Modern Schools Would Have Failed Einstein

As a teenager Albert Einstein imagined chasing after a beam of light. It was a thought experiment that ultimately led to his groundbreaking Special Theory of Relativity, one of the most impactful and important science developments of the 20th century. It completely transformed our understanding of space, time, gravity, and energy. Math was later used to confirm his discoveries, but it all started with the play-based gold standard of "embodied learning."

This was the year 1895. His math and physics teachers gave him high marks, but as far as his French and history teachers were concerned he was a problem child. He bridled under their strictness, defying them, opposing them, and refusing to do the work. We celebrate his single-minded courage, but were he an American high schooler today, he would likely be diagnosed with something or other, possibly even drugged. His brilliance in math might be used as evidence that he "has potential," but it's likely that most of the focus of his teachers (and by extension his parents) would have been on fixing his deficits rather than encouraging his strengths. 

As a preschooler he was curious and loved building with blocks and working puzzles, but was also quiet and solitary. He didn't speak until he was 3-years-old. If he were in a modern preschool, I have no doubt that the focus would likewise have been on his deficits. His parents would be told that "early intervention" is "crucial." Dyslexia is a likely diagnosis. At a minimum, speech-language therapy would be prescribed. Contemporary experts retroactively speculate that he showed strong ADHD traits -- disorganization, forgetfulness, "rebellion" against teacher-proscribed learning -- and would likely have met the criteria for diagnosis.

Our schools give lip-service to the truth exemplified by Einstein that learning differences don't limit potential, but in reality they invariably treat differences as deficits, challenges, and something to be cured. This is because standard schools are simply incapable of the flexibility needed to serve all children. Any child who cannot or will not learn the way our schools are designed to "teach" show up as problems. 

Thankfully for all of us, people at the turn of the last century didn't take schooling nearly as seriously as we do today. Indeed, it was widely acknowledge that schooling wasn't for everyone, or even most. Universities ignored Einstein's poor marks in other areas, the kiss of death at today's Ivy League schools who tend to only admit straight-A students. 

Other scientists may or may not have made the discoveries Einstein made. It's unknown whether or not math alone would have figured it out. After all, the very idea that space, time, and gravity are all just aspects of the same phenomenon is so alien to our day-to-day experiences that most of us -- even as we "believe" in it -- simply can't bring ourselves to genuinely understand it. But Einstein felt free to pursue his embodied approach to life itself and we're all richer for it.

In our play-based preschools, children spend most of their days in pursuit of embodied learning, not just with thought experiments, but by actually creating levers, experimenting with rolling down hills, swinging, digging, building with blocks, and laying their hands on all manner of things. They work their puzzles, take on new identities through dramatic play, test themselves socially, explore power and exploitation, feel emotions, and generally pursue their own path in a full embrace of their own, unique "learning difference." No, they won't be able to answer those testing questions because, like with a young Einstein, their language is a lagging indicator of what is genuinely understood. Someday, they will perhaps be able to "prove" their theories, but real learning needs no proof. Or rather it is already proven, embodied, even if the others are incapable of genuinely understanding.

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