Many of the things children learn happens intuitively and unconsciously. They go with the flow and observe what is happening around them. They take everything in. Whatever is happening, they will interpret it in their way and with the tools, they have at hand.

Their job is to learn as much as they can about how they can find their way in a group.

While it makes a lot of sense to involve them in the learning it makes no sense to expect a five-year-old to be able to make their decisions as you’d ask an adult to do.

Once they are adults things change.

The learning is less intuitive. It becomes an association with everything we know and learned. The rationale sets in. Every new bit is integrated into the existing. This means that it is interpreted with the given experience to make sense of it and to stabilize the existing experience. Learning serves to reinforce the existing.

The hard work is to start letting go of the existing knowledge. It is unlearning to enable new learning.

Neither type of learning is better. They are different.

It’s up to us to adapt.

Once we let it happen, learning continues to be just as exciting as ever.