The Way Democracy is Supposed to Work

Like many preschools, we were always a little short on storage space. We had a separate storage room and a couple of outdoor sheds, but our classroom walls were still lined with a hodgepodge of shelves and cabinets. A few of these pieces of furniture had doors, but most were open shelves which were covered with curtains of butter yellow fabric.

One of the first things children learned about our space was that when the curtain was in place, the items on those shelves were "closed," while when the curtain was removed, that meant "open." Even the youngest children got the system within a couple weeks. Of course, that didn't mean they didn't peek, but after the first couple weeks of school it was exceedingly rare for a child, even a two-year-old, to take the next step of actually playing with what they found there.

I'm always impressed by this level of self-control. After all, they were only curtains, attached with velcro. The shelves were full of attractive items stored at eye-level. No one ever threatened or scolded them about these shelves. During the first few weeks of school, as they are figuring out the boundaries, they are told, "That's closed" or "That's opened," statements of fact about our storage-challenged classroom, said in the way one might say, "That's a window" or "This is a chair." We helped them re-hang any curtains that had been removed in the process. We might then discuss when we should "open" the shelf in question (we usually agreed on tomorrow). And after a couple weeks of experimentation, we all seemed to more or less agree on the system.

There was one curtain, however, that needed new velcro. Indeed, it had needed new velcro for several years. Pretty much anytime someone brushed against it, it fell. It was located on a shelf adjacent to our checkerboard rug, an active place where we regularly engaged in both circle time and a lot of large motor, dramatic, and constructive play. Needless to say, it fell open several times a day. A child could easily be excused for assuming that meant that those blocks were "open," yet they never did.

Almost every time the curtain was knocked down, a child would take it upon themself to re-attach the velcro. No one asked them to do it. No one even suggested it. Yet the moment the curtain fell, someone was on it. Often more than one, and usually without saying a word. Over the years, parents volunteered to repair it with new velcro, but I declined the offer. It was beautiful to me to watch how the children took responsibility for it year after year, often struggling with it, often needing help, but nevertheless making the effort; "closing" the inadvertently "open" shelf, not because it's a rule or because they had been told to do it by an authority figure, but simply because that's the way we do things at Woodland Park. 

Every time I saw it happen it occurs to me that this is the way democracy is supposed to work.

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What Do You Do That is as Effortless and Unprompted as a Preschooler Playing?

The four and five year olds started their days on the playground. Some would take a moment to greet me, but most barely paused to shed their backpacks and jackets before plunging into their play. That might mean manning a position at the cast iron water pump, digging in the sand, swinging, racing up and down the concrete slide, hunting out a favorite loose part, or gathering with friends to plot and plan together, inviting one another with the most beautiful sentences in the human language, the one's that start with the contraction, "Let's . . ."

"Let's pretend we're pilots!"

"Let's all be baby animals!"

"Let's go over there!"

Most of the four and five year olds I ever taught had been together in school for a couple of years already. They knew me, they knew the other kids, they knew the environment, and they knew how to derive satisfaction from playing together. They did it effortlessly and without prompting. This was life as they knew it, a formula of their own collective and ongoing distillation. Of course, they knew there would be conflict, even pain, because they had already learned from experience that the permission to learn from pleasure always includes the possibility of pain. That's perhaps the lesson of life, not this artificial pain that is imposed by schools in the name of teaching children the harsh lessons of the workplace: do what you're told even when it's mind-numbing and soul-crushing.

In our school, the children knew that they were free to pursue, both individually and together, a life in which their work was their play and vice versa. 

"(M)ost individuals today are born into serfdom to Factory Earth," writes historian Peter Stearns in his book From Alienation to Addiction. "With factory industry, most people, for the first time in human history outside of some forms of slavery, could never aspire to work without direct supervision."

The adults at Woodland Park performed their ancient role of caretakers, protectors, and occasional advisors, because the goal of education as we saw it is to allow young humans to seek their one true path, the one they follow, for a day or a week or a lifetime, out of curiosity. In our way of doing it, curiosity stands in the stead of the factory floor boss.

