Playing to learn - geeks, aspies and hunter-gatherers

Unfortunately, learning has become serious “business” nowadays and it has been considered “work” for a long time, which is a bit odd considering that in other species as well as for human toddlers playing and learning are basically one and the same thing. When did that change all for homo sapiens? Surprisingly recently: with the advent of farming.

As Peter Gray convincingly argues in his wonderful book “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life” in hunter-gatherer societies kids turn into successful grown-ups exactly because they are free to learn by self-directed learning and from their older peers. Unfortunately, fun, game-based learning, peer-learning, and autonomous learning are not usually writ large in schools, even though all of them have elaborate pedagogical frameworks.

In farmer societies learning probably had to be enforced as children had to help - in contrast to hunter-gatherer societies - early on with farming work. Nowadays we have got a mixed farmer hunter-gatherer situation: children don’t have to work until they are grown-ups, but we do have enforced learning from an early age and the situation seems to be aggravated by more and more international competitive thinking. Teaching to the test has become the norm. This situation seems to be highly counterproductive because you don’t create fully functioning adults from kids who have to go through what they consider prison labor.

Adult play is also very important in hunter-gatherer societies as it is a part of their social-cohesion kit. In our business dominated world, it has often disappeared, with geeky computer players one of the most notable exceptions. It is not unlikely that childlike open minds helped hunter-gatherers survive in changing environments, whereas early farmers had to rely more on hard work, conscientiousness, and routine.

As Dean Falk notes in her highly recommendable book “Geeks, Genes, and the Evolution of Asperger Syndrome” geeks and aspies (who probably inherit a lot of hunter-gatherer traits) do not only share a love for computers, tech, and videogames but also a passion for science and history.

It is not very hard from the following statistic about which personality types play a certain video game to see which types tend to have the most hunter-gatherer traits (INs) and which types the most farmer traits (ESTJs/ESFJs). Considering that Fs are way more often females than males, it is amazing to see how many IN girls are geeky gamers (not that many in reality, because IN types only make up about 10% of society).

The takeaway from this post: we should value play again and definitely not take it away from young children. We should value geeks and aspies more, so that they don’t have to seek shelter from society in video games so often and because they are most likely the ones who will find solutions to future problems. Diversity is a good thing. Life on this planet has become much easier than it used to be for hunter-gatherers and, and yet those folks played more and laughed more than us whereas we have become so serious and pessimistic about life.

Dedicated to Peter Gray, to whom I am grateful for his inspiring discussions and his wonderful book “Free to Learn”

and to Dean Falk whose books I also have enjoyed reading immensely and her granddaughter Eve, who reminds me so much of my oldest son.