‘Play is the work of children’
Lego, the world's largest toy brand with annual sales of more than $2 billion, was established by the Kirk Christiansen family in Billund, Denmark in 1932. It did not stop at selling toys, as the company continued to grow. In the 1980s, the family established Lego Foundation and donated 25 percent share to charity, which initiated efforts to make learning playful for children and help them become creative, engaged and lifelong learners. It now works in many countries, including Bangladesh. Lego Foundation CEO John Goodwin, who recently visited Bangladesh, shared its insights with Porimol Palma of Star.
TDS: What was the vision behind Lego Foundation?
Goodwin: It's not uncommon in Danish family structures to create foundations. The Danish people are very committed to community and society. As a consequence of that, the owners of companies often establish foundations meant to distribute their wealth back to the society. That was the big driver of the Christiansen family.
TDS: Why did Lego Group start a foundation for children?
Goodwin: Over the years, Lego Foundation conducted a lot of researches through many famous institutions like Harvard, MIT and Cambridge to understand the characteristics of play; what are the things that need to be present for children to learn and develop, and what are the skills that develop through the process of play and the links between play and neurological development of brain.
The research findings gave us a robust understanding that particularly during the years from 0-5, it is essential that children get key stimulation that enables their brain to develop in the most effective way. That then leads to the skills in the future that's of such demand today -- creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving -- all of these skills lay the foundations in the very early stage when their brain development formation is taking place.
Eventually, we've developed programme, research and advocacy in order to try and change society's minds around the importance of play and the role they have in our lives as human. Play needs to be placed very consciously in the lives of children to enable them to develop in the most effective way.
TDS: How does Lego Foundation operate?
Goodwin: We run a number of initiatives around the world that help us understand the research, the evidence we need. We test and understand how to adapt most effectively the plays in different environment and cultures and then advocate for change. For example, we have been working in South Africa for a number of years. We trained 150,000 teachers in the pedagogical approach of how to incorporate learning through play into the classroom. We run classroom training online for the new and existing teachers. In Ukraine, we provided training courses and supported training of 15,000 teachers in schools.
TDS: How did you start working with Brac?
Goodwin: In 2015, one of our initiatives was to work in a number of countries to develop low-cost early childhood programme because there was lack of early childhood provision in the world, for example, kindergarten types of settings for children aged 3-5 years.
Neurological science shows that 0-5 years of children is the most critical period for development of children. So, we wanted to explore ways in which different governments around the world could implement programme for 3-5-year-old children at low cost.
We identified three sets of partners -- one in Kenya, one in Colombia and Brac in Bangladesh. We worked with Brac to establish affordable, high quality, play-based early childhood programme, known as play labs, for 3-5-year-old children. We established 350 play labs. We also partnered with Brac to develop play labs in Tanzania and Uganda to be able to test whether or not that concept can be used in different cultural environments.
That insight then stimulated us to make the $100 million dollar grant award in 2018 towards working with Sesame Workshop (American nonprofit) and Brac to work for the Rohingyas, using the play lab concept to help those children affected by the crisis to have a play lab like environment where they can work out the trauma.
Play labs can go on to provide them with great stimulation that can build their confidence and get ready for formal education system. Play lab is an amazing project through which children can really get thirst and hunger for learning in the formative stage.
TDS: What's your plan about Bangladesh?
Goodwin: We will continue to work with our partner Brac and we are very excited around the reforms that are being set to roll out in 2022 by Bangladesh government where they are looking to introduce schooling from the age of four. They already have a commitment to pre-primary school at the age of five. We have just agreed with Brac to implement our programme to train in-service teachers in primary schools on how to change the pedagogical approach to incorporate more learning through play.
TDS: Are the Lego toys used in all cultural contexts?
Goodwin: We don't say you have to use Lego blocks in the schools. We use full range of materials and full range of plays. Lego does great job in creating amazing construction materials -- ways in which children can make amazing things but there are full range of plays -- character play where children can dress up and there's physical play which is healthier and in different cultures, they are considerably using that.
We do research on all forms of play that develop social and emotional skills, creative and collaboration skills and physical skills. Those skills can be developed if you develop right forms of plays. Training teachers helps using those characteristics in those settings and different forms of teachings.
TDS: How do you differentiate between traditional and learning through play approach?
Goodwin: Children at their early life can't make association that the letter is part of a word, words are part of a sentence and sentences are part of a paragraph. As a result, in traditional approach, they just memorise, which does not have any context that makes meaning for them. That's why it is very important that we start play as an effective way of learning during 3-5 years. You have to put the children at the centre of the learning journey and that's what learning through play does. Play is the work of children. It's the way through which the brain is stimulated and makes sense of the world around them.
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