What do you do that is as effortless and unprompted as the four and five year olds playing together at Woodland Park? What is it that you do that doesn't need to be put on a "to do" list because you will do it anyway? As adults, many of us have forgotten what it means to live in this way, looking inward and asking ourselves what would give us permission to play-work-live like these children? People often envy these young children who are, quite frankly, living a life of abundance and purpose. It still surprises me how many feel they need to put a stop to it, "for their own good." They can't just go through life doing what they want. It's the grim view of life as a factory. A place where no one has ever found abundance and purpose. As the Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote, "Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance." 

But life can't just be about enjoyment! If it feels good, it must be bad. If we do it just to satisfy our curiosity, it must be a waste of time. Curiosity kills the cat. What's good must be hard and painful. Pleasure is only a dessert, something to be limited and saved for last. 

The novelist Edith Wharton asks, "Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?" Why indeed.

I've spent my adult life trying to learn the lessons of humans for whom pleasure and curiosity stand as the pure goods that they are. These are the people who are living, not happy lives, but abundant ones. At the end of life, no one wishes they had worked harder. If they have any regrets it's that they didn't love and play more. Why is it that we only seem to understand this central truth at the Alpha and Omega of life, whereas during the journey in between we treat it as, at best, a hinderance and at worst a devil that must be kept down lest we . . . What? Find purpose in life before it's all over? Sounds pretty good to me.

I know why, of course. It's fear and doubt. We've been taught by years of schooling, both curricular and extracurricular, that the floor bosses know best, that we are here to serve Factory Earth, and that anything that makes our hearts sing is a secret evil. It's reinforced every time a child is reprimanded for daydreaming and not paying attention. It's taught each time children are scolded for chatting amongst themselves instead to listening to the teacher's instructions. We've been made to feel afraid of ourselves and our own desires because they have no place in the factory.

As I spent my days amidst these self-directed humans who had permission to work-play-live, I knew that they would inevitably leave Woodland Park where they would begin their training for Factory Earth. Soon enough they would come across those who would direct them "for their own good" and make them feel guilt or shame over those things that bring them joy, and pride in doing the things against which their souls rebelled. I found my joy in the moment; the now of this community of children. I will always have the satisfaction in knowing that for a time, on that playground, the four and five year olds knew they had permission to live abundantly in a world in which "Let's . . ." was the sacred a call to live together with a purpose all our own.

I can dream that one day we will come to understand that this should stand at the center of education. Until then, I'll just live it.

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How Young Children Learn Self-Discipline

I bridle at most "systems of discipline." Even so-called "gentle discipline" often strikes me as overly controlling and manipulative. 

For starters, it seems to me that adults -- both educators and parents -- lump far too many things into the basket of "challenging behaviors" that require discipline. Sassing or talking back, for one. I mean, who cares? When adults do it, we call it standing up for themself. Disobedience is another; it's not a problem if obedience isn't the goal. And there is entirely too much emphasis placed on following unnecessary rules, like walking in straight lines, sitting still, and asking permission to use the bathroom. Most adults would exhibit the same challenging behaviors that preschoolers do if they were forced into the kind of environments of control and manipulation in which most young children spend their lives. Indeed, I see much of these behaviors as a healthy response to being controlled and manipulated.

Secondly, almost every system of discipline I've ever come across relies on the external motivators of rewards and punishments, the tools of behaviorism, a method of "training" that treats children like organic machines, completely ignoring the fact that they are, you know, fully formed human beings.

Yes, we know from psychology that external motivators may "work" if mere compliance is the marker of success, but only as long as the rewarder/punisher remains present. There are those who argue that external motivators eventually become internal motivation over time, which is BS. What they mean is that under the right circumstances, children can be conditioned to respond in an adult-approved way. If their system is applied with consistent rigidity, it's possible to create a Pavlovian drool response in which a child behaves in a certain way due to operant conditioning, which is to say a mindless response to external cues. That's inhuman and cruel. I will never do anything to a child that requires them to ignore their emotions, set aside their sense of morality, and, worst of all, give up on actual thinking. 

