a triangle.... But wherever we look through life, we find that these three points— freedom, barriers, and purposes—are interdependent to some degree. It’s one of the wildest-looking things a person ever studied. One has to look it over and think of different examples to satisfy oneself that this relationship does exist because it looks very illogical that if you increase barriers, you increase freedom and purposes—or if you increase freedom, you increase barriers and purposes. It just doesn’t seem right at first look. One has to work with it a bit. It’s not intuitive. This triangle does, however, provide another way to explain why the idea of “let children do anything they want, express themselves in any way” doesn’t work. It’s a total absence of barriers, so there’s no triangle. No game. And they’ll be very unhappy.
Purpose
...Children with games to play have purposes, barriers, and freedoms and tend to be happier. Education: Fostering Reason and Self-Determinism in Students based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard This concept, the pursuit of knowledge as a game, is fundamental to Delphian’s approach to education. In helping students learn to think with this interrelationship of purposes, barriers, and freedoms, I have had many a conversation along these lines: Me: Do you generally think of a wall as a barrier or as a freedom? Student: A barrier. Me: Did you have a purpose in mind when you thought of it in that way?
Freedom
Barriers
=GAME
Student: Wanting to get through it for some reason. Me: With that same purpose in mind, would you consider a door to be a barrier or a freedom?
PAGE 1