---
title: "The playground model: a new approach to education for an unknown future"
description: "When planning for our children’s future, we must have the courage to challenge the comfort zones of the very institutions that have served us for generations."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "Sponsored Content"
author: "Odin"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/odin-education/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-09-11-the-playground-model-a-new-approach-to-education-for-an-unknown-future/"
published: "2025-09-11T11:03:47"
updated: "2025-09-11T15:41:12"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 432
---

# The playground model: a new approach to education for an unknown future

> When planning for our children’s future, we must have the courage to challenge the comfort zones of the very institutions that have served us for generations.

By Odin · Published 11 September 2025, 13:03 SAST · Updated 11 September 2025, 17:41 SAST

## Key points
- As we teeter on the brink of an uncertain future, it's time to swap our soulless production lines for vibrant playgrounds where curiosity reigns and children—those unfiltered pioneers of exploration—can teach us a thing or two about embracing the unknown.
- The current system mirrors a production line, prioritizing efficiency over humanity, leading to a loss of creativity and exploration.
- Transitioning from a rigid model to a more dynamic approach is essential; we must not merely iterate but innovate fundamentally.
- Embracing the innate curiosity and creativity of children can guide us in redefining education and learning environments.
- Schools should evolve into playgrounds, fostering exploration and adaptability rather than traditional teaching methods.

## Content

Having spent a career in manufacturing, it’s impossible not to recognise the model on which our current system is based – a production line. We take raw materials and pass them through a series of stations, adding components at each one. We establish quality gates at different points, and reject or recycle units that don’t pass our strict criteria. We set our tolerances tighter to reduce variability and increase output. And we do this again and again until the line is fully automated and has lost all of its humanity. Lights out... factory.

In our search for a replacement, we shouldn’t try to adapt or improve our existing system. That’s like trying to iterate a train into a plane. They have vaguely the same purpose but are built on completely different models.

In an unknown future, we must shift the focus from expertise to exploration. From Production line to Playground.

I believe, as humans, we are all born with the necessary skills to explore. Just look to the most human of humans – our children. Specifically, our five- and six-year-olds. Old enough to display the miracle of our natural abilities and young enough to be unindoctrinated by our prejudices. By age six our children have shown, in abundance, the quintessential human attributes for journeying into the unknown: curiosity, creativity, collaboration and compassion.

They are designed to explore, since everything around them is new and enthralling.

Take a moment to contemplate the light in the eyes of every six-year-old. If you are a parent, you have seen this light. We don’t teach our children at that age. We simply watch from the side, and keep them safe, fed and occasionally clean. We provide stimulation and observe with awe the daily transformation. They display such autonomous curiosity and creativity that we have no choice but to collaborate with them on one expedition after the other. We forgive their failures and inconvenient passions. We do this through our equally spontaneous love and compassion for this innocent little human.

And then we send them to school.

Instead our schools need to be re-imagined around playgrounds. Safe spaces full of stimuli. Where we watch from the sides as the children learn about the ‘new’ world, themselves and their place in it through play. Where we don’t teach, we guide. Where children drive the what and how of learning, and our job remains only to un-constrain that effort.

Discovery, learning, critical thinking and adaptability are human attributes. To prepare our society for the unknown future, all we have to do is stop training ourselves out of them. **DM**

![Image](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Ajit-Gopalakrishnan-Odin-Education-head-1-e1751450342107.png)