If learning is our objective, and I hope it is, then actual, reasoned, internal motivation is the only rational and ethical objective. And this can only happen when children are free to think for themselves.

The bottom line is that these systems of discipline require adults to treat children in ways that they themselves would never tolerate . . . Unless, of course, they themselves have been victims of behaviorist conditioning.

I take no pride in forcing or tricking children into behaving according to my standards. What I want is for children to learn self-discipline: which is to say, behave according to their own standards. To be honest, I expect that this is the ultimate goal of most adults who work with children, but we'll never get there through rewards and punishments. Or rather, a child might get there, on their own, but first they'll have to dedicate years to overcoming their conditioning, which is a difficult, even hazardous, process. 

It's not a function of biology that so many young people throw themselves into drink, drugs, and reckless sex when they first leave home: it's a reaction to finally finding themselves outside the control of those external motivators. With no threat of external punishment (e.g., when the punisher is not present) there is nothing stopping them until they start running into the natural consequences: hangovers, STDs, arrests, DUIs, unwanted pregnancies, most of which could have been avoided if only these children had practice and experience in self-discipline.

I want the young children in my life to know, from the very start, that their behavior is their own responsibility. That doesn't mean that I expect them to always do the right thing. It's preschool, after all. There will be hitting and snatching. There will be tantrums and rowdiness and experiments in power. These are not things I need to control, but rather opportunities for children to learn about natural consequences, making amends, and self-discipline.

You'll notice that most of what the "systems" define as "challenging behaviors" aren't included here. Obedience, respect for authority, walking in straight lines, these are concerns for adults who seek to control. Obedience is a dangerous habit to learn. Respect (too often conflated with fear in these systems) is something that I must earn, it's not something I'm owed. And walking in straight lines is, at best, a cosmetic concern.

I'm concerned with children learning how to get their own needs met while also allowing others to get their needs met within the context of community. I want them to learn that the natural consequence of violence is that people get hurt, that taking things from others makes them sad, that being foolhardy may result in injury, and that the other people deserve to be treated not just as you yourself want to be treated, but as they themselves want to be treated. I want them to know that self-discipline is not about rigorously adhering to rules that others have made for you, but rather being ready to come to agreements while adhering to principles and morals that come from within.

And the only way to learn this is by being allowed to play -- which for young children is to say live -- in a community of others where they can experiment, explore, and discover the kind of person they need to be in order to thrive. Young children are not developmentally ready for academic things like literacy, but they are ready for this kind of trail-and-error social-emotional learning. In fact, they are driven to it.

As adults, our role is not to strong-arm and frighten them into never making those trials and errors, but rather to notice when they do, to help them understand that the consequences are a result of their behaviors, of their errors, and to then offer them a realistic assessment of the steps they can take to make amends. But more importantly, to provide suggestions for what they can do differently in the future. It means understanding enough basic psychology to know that no learning or listening can take place while they are in a disregulated state and help them first become re-regulated. It means creating two-way relationships of fondness, respect, and trust with them. It means knowing that we are neither above or below them, but rather with them.

In other words, it means treating young children the way we treat adults whose we like and respect.

Of course, we are the actual adults, vested with more experience in the world. Because of this, know more about safety, schedules, and courtesy than they do. That's it. The rest is trivia. Yes, I know more about Elizabethan novels than the average four-year-old, but they know more about Disney movies than I do. Trivia.

When they are doing something that is unsafe, including harming another child, I speak calmly and authoritatively from my responsibility: "My job is to keep everyone safe. What you are doing is not safe. I can't let you do that." I then proceed to not let them do it. 

Yes, they may object, they may cry, they may even become disregulated. That's a natural, normal preschooler response to disappointments, all of which can feel vital and overwhelming in the moment. I don't have to argue with them. I don't have to make them stop crying. And I definitely don't have to feel what they feel. What I can do is be compassionate, to feel for them, which is to say agree that their response, for them, is okay with me, and that I will be there with them until they are ready to move on . . . Just as I would with a disappointed adult who I care for.

