Imagination, Evolution, & Education

I was listening to a podcast titled Philosophy Bites in which Edmonds and Warburton (forgot first names) interviewd Alison Gopnik on the imagination. Toward the end of the interview, Gopnik offered an explanation for why we even have imaginations at all. In her estimation, and from an evolutionary perspective, the role of imagination in childhood serves as the R&D department of the human race (what the imagination corresponds to in adults was not clear, although our purpose in general as adults could be summarized as PR and Marketinig). She went on to say that what's interesting about this is that the period of childhood in which we spend so much time exploring, pretending, etc. is time we actually spend inferring causal relationships in the world: this causes that, if I do this then that happens, and so on. So far so good. What followed, however, was that she observed that this doesn't do the human species at large any particular good; it's just a whole lot of years and resources spent on offspring who don't bring home any bacon and who consume a disproportionate amount of resources (time, attention, affection, money, etc). The conclusion she forwarded was that this whole thing actually seems to work because, from the child's perspective, nothing is "on the line" in their learninig. They get year after year of opportunity of "trial and error", and that, rather than being an inefficient use of time and resrouces, it paradoxically creates an environment in which learning is incredibly effective!

Now, what I want to know is, since this observation is true (and I think that it is, even though the evolutionary interpretation is flawed), two things:

1. Why has it taken evolutionary psychologists so long to see that children learn well when the "pressure" to learn is not constant, but they are shown the delight and sweetness of things,
2. Why is our national state education policy moving in exactly the opposite direction, requiring that every move of every student in every classroom on every day be quantified, analyzed, interpreted, and constructed upon for the next day's lesson?

BHT