"Reality is Merely an Illusion"

Dale Chihuly

As the elevator door opened, our dog Stella leapt forward as if trying to catch a squirrel or a crow that was somehow, impossibly, waiting for us inside the carriage. The lift was clearly empty, but so convincing was her lunge that I pulled back on her leash, doubting my own senses for a second. And even though I detected nothing lurking there, she clearly did, the product of her canine ability to smell into the past through the scents left behind.

If a human had this ability, it would be a superpower: the ability to see, or smell, into the past, to know what had happened in a place or to a person well after that moment was history. Indeed, what a different world it must be for canines with the past always being so pungently present.

Of course, we do see and smell the past. Indeed, that's the only thing we see and smell. The same goes for our other senses of taste, touch, and hearing. There is a lag, ever so slight, between our direct experience with reality and our bodies' ability to transmit that experience to our brains where we interpret it. And because of that fraction of a second, what we experience through our senses is not the present moment, but rather a moment from the very, very recent past. In other words, we are perpetually running ever so slightly behind, leaping into elevators full of the ghosts of things that no longer exist.

It's in these fractions of seconds that our brains process all that sensory input, interpreting it as the reality we see, smell, hear, feel, and taste, making it part of the story we are telling ourselves about the present. We must rely upon our stories because we are simply incapable of perceiving the universe as what it really is, which is energy. As Albert Einstein said, "Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one."

It's lucky, I suppose, that we are perpetually running a fraction of a second behind because without the stories we tell about the sensations we experience, there would be no life at all. Without our illusions, without our interpretations, without our stories, there would be nothing but energy, which is more like an event than a physical thing. Stella tells herself a "story" about the interior of the elevator just as we tell the story of everything we experience and that is what becomes reality. 

We come into this world "knowing" it is all energy and then spend our lives learning to tell the stories that will make up our existence. As adults, we can't prevent ourselves from telling our stories to our babies, teaching them to interpret reality as we interpret it. It is an awesome power, one I hardly feel worthy of wielding. I mean, I generally speaking like the reality in which I find myself, but, you know, it could be better and who am I to foist my interpretation upon someone else? I reckon, at bottom, that's the desire we all have for our children to live a little better than we did, so we try to tell them the good stories and leave out the bad, but better I think is to stand aside and listen to them tell their own stories.

Stories are all around us, they are in everything and everyone. Most are stories we unconsciously tell, illusions that persist like ghosts in elevators. But there are the conscious stories too, the ones we tell ourselves and one another. These are the ones over which we have the godlike power of authorship. These are the stories that we tell about our days and weeks and years, the ones that in the end form the persistent illusion of our reality. 

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 If you like my blog, you'll love my books! Teacher Tom's Second Book is now available in the UK, Iceland, and Europe, as well as the US and Canada. And if you missed it, Teacher Tom's First Book is back in print as well. Thank you!

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"Just In Time" Education

Little boxes on the hillside

Little boxes made of ticky tacky

Little boxes on the hillside

Little boxes all the same

There's a pink one and a green one

And a blue one and a yellow one

And they're all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same

                   ~Malvina Reynolds

One of the theories underpinning "normal" education is that children need a "foundation" upon which to build future learning. Indeed, that's pretty much what the first 18 years is all about for most kids: memorizing the stuff they're going to need to have memorized in order to memorize the stuff they're going to need to memorize for next year, and so on, until they are released into the world, their foundations finally ready to support their "little boxes." Of course, it's not entirely like that. Some more progressive teachers might allow the children to write their papers on "any topic you chose" or "read any book you want (unless it's a comic book)," but they are largely constrained by the blueprint curriculum that they've been issued for constructing foundations so that those little boxes will turn out "all the same." 

It's a theory that starts with the idea that the adults, in their wisdom and superior soothsaying about the future, can predict what every child will need, as if there is a common body of knowledge that all children, no matter their interests, aptitudes, background, culture, or developmental stage, must know in order to move forward in life. We argued that they must be "well rounded." We say we are preparing them for the "jobs of tomorrow." We warn they are "falling behind" when the foundation for their little box is not the same as all the others. We tell them they are wrong when they, say, aspire to anything other than an out-of-the-box foundation for their future little box. After all, some day we will allow you to pick any color of paint for your box, as long as it's pink, green, blue, or yellow.