When schedules must be met, when, for instance, we must come in from outdoors, I say, "It's time to go" because it's a statement of fact. If a child objects, I again speak from my responsibilities: "I can't let you stay outside by yourself." I then proceed to not let them stay outside by themself because that's my responsibility.

When they are behaving in ways that disrupt or disturb others, I again speak from my responsibilities, then help them find an appropriate place or time in which to engage in whatever it was that disrupted or disturbed, because that's my responsibility.

Conflict is not challenging behavior, but rather an opportunity to learn about ourselves and others within the context of community. I'm not there to force a resolution, but rather to be with the children, keeping them safe by removing physical violence from the equation, as they teach themselves, from the ground up, the basics of negotiation and agreement. It might not look pretty from an adult perspective, because learning through trial, error, and natural consequences isn't always pretty, but it is how free humans are meant to learn these things.

High spirits and rowdiness are not challenging behavior, but rather an indication that I have failed to provide them with an environment in which they can engage in those necessary behaviors. Indeed, providing a safe enough environment in which children may learn as their minds and bodies dictate is another of my adult responsibilities. 

None of this requires obedience. None of this requires Pavlovian conditioning. None of this requires me to punish or reward. I am not commanding children, but rather doing the job of helping young humans feel their way, through natural consequences, toward self-discipline.

A public school kindergarten teacher once told me, "I can always tell which of my new students came from your preschool. They know how to get their own needs met and how to help others get their needs met." That's the goal.

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The Girl Who Couldn't Sit at Circle Time

When we sat down for circle time, three-year-old Hazel didn't sit. Or rather, she would lower herself to her knees until she was moved to speak, whereupon she would leap to her feet and pace as she spoke. At first, some of the adults reacted to her like a distraction, urging her in whispers to "sit on her bottom." She would comply with a quizzical expression, but the moment it was her turn to talk, her body simply could not remain still.

One of the lessons of schooling is that children must learn to sit still. Indeed, this is one of the main things elementary schools want from preschools: children who are capable of sitting, eyes forward, listening. Quite often, this is the explicit reason parents give for holding their child back from kindergarten for an extra year: their child just isn't "ready" for all that stillness. 

Hazel was an important teacher for me. When we allowed her to pace, she was thoughtful and articulate, but on those rare occasions when we succeeded in getting her to remain seated, she simply couldn't participate beyond simple yes-or-no answers to direct questions, and even then her mind seemed like it was elsewhere.

A lot has been said about our brain's prefrontal cortex. This is the seat of our "executive function," which is the part of our brain that keeps our impulses (like popping to our feet) in check. It is also the part of the brain responsible for intellectual functions (like speaking articulately). I wasn't aware of this at the time, but obviously Hazel's prefrontal cortex was not up to simultaneously controlling her strong bodily impulse to pace while also sharing her ideas, opinions, and stories. Indeed, Hazel's urge to move was likely an important aspect of her intellectual process: she needed to move her body in order to think more clearly.

The school-ish myth that children must be still in order to concentrate is simply not supported by scientific evidence. In her book The Extended Mind, science journalist Annie Murphy Paul, writes, "(W)e believe there's something virtuous about controlling the impulse to move . . . What this attitude overlooks is that the capacity to regulate our attention and our behavior is a limited resource, and some of it is used up by suppressing the very natural urge to move."

Study and after study in recent years have clearly demonstrated that the human brain's capacity for thought is greatly enhanced by movement. "Parents and teachers often believe they have to get kids to stop moving around before they can focus and get down to work," says Paul, "(A) more constructive approach would be to allow kids to move around so that they can focus."

Like with most things that science "discovers," this is a truth that we've long known, and that our schools, in their abiding concern with control-over-learning, have straight-up ignored. By all accounts, the Ancient Greeks like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle did most of their teaching while strolling outdoors. Many of those we hold up as Western culture's greatest thinkers -- Einstein, Darwin, Woolf, Nietzsche, James -- were famous walkers. In her book Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit (a great thinker and walker in her own right) enthuses about the enhanced mental capacity of "the mind at three miles per hour." 

Embodied thinking isn't just for young children.

