Sublime

The drive to play freely is a basic, biological drive. Lack of free play may not kill the physical body, as would lack of food, air, or water, but it kills the spirit and stunts mental growth … nothing that we do, no amount of toys we buy or ‘quality time’ or special training we give our children, can compensate for the freedom we take away. The

We deploy knowledge and ideas that carry indubitable prestige to stand guard against the emergence of more humble but essential knowledge from our emotional past. We bury our personal stories beneath an avalanche of expertise. The possibility of a deeply consequential intimate enquiry is deliberately left to seem feeble and superfluous next to the

La croyance selon laquelle les enfants ont un esprit intrinsèquement pur, uniquement corrompu par la culture et la société, est issue en grande partie de l’esprit du philosophe genevois Jean-Jacques Rousseau82

There’s a second plotline here: the well-intentioned and disastrous shift toward overprotecting children and restricting their autonomy in the real world. Children need a great deal of free play to thrive. It’s an imperative that’s evident across all mammal species. The small-scale challenges and setbacks that happen during play are like an

Ce qui a été radicalement nouveau, avec Piaget, c’est de considérer l’enfance comme le terrain expérimental de l’épistémologie, au sens des mécanismes généraux de la construction des connaissances (ou cognition), qu’il s’agisse de logique, de mathématiques ou de physique. Avec cette « épistémologie génétique » (Piaget, 1970), définie en référence à