Preschool

I've decided that the best learning environment is playschool.

Picture a nice quiet library with no books out of place, uncluttered walls, and nothing visually distracting. I don't think I've learned a thing in this kind of setting. The plainer the wall is, the more blankly I stare at it.

Now picture a busy playschool with toys heaped randomly on the colorfully stained floor and finger paintings falling off the rainbow-colored walls. How much have you learned in this kind of environment? Hitting the kid who's hogging the red push-car over the head with your Fisher Price hammer gets you in trouble. Finger paint doesn't taste good, but eating it is an easy way to get help drawing the cookie monster.

For a more recent example, think of how much you learned while sleeping off one of those Monday morning Application of Engineering Principles classes. Compare that with how much you learned in a cluttered high-school shop with random parts of alternators and starters in even more random places.

I know that any well-organized professor would disagree with this, but from my disordered perspective, I find that the more scattered the environment, the less scrambled my brain is, and the more I learn.

So, who's up for finding the brightest colors of paint that exist, filling up water balloons with them, going into some unsuspecting classroom, having a balloon fight, and totally showing up Picasso?

And who's bringing the Duplo?

Okay, seriously, here is what I think about learning:

• Mistakes are excellent teachers
• Trial and error teaches the most useful skills
• Learning by observing, then doing, works well
• The above point does not apply when in a classroom
• Interest level is closely linked to learning level