Skills Developed Through Play.

#play Post 3

Have you heard of Cal Tech? I’m sure that rang a bell for most of you as it did for me and I’m as aware of technological companies as I am of the rare bird species in Antarctica (are there even birds in Antarctica? 🤔)

Anyway, you’ve probably heard of it because of it’s parent company Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which is the United States’ premier aerospace research facility- in other words, it’s where all the real rocket scientists are at.

In simple words:

Cal Tech = JPL = super smart people (aqalmand logon ke factory samjh lain) 🤓

Yes?

These are the people who basically put man on the moon.

Once they started retiring in the 1960’s and JPL started hiring new people... something weird started to happen.

The new people had GLOWING credentials.

Great grades 💯

Top universities 💯 (MIT, Stanford etc.)

Perfect education 💯

Perfect resume 💯

Actual skills 0️⃣

Actual creativity 0️⃣

Problem-solving 0️⃣

So the JPL management was like whaaat?!!

😱

Yaani- full time bizti

Them being super nerds decided to research this very strange phenomenon.

When they compared every relevant aspect of the amazing retired engineers that had accomplished so much versus the new batch of incoming engineers, they found only ONE difference that was apparently making ALL the difference,

“They found that those who had worked and played with their hands as they were growing up were able to “see solutions” that those who hadn’t worked with their hands could not.”

Guess what kinds of new questions they added to their interview/hiring process? 😏

In short: Play isn’t “just play”... it serves a vital role in children’s brain development. So much so that no amount of glowing academics can replace it.

Sources: Play by Dr. Stuart Brown and Play Therapy by Virginia Axline.