It's a theory that assumes that adults, especially the adults who write and approve curricula, adults who have never met the individual children in question, know best about not only what this foundation for the future should look like, but how it should be constructed. It's a theory that relies upon the dehumanizing metaphors of assembly-line manufacturing. 

Adults have a long, long, long history of being poor predictors of the future. Indeed, they are always wrong about the "jobs of tomorrow." It's today's five-year-olds who will be inventing those jobs of tomorrow long after we adults have left the stage, shaking our heads in befuddlement over what the world has become. There is no way for us to know what kind of foundation children need, yet we persist in forcing a standardized one on them whether they plan to build little boxes, all the same, or not.

Self-directed education, or play-based education as we call it in the early years, frees children to build their own foundations, not based not upon the guesswork of adults who know nothing about them other than their age, but rather according to their immediate needs. Instead of spending their days being filled up with random trivia that may or may not be useful in the future, they are free to develop, through their own initiative, the knowledge and skills they need right now in order to accomplish their self-selected inquiry. It's "just in time" education, with children learning what they need to learn, exactly when they need to learn it, not because some adult is dangling a carrot or wielding a stick, but because they are self-motivated. It's about learning, not memorizing. One never need "test" children who learn in this way because the learning is self-evident. We see them demonstrating their learning, on the spot, in real time, then moving on to the next thing they need to learn as they follow their own curiosity, building their own unique and quirky foundation.

And this is the sort of foundation that every human deserves to create for themself, not just for the future, but for right now: one built through self-motivation and curiosity, rather than according the dictates of tract housing destined to be painted in pastel hues, all the same. 

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 If you like my blog, you'll love my books! Teacher Tom's Second Book is now available in the UK, Iceland, and Europe, as well as the US and Canada. And if you missed it, Teacher Tom's First Book is back in print as well. Thank you!

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Man, I Was Not Ready for This Pandemic

Man, I was not ready for this pandemic. Not at all. Up until March, my life revolved around being in the physical presence of other people, usually packed together in classrooms, airports and airplanes, hotels, conference rooms, restaurants, concerts, and dance floors. Indeed, I could not have been less well prepared for staying home, isolating, and distancing.

I mean, the adjustment has been brutal. I've lost income. I've fallen into bouts of anger and despair. I've struggled with waiting in well-spaced lines, dodging people on the sidewalks, carrying on day-to-day life via the computer, and wearing a mask. The mask has been particularly tough because, let's face it, my smile is my "money maker." I've had to learn to smile with my eyes, for crying out loud. 

If only I'd practiced these things. If only I had pre-restricted my social and professional life. That would have been the thing to do, right? I should have anticipated this pandemic by hunkering down more, keeping to myself, and perfecting my indoor hobbies. I mean, it's not like people weren't warning us that "the big one" was coming, but I guess I was cocky, you know. I'd survived the HIV/AIDS pandemic as well as SARS, MERS, Ebola, and several versions of flu without really changing a thing. But I see now how maybe I should have gone into training in order to be ready for this. Then the transition wouldn't have been so hard, then I would have been ready, then I would have been way ahead of all those other schmucks who were just living their lives, without a care in the world.

I should have worried more. I should have stocked up. I should have been "pandemic ready."

Of course, that's crazy. No one practices for a pandemic. It makes no sense to make one's life grim, to deprive oneself, to stop living in order to pre-experience hardship, yet that's exactly what we do when we harp on concepts like school or kindergarten "readiness." Let's make kids struggle through things for which they aren't developmentally ready in order to prepare them for next year when they will also be expected to struggle through things for which they aren't developmentally ready. And then let's "motivate" them with warnings about "falling behind." That's more or less the rationale behind trying to teach literacy to three-year-olds. It's the logic behind making preschoolers pre-grind their noses over worksheets and standardized tests. It's the logic behind making our youngest citizens sit, facing forward, while muted even as every fiber of their being is crying out to actually live their lives.

This, of course, is not what preschoolers should be doing. Humans are designed to play, to explore their world, to ask and answer their own questions, to invent, discover, pretend, and imagine. If there is a "pandemic" of schooling in their future, it will be challenging no matter what. What we do in the name of "school readiness" is a shame. What a cruelty it is to artificially force children to suffer in anticipation of suffering and to prime their parents with fears of "falling behind."

