Kerry McDonald  / Tuesday, June 06, 2017 /  at FEE

You’ve likely seen the headlines lately regarding the latest fad frenzy: fidget toys. These toys, most popularly fidget spinners and fidget cubes, are simple gadgets that have taken over schools and classrooms across the country, to the point that they are now being banned by many of them.

Initially touted as a concentration tool for children with attention issues, these hand-held fidget toys are apparently becoming distracting for teachers and disruptive to classrooms. In a recent Working Mother article, 6th grade teacher, Cristina Bolusi Zawacki, writes:

Fidget spinners: The very phrase makes me cringe. Its claim to fame is that it allows one to channel their excess energy to help maintain focus. The only thing my students seem to focus on, however, is the spinner, itself, and not their work. It’s like a friggin’ siren song. The allure of someone else’s spinner spinning is too much to bear.”

The teacher goes on to ask:

How is it that my 2-year-old is able to sit long enough to fill the pages of an entire coloring book, yet adolescent students cannot function without these helicopters of distraction whirling feverishly on their fingertips? Mind you, these are the same kids who can sit and text for hours, spend incalculable amounts of time on social media, and take enough selfies in one sitting to carpet The Cloisters.”

Learning to Avoid Work

Perhaps the problem is not the fidget toys but the lack of autonomy, self-direction, and relevance characteristic of the mass schooling model that gives rise to the fidget toy craze. Boston College psychology professor and author of Free To Learn, Peter Gray, writes that all children love to learn and eagerly explore their world with enthusiasm and great dedication – until they go to school.

In his research on unschoolers and others who have rejected mass schooling for alternative forms of education, Dr. Gray discovered that human curiosity and commitment to learning endure beyond early childhood. He writes:

This amazing drive and capacity to learn does not turn itself off when children turn 5 or 6. We turn it off with our coercive system of schooling. The biggest, most enduring lesson of our system of schooling is that learning is work, to be avoided when possible.”

Dr. Gray’s observation is not new. Decades ago, the well-known educator and homeschooling advocate, John Holt, wrote in his best-selling book, How Children Learn: read more at source: https://fee.org/articles/school-kids-fidget-because-they-feel-trapped/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FEE-Freeman+%28Foundation+for+Economic+Education+-+Latest+Articles%29