Blocks As a Tool for Learning: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Karen Hewitt · Young children · 2001
Young Children • January 2001 hildren have always built, testing their theories about the physical and social world. They stack units, knock them down, enclose spaces, bridge gaps, and repeat and refine ideas—often without the intervention of adults or the introduction of commercial materials. The natural world provides abundant building material: heavy stones to pile, sticky burdock to connect, green twigs to tie and weave. And children are quick to pick up discarded construction and commerical materials such as wood pieces or boxes. Purchased building blocks and construction sets afford days of open-ended play and learning. That children’s impulse to construct is inherent and connected to learning is an old idea. It can be found in the writings of Plato (429–347 b.c.), Comenius (1592–1670), and Pestalozzi (1746–1827), as well as in the work of modern thinkers such as Jean Piaget (1896–1980). The importance of play as a recognized mode of learning for young children is clearly reflected in the history of blocks and construction toys. As educators, we should appreciate the central historical and contemporary role of these toys in early childhood education. Whether blocks were advertised for home use or found their way into the classroom as an educational device, they have always been linked to learning. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, English philosopher John Locke (1693) went against the prevailing trend in childrearing and placed the carrot before the stick: “The chief art is to make all that [children] have to do, sport and play too. . . . Learning anything they should be taught, might be made as much a recreation to their play, as their play is to their learning.” Toys now began to be considered influential in a positive way—not as sinful pastimes or baubles, but as a necessity. Locke described what was to become one of the most popular educational block sets—the alphabet blocks—extolling the merits of sweetened learning. In midto late nineteenth century, a small group of European and U.S. manufacturers began producing building toys, often as a sideline to their main woodworking or printing business. The blocks for the commercial market were characterized by three distinct ideas linking learnC Karen Hewitt Blocks As a Tool for Learning: