childhood
A crumpled drawing
A child is walking with a crumpled drawing in his hand. Someone asks him if the crumped drawing has a "name"...
"Every thing," he replies.
If children are transferred from a lively city street
In real life, what significant change does occur if children are transferred from a lively city street to the usual park or to the usual public or project playground?
In most cases (not all, fortunately), the most significant change is this: The children have moved from under the eyes of a high numerical ratio of adults, into a place where the ratio of adults is low or even nil. To think this represents an improvement in city child rearing is pure daydreaming.
Inheriting Froebel's Gifts
A Podcast by Kurt KohlstedtFroebel’s Gifts were meant to be given in a particular order, growing more complex over time and teaching different lessons about shape, structure and perception along the way. A soft knitted ball could be given to a child just six weeks old, followed by a wooden ball and then a cube, illustrating similarities and differences in shapes and materials. Then kids would get a cylinder (which combines elements of both the ball and the cube) and it would blow their little minds. Some objects were pierced by strings or rods so kids could spin them and see how one shapes morphs into another when set into motion. Later came cubes made up of smaller cubes and other hybrids, showing children how parts relate to a whole through deconstruction and reassembly.
These perception-oriented “Gifts” would then give way to construction-oriented “Occupations.” Kids would be told to build things out of materials like paper, string, wire, or little sticks and peas that could be connected and stacked into structures.
Walking lessons
A TweetLecturing Birds on How to Fly, from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile
If children started school at six months old and their teachers gave them walking lessons, within a single generation people would come to believe that humans couldn't learn to walk without going to school.
Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation
A Research PaperWe directly establish the importance of environment by showing that exposure to innovation during childhood has significant causal effects on children's propensities to invent. Children whose families move to a high-innovation area when they are young are more likely to become inventors. These exposure effects are technology-class and gender specific.
Upstream Color
The same material as the sun
I have to apologize. I was born with a disfigurement where my head is made of the same material as the sun. It makes it impossible for you to look directly at me. It has always been this way.
When it goes wrong
Kris: It's not my fault when it goes wrong.
Jeff: Yes it is.
Upstream Color Original Soundtrack
- Leaves Expanded May Be Prevailing Blue Mixed With Yellow Of The Sand
- I Used To Wonder At The Halo Of Light Around My Shadow And Would Fancy Myself One Of The Elect
- Fearing That They Would Be Light-headed For Want Of Food And Also Sleep
- Stirring Them Up As The Keeper Of A Menagerie His Wild Beasts
- The Finest Qualities Of Our Nature Like The Bloom On Fruits Can Be Preserved
- Perhaps The Wildest Sound That Is Ever Heard Here Making The Woods Ring Far And Wide
- I Love To Be Alone
- A Young Forest Growing Up Under Your Meadows
- Their Roots Reaching Quite Under The House
- The Rays Which Stream Through The Shutter Will Be No Longer Remembered When The Shutter Is Wholly Removed
- After Soaking Two Years And Then Lying High Six Months It Was Perfectly Sound Though Waterlogged Past Drying
- The Sun Is But A Morning Star
- A Low And Distant Sound Gradually Swelling And Increasing
- As If It Would Have A Universal And Memorable Ending
- A Sullen Rush And Roar