“A bud unfolds into a blossom, but the boat which one teaches children to make by folding paper unfolds into a flat sheet of paper.”
This was a sentence that was discussed in a workshop I participated in recently and the following insights came from the participants:
– A bud is natural but the paper boat is man-made. – The bud unfolds by itself but the paper boat needs to be folded and unfolded. – It is easy for us to imagine that we are ‘doing’ something as we make the paper boat but there is nothing to ‘do’ for the bud unfolding. – In our schools we are making and unmaking paper boats without realising that the project of learning is about letting buds flower into blossoms.
I thought that the insights were very interesting. What do you think?