I am finding ways to thrive during this pandemic, not because I practiced for it, but rather because I have, up until now, lived my life as best I could, facing challenges as they come, overcoming them or adapting. Of course, I miss the old world, but I'm accustomed to living the life in front of me, learning from the real world and making the most of the present reality. Resilience, flexibility, and creativity don't come from practice or training, but rather from the habit of living the life in front of us, right now. And it's this, and only this, that allows us to be "ready" for whatever challenges life has to offer.

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If you like my blog, you'll love my books! Teacher Tom's Second Book is now available in the UK, Iceland, and Europe, as well as the US and Canada. And if you missed it, Teacher Tom's First Book is back in print as well. Thank you!

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Why I Worry About "Loose Parts"

I suppose I'm happy that the concept of "loose parts" play has taken the early childhood world by storm these past few years. It seems like not a day goes by that I don't discover a website dedicated to loose parts play, or a loose parts workshop for teachers, or a new book that will help us better understand it. Of course, it's an idea that's been around since the advent of children, one that was once just implied in the standard understanding of play: when left to their own devices kids tend to pick up whatever is at hand and goof around with it. Then, over the course of modernization and commercialization, we came to understand the idea of "toys" manufactured specifically for children's play, and many of us adopted those things as the hub around which play necessarily revolved.

Children, of course, still continued to play with loose parts, some of which were these toys, broken, modified, or otherwise, but we adults lost sight of that amidst the bright colors, flashing lights, and annoying noises of those objects that came from toy stores. And as toys became cheaper and more prevalent and better marketed, our homes and classrooms have come to be overwhelmed with them. But even then, children continued their loose parts play. Who among us, for instance, hasn't joked that our kids prefer the boxes the toys came in over the toys themselves?

So yes, I'm pleased that there is a renewed focus on the open-endedness of things like rocks and sticks and pinecones, of toilet paper tubes and mint tins and yoghurt containers, of old tires and planks of wood and house gutters, but I worry that we are on the edge of turning those into just another commodity to be bought and sold. I worry that in our embrace of loose parts play we are concentrating far too much on the loose parts and not enough on the play. I worry when I hear teachers fussing about their "loose parts" collection, hovering over the children lest they damage or misuse or lose their precious loose parts.

The children I've taught have always been engaged in loose parts play, but you'll rarely hear me use the term. I usually just call it "junk," or in the case of items that come from nature like leaves or sticks, I might refer to it as "debris." Whatever it's called, the key element is that we didn't pay for it and I have no concerns that it will be damaged, misused, or lost. Most of what you'll find on the Woodland Park playground came either from the earth itself or from the garages, attics, and recycling bins of the families who have enrolled their children. I often say that one of the functions of preschools isn't to use stuff, but to finish using it. We still have toys around, but most of them are broken in some way -- the cars have lost wheels, the dolls have lost their heads, and the balls have lost their shape. When we do spend money it's not on toys or loose parts, but rather on tools and furniture, things that need to be sturdy.

So while I'm pleased that more and more of us are discussing the value of loose parts play, I guess my caution is that we don't lose sight of the fact that you don't need to go shopping for these things and you don't need to "teach" the children how to play with them. Your world is already abundant with loose parts. Your recycling bin is full of them, your cellar is choc-a-bloc, and a broken toy is often much better than a new one. Our main job is simply make junk available and to step out of the way. The kids, as they always have, know what to do with it.

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If you like my blog, you'll love my books! Teacher Tom's Second Book is now available in the UK, Iceland, and Europe, as well as the US and Canada. And if you missed it, Teacher Tom's First Book is back in print as well. Thank you!

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A Lifetime of Learning in Every Moment

A couple days ago, while walking our dog in South Lake Union Park, my wife and I had to dodge a champagne cork. Drinking alcohol in the park is expressly forbidden during normal times, but, of course, these are anything but normal times. As the cork bounced harmlessly past us, several people from the large family group that had gathered to celebrate a loved one's life transforming moment, called out, laughingly, "Sorry."