Paul writes about a study published in 2018: "(T)hey asked groups of volunteers to solve a set of math problems in their heads while staying still, while remaining relaxed "but without substantial movement," or while moving slightly in a rhythmic pattern. All the while, the participants' cognitive load -- how hard their brains were working -- was being measured . . . Subjects' cognitive load "considerably increased under the instruction 'not to move'" . . . Of the three conditions, the requirement to remain still produced the poorest performance on the math problems . . . "Sitting quietly," the researchers conclude, "is not necessarily the best condition for learning in school."

Or, I will assert, anywhere. My tendency to fidget in meetings used to embarrass me, but now I understand that when I bounce my leg or tap my fingers or play with my hair or doodle or repeatedly shift my weight, what I'm doing is enhancing my ability to concentrate. If it was socially acceptable, I would pace like Hazel.

At Woodland Park, we agreed to let Hazel pace during circle time. The control-freak caution that this would encourage all the other kids to imitate her proved partly true, but in a fascinating way. The main thing that bugged the other kids about her pacing was that she would often block their views. The kids decided that our circle time rug should have various zones. Up front, near me, was the "lying down zone." Next came the "sitting on bottoms zone," followed by the "knees zone," the "standing zone," and then, in the back, the "jumping up and down zone." It took a few days, but before long we had settled into a wonderfully active and intellectually profitable pattern, one quite suitable for the kind of embodied thinking that humans do best.

But, of course, in the very back there was a zone behind the jumpers for Hazel, who continued to pace, doing her best thinking at three miles per hour.

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"I Often Lose My Patience and Even Scream at My Children"

Parents and others have often complimented my "patience" with young children. It makes me feel good, although I'm certainly not patient all the time, and I've been known to lose my temper, just ask my family.

Everyone knows I hold Mister Rogers in high esteem -- the poster child for patience. Here's something he had to say on the topic:

I received a letter from a parent who wrote: "Mister Rogers, how do you do it? I wish I were like you. I want to be patient and quiet and even-tempered, and always speak respectfully to my children. But that just isn't my personality. I often lose my patience and even scream at my children. I want to change from an impatient person into a patient person, from an angry person into a gentle one."

Just as it takes time for children to understand what real love is, it takes time for parents to understand that being always patient, quiet, even-tempered, and respectful isn't necessarily what "good" parents are. In fact, parents help children by expressing a wide range of feelings -- including appropriate anger. All children need to see that the adults in their lives can feel anger and not hurt themselves or anyone else when they feel that way.

Amen.

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Surely, You Want Your Kid to Be a Part of This!

As clean up time approached, I began to survey the two-year-olds, "I'm thinking that it might be clean-up time." Some agreed while others informed me that they wanted to wait "Three minutes" or "Five minutes." They all knew by now that after we tidy up we go outside. I've never instructed the children to participate in cleaning up, but I have instructed the parent-teachers in this cooperative class to practice stepping back, to leave space for the children who choose to participate to do so in a meaningful way.

After three or five minutes, I retrieved the hand drum we use as a transition signal. Children were engaged in their play all around the room, although a couple of them stopped what they were doing to notice me. I said, "I'm getting the clean-up time banjo," and proceeded to "play" it like a banjo.

A few more kids noticed me. "It's not a banjo," I said, "It's a flute," and I played the drumstick like a flute.

"It's not a flute, it's a trumpet," and I played the stick like a trumpet. Now several more children were watching me. One of them laughed, saying, "It's a drum!"

"It's not a trumpet," I continued, "It's a trombone," and I pantomimed playing the stick as a trombone.

"It's not a trombone, Teacher Tom! It's a drum!" By now about half the kids had dropped what they were doing to watch me.

"It's not a trombone, it's a tuba." I used the drumstick for the mouthpiece and held the drum over my head to represent the large, flared tuba bell.

By now, most of the kids were paying attention, and most of them had come over to where I stood on our checker board rug to stand amidst the Duplos that were scattered there. Several of them shouted at me, "It's a drum!" and "It's not a tuba!"

I said, "It's not a tuba, it's a harp."

"It's not a harp!" they shouted. "It's a drum!" Some were so full of anticipation that they demanded, "Bang it!"

