Creating Reality

In the Facebook comments section under yesterday's post, I used the phrase, "language creates reality." This is not original to me. I learned it from my university rhetoric professor. I was convinced of it's truth then, but have become even more so as a teacher.

If there is one thing I concentrate on more than any other as a teacher is the language I use with children. Of course, the tone, context, and emotional content are also central, but equally so are the actual words, phrases, and sentences we use, the language we choose to express ourselves. And this creates reality, both for ourselves and others. 

For instance, if I go through life speaking mostly in directive statements, those that command others ("Come here," "Sit down," "Don't do that.") a certain reality grows around me. If I ask a lot of questions to satisfy my curiosity about the world, then one reality will emerge while if my questions are of the argumentative or quizzing or jealous or passive aggressive variety then, well, I will live in other realities. And if I tend toward informational statements, striving to communicate things that are true about the world, including my own opinions and emotions, yet another world is mine.

As a teacher, I try to avoid directive statements and questions, both of which tend to strongly shape reality according to my preconceived notions, and instead focus on making informative statements, those statements that have the virtue of being true, because they tend to leave more space for children to do their own thinking, and that, after all, is what education is all about.

Directive statements, commands, the ones that fill our children's lives (some studies have found that as many as 80 percent of the sentences said to young children are commands) leave children with only two choices: obey or disobey. There is no room in there for thinking for oneself, just obedience or rebellion.

Questions asked out of any motivation other than genuine curiosity, put children on the spot, forcing them to think about the adult's agenda instead of their own, which is, at least, their proper pursuit in a child-lead, play-based environment.

Informative statements, however, create a space in which children can do their own thinking.

For instance, when a child approaches a table upon which there is a bowl of fruit and finds there also paper, brushes, and paints, the reality of those materials are changed if I declare, "Today, we are making still life paintings," rather than, "Here is a bowl of fruit, paper, bushes, and paint." In the first case the child lives in a world in which he can either try to paint that still life or not. In the second instance, the one in which I simply listed the materials, a whole world of possibilities is open: he can indeed paint a still life, but he can also use the brushes to paint the fruit; he can eat the fruit while painting; he can use the fruit as brushes; he can finger paint, make prints, or simply mix colors. When I use directive language I make his world narrow, while informative statements open it up.

When it's clean-up time and I command a child, "Pick up that block," she can either do what I say or not. When I make informative statements like, "It's clean-up time," "I see a block on the floor," "The costumes go on the hooks," or "I see Sally putting the puzzles on the shelf," I create a world in which she can think for herself, where she makes her own decisions about how to best engage in clean-up time.

Likewise, I strive to avoid questions unless I'm genuinely curious about the answer and I have a reasonable expectation that this particular child can answer it. Too often we use questions to control or test children, to shape them to our agenda: "What color is that?" "How many marbles am I holding?" "Does that look safe?" Informative statements, in contrast, simply provide potentially useful information that the child may or may not use: "That color is red." "I'm holding three marbles." "That doesn't look safe to me."

None of us, of course, can ever completely eliminate directive statements or questions, they have their place and are, besides, simply too ingrained in us by now. But we can, with conscious effort begin to replace them with more informative statements, and when we do, even a little, we begin to create a new reality, one in which there is more space for children to do their own thinking.

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