Interests Support Experience

Can you imagine three ten-year-old boys totally engaged in discussing textile qualities? They spent over 30 minutes in squeezing, lifting and stroking different types of off-white textile: This one is too light! This one is too shiny… too thick, too stiff… They used many words to describe a single quality: “When you jump, the pants are supposed to fly with you, but with a slights delay, and fall heavily down just a second after you’ve landed”.

In the discussions they recalled their visual experience of Prince of Persia’s pants from the Play Station game they’ve been playing. They desired to have pants just like that – and this was the purpose of our shopping trip that day. I promised to help them saw three pair of Prince-of-Persia-pants, but I was not competent enough to find the right materials. The boys knew exactly which specific qualities they needed from the off-white textile and ribbons for the vertical decorations on the sides. They had long discussions about the ribbon colors, width and pattern. And since the selection of ribbons was limited, they had to improvise by combining different ribbons side by side.

Their fascination with Prince of Persia made them wish to be like him – or at least, have something similar to what he had; Their decision to make the pants motivated their attention to the aesthetic qualities, and their interests seemed to intensify both their experience and reflection about visual experience from the game, and multisensory experience from the textile shop. Motivation was essential for the experience – and the experience was the source of motivation.

A few weeks ago my son (12) was refurnishing his room. He seem to be motivate by responsibility to chose the furniture, textiles, decorations and the color for the walls, and was attentive, careful and proud when he was stitching the pillows and hanging the paintings on the wall. He and his stepbrother (12) were even singing while they were screwing the furniture and painting the walls.

If motivation is essential for learning, education should build upon student’s interests for their world.