"It's not a harp, it's a piano."

"It's a drum!" "Bang it!"

"It's not a piano, it's a drum and I'm going to bang it so loud that your brains are going to shoot out of your ears and splat on the wall."

By now everyone was focused on my silly little show and they were demanding that I bang the drum. They were demanding the transition. It's not the first time I've done this, indeed, it's part of my regular teacher repertoire. After a couple of goofs where I pretended to miss the drum, I finally made contact, playing it gently with three soft beats because they were all so focused with anticipation that that was all I needed.

As I said, I've never suggested that these two-year-olds participate in clean-up, although they had by now been coming to class for months and most had been pitching in of their own accord. On this day, the sound of Duplos being dropped into boxes was almost deafening, as they all, as one, leapt to the task. There were a couple visitors in the room at the time, mothers touring the school with an eye toward enrolling for next year. The response was so dramatic, so instantaneous, so opposite of the stereotype we have of young children, that I couldn't help making eye-contact with one of the prospective parents boastfully, as if to non-verbally say, Surely, you want your kid to be a part of this!

I then continued to make informational statements like, "That box needs to go over here," and "Phillip is putting away lots of blocks," and "We need help at the red table," until everything was packed away. None of them complained. None of them hid. None of them sought to avoid the "work." They simply did what we were doing until it was done, then we put on our coats and went outside.

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If There is Any Single Thing I Want Parents to Know, It's This

I once had a three-year-old in my class who taught himself the Periodic Table of the Elements, including the atomic numbers. I didn't teach it to him. His parents swore they hadn't taught it to him. And his grandfather, who was his day-to-day caretaker, found it amusing, but otherwise barely worthy of notice, just as he hadn't been particularly impressed when his grandson taught himself to read as a two-year-old.

The boy's parents felt pressure from friends and society at large to place the boy in some sort of program for gifted children. But, as his mother told me, "He's happy here, so we're happy here. Besides, he seems to be learning just fine as it is. Why would we mess with that?"

Of course, the word "happy" in this context was used to mean something more along the lines of "motivated," because he wasn't always happy at school. In fact, at school his primary project was making friends, a notoriously fraught field of study. As a two-year-old he had been primarily focused on "the ABCs." If he couldn't find an alphabet themed puzzle or book, he would begin to shape letters from play dough or paint them at the easel. Sometimes he would cry until we helped him discover some kind of alphabet-based activity. And even though he continued his "academic" pursuits on his own time, as he grew older, his main focus of study at school became the other people in the room.

He found this kind of learning far more difficult than chemistry or literacy. He was often confused to the point of tears by the behaviors of these children with whom he sought connection. Yet, each day he arrived curious and motivated to figure things out, even if these social-emotional pursuits remained complex and unpredictable. In a world that tends to elevate children like him above the hoi polloi, he wanted, more than anything else, to fit in, to be one of the guys. Sometimes he sought to lead, but most of the time his strategy was to fawn, follow, and befriend. It left him vulnerable, but time and again he bounced back. By the time he was four, he spent most of his days at school in the midst of a pack of children playing classic preschool games of pretend and adventure. He was still interested in things like the solar system (he was upset that "some picky scientists" had demoted Pluto), presidential history (he knew every President, their Vice Presidents, and First Ladies), and reading (well above his so-called "grade level"), but at school he didn't have time for those things.

The last time I saw him was as a fifth grader performing in a public school production of Shakespeare's The Tempest, one of a cast of dozens. He was happy, which is to say, motivated.

By now, he's in high school. I'm sure that he and his family are feeling pressure to "accelerate" his learning, to separate him from his average classmates in the name of his obvious intellectual gifts, to make all his learning more focused and "useful." To do that to the boy I know, would be the equivalent of depriving him of oxygen. Self-motivation is what he breathes. I've not spoken with the family for a few years now, but I have no doubt that he is feeling no pressure from them to do anything other than follow his curiosity because, at the end of the day, that is the only way any of us will ever truly live a "happy" life. If there is any single thing I want parents to know, it's this.

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