The Four Educative Drives | Alliance for Self-Directed Education

Playfulness motivates children to practice new skills.

Children play:

• In physical ways - climb, chase, tumble: It develops strong bodies and movement.
• In risky ways: They learn to manage fear and develop courage.
• With language: That is how they become competent with language.
• Socially: They learn to communicate and get along with others.
• Games with implicit or explicit rules: They learn to navigate and negotiate rules.
• Imaginative games help them to learn to think hypothetically and creatively in collaboration with others.
• With logic.
• At building things.

Children are born with an instinctive knowledge that their survival and wellbeing depend on their ability to connect with and learn from other people. As soon as they can communicate, they will inquire about their world, for the connection and information. 

Language enables children to learn. The ability to use language help social interactions. Because of the Internet, much of the world is at our fingertips, and self-directed learners will naturally seek new information, connection or opportunities.

We have the capacity to think ahead if we are driven to do so. This is the most consciously cognitive of our basic educative drives and develops slower than the other drives. This drive to motivate and plan ahead leads self-directed learners to think about life goals, and they deliberately seek out the knowledge and practice the skills needed to achieve their goals.

Research shows that children who have lots of free time to play and explore independently, develop this capacity more fully than children who spend more time in adult-structured activities.