We love this YouTube showing two toddlers discovering the fizzy drink, Lucozade. It’s 53 seconds of pure delight. We dare you to watch it without also laughing. And that’s the point.
It embodies what learning can be like: fun, exciting, messy and unexpected.
It’s also about the mood you create. Learning ‘very important things’ needn’t be solemn. Nor does anyone want it to be trivialised, but we all know the benefits of laughter and the relief that it provides, especially if times are tough and you’re trying to learn new things.
If you look beyond the laughter you can see the excitement that genuine shared discovery can bring us. Sometimes, lesson plans and learning outcomes prevent us from making discoveries that matter to us, right now, in the moment.
This is constantly reinforced for us in our online work over the past months: some of the best learning occurs when things don’t go to plan, when something unexpected happens. If the atmosphere in the group is accepting and playful, the capacity to learn from the unexpected is enhanced.
Beyond the fizz
Some might dismiss the value of small moments of delight. But what if it turns out this capacity for play leads to… the invention of flying?
Keith Sawyer, in his book Group Genius, relates how the Wright Brothers put their invention of the aeroplane down to their shared lifetime of playing together. Here’s how Wilbur Wright described their relationship:
From the time we were little children my brother.. and myself lived together played together, worked together and, in fact, thought together. We usually owned all of our toys in common, talked over our thoughts and aspirations so that nearly everything that was done in our lives has been the result of conversations, suggestions and discussions between us.
As Sawyer relates:
The Wrights didn’t experience a single moment of insight; rather, their collaboration resulted in a string of successive ideas, each spark lighting the next.