1. Age matters only as long as you are in school - looking down upon (as if they were a baby)/looking up to (because they have grey hair) at someone based on their age gets embedded in us though for life! Doesn't help your cause if you are only willing to work/compete with someone who is of your age, life is unfair that way, honey!
2. It is funny though, when it comes to creativity (and even thinking), age is not a barrier - exposure, application, thinking on your feet, flexibility of thought, openness to learning matter more...we have seen 5 year olds who are set in their ways and some 40 year olds who are open to learning like they were just born! 8 year or 13 years is not a large age difference in our open-ended scheme of things...
3. Self as a peg for improvement - every single activity/tool we use is scalable to be very deep. So based on the application capacity of the individual child we can take them deeper and further than the others. As a first step, we work with them to hang the comparison peg on themselves rather than others' work (this is easier than it sounds, there is years of unlearning involved already and a lot of pre-conceived notions!) and the next step is to go deeper...
4. Flexibility of the facilitator - our facilitators have been trained to be flexible enough to accommodate the entire range of inputs for the age group. They are not just from teaching backgrounds but also understand the psyche of the child and have had varied exposure in the real world of how things work/don't work which makes them very passionate about the work they do and it shows in the excellent way in which they facilitate the activities and discussions in a session
5. Open ended nature of problems/challenges - unlike a typical classroom, our problems/situations are very open ended and that means there is more than one correct answer. Which in turn, lets every child come up with answers based on their age/exposure/depth of understanding and they are all welcome. It brings us to the interesting concept of push-pull...next
6. Push-pull - The different age groups have a push-pull effect with respect to energy, openness on one side and exposure and balance on the other side. It is very interesting to watch the ebb and flow of the discussions and how they learn from each other too! by the way, if you are not pushing your boundaries and comfort zone you are not growing - so it is ok if some of them feel a bit Why would we deprive children of such a glimpse of real life?
What do you think? Should we narrow down the age group and not let children benefit from a real life thinking scenario? Let us know your thoughts...