Educational environments usually consist of activities with known outcomes, involving a known set of concepts or ideas. Students are expected to reconstruct or rederive those concepts for themselves through their studies. But even in “discovery learning” environments and interpretive liberal arts courses, activities generally aren’t designed to facilitate original thought.
If educational environments’ aspiration is enabling students to pursue independent, personally meaningful intellectual activity, this observation is in conflict. How can one expect to prepare students to think original thoughts through activities which never require them to think an original thought—which, in fact, often discourage original thoughts?
This appears to be an important limitation of using Enacted experience to teach.
See also: Nell doesn’t do any original thinking inside the Primer