Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
Diane AckermanRead
American writer_x000D_ _x000D_ 1803-1882_x000D_ _x000D_ Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.
Interpretation
Play is a fundamental method through which our brains learn and grow.
In this quote, Diane Ackerman emphasizes the importance of play as a natural and essential mode of learning for the human brain. It suggests that engaging in playful activities not only fosters creativity and innovation but also enhances cognitive development and understanding in various fields.
In practice
In a workshop on early childhood education, this quote could be used to highlight the significance of play in learning.
Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
We try to exile ourselves more and more from nature - not always consciously: We build houses; we dismiss nature; nature has to be outside, because we're inside. God forbid something like a cockroach comes inside, or some dust.
We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature can't completely satisfy that yearning.
Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.
In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.
There is a way of beholding nature which is a form of prayer, a way of minding something with such clarity and aliveness that the rest of the world recedes. It . . . gives the brain a small vacation.
In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.
However my parents - both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.
I can't add. I don't understand basic science. Or anything else. But I can read anything. I've always been able to, and I've always liked to. Even if I didn't understand it, I liked to.
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
To teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.
You aren't learning anything when you're talking.
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