I was taken back to another shooting champagne cork, one from some 50 years ago. Our family friend, Mr. Hollingsworth, had left a dent in the kitchen ceiling when a cork got away from him during one of the many times our families celebrated together. I'd never been around champagne before. Indeed I don't think I even knew what it was until that dramatic moment. There was an explosive pop, followed by a brief moment of startled silence as everyone registered what had happened. Then came a second explosion, this time of laughter as the adults noticed the marred ceiling and pieced together what had happened. Mr. Hollingsworth, whose ceiling had been spoiled, laughed the hardest of all.

Just as that moment left a mark on the ceiling, it also, clearly left a mark on me. It comes back to me whenever champagne is even mentioned. I was obviously impressed by the surprising explosive power, something I often recreate to this day while goofing around with baking soda and vinegar with children, but what stuck with me more than anything else is the idea of laughing at the dent Mr. Hollingsworth had made in the ceiling. After all, I'd marred walls before (although never ceilings) and no one had laughed about that. I'd accidentally broken many things and laughing about it had never been an option. If anything, one crept away from such things, hoping, and generally failing, to create plausible deniability. 

At one level, I suppose, I was impressed by the fact that Mr. Hollingsworth had "gotten away with it," not through denial, but rather by boldly acknowledging it. This was what adults got to do, I thought. They got to laugh at their mistakes. In fact, in Mr. Hollingsworth's case, he seemed to actually take pride in this particular mistake. Not only didn't he repair the dent, but it became a prompt as the years past to tell and re-tell the story, which he did whenever we gathered, always to renewed laughter. In many ways I expect it was his constant retellings, perhaps more than the actual moment itself, that caused it to become burned into my memory. 

Looking back, I can see how unfair it was. The adults got to laugh at their mistakes while we children were scolded and even punished for our own, but that's not how I felt then, or even now. It was that moment that made me want to be more like Mr. Hollingsworth: I wanted to grow up to be a man who could laugh at his mistakes. I wanted to become a person who not only laughed at his mistakes, but who could even find in them a source of pride and joy. In many ways, I'm still trying to be Mr. Hollingsworth.

There were several children at the family weekend celebration in South Lake Union Park. I wonder if any of them will remember the time their father or family friend or uncle accidentally launched a cork at innocent bystanders. Probably not, but you never know. There is the potential for a lifetime of learning in every moment.

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If you like my blog, you'll love my books! Teacher Tom's Second Book is now available in the UK, Iceland, and Europe, as well as the US and Canada. And if you missed it, Teacher Tom's First Book is back in print as well. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

"Do Schools Kill Creativity?"

 

"Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it's the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves." ~Sir Ken Robinson

The most watched TED Talk of all time was Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 talk, which has been viewed more than 65 million times. Entitled, Do Schools Kill Creativity? it is a masterpiece of public speaking, deep thinking, and sharp critique, woven together by charm and humor. He died on Saturday, taken by cancer. He was more than his TED Talk, of course, but it was that talk that changed things for me and millions of other educators around the world.

I didn't know Ken Robinson, although we met once at a conference in the UK where we both spoke nearly a decade ago, but his work, his thinking, his analysis, and his commitment to transforming education continue to live every day in my own life and work. Indeed, it's very likely I would never have had the courage to begin writing the Teacher Tom blog in 2009 had he not paved the way. 

Thank you Ken Robinson. You will be missed and you will continue to educate and inspire through those of us committed to your message. And I, for one, remain focused on a revolution in education, one that places critical thinking ahead of rote learning and creativity ahead compliance and standardization. As so many schools are now attempting to recreate the tired old models in the age of pandemic, it behooves us to remember Ken Robinson. There has never been a better time than now for a revolution!

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If you like my blog, you'll love my books! Teacher Tom's Second Book is now available in the UK, Iceland, and Europe, as well as the US and Canada. And if you missed it, Teacher Tom's First Book is back in print as well. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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"Rivalry Play"

A five-year-old girl complained that some boys were being "mean" to her and her friend.

I answered, "Oh no, what did you do?"

"I told them to stop it, but they didn't stop."

I looked across the playground at the "mean" boys in question. "It doesn't look like they're being mean right now."

"No, they're not being mean now, but they were."

"And you told them to stop."

"I did."

"And they stopped."

We stood looking at the boys for a moment, then she said, cheering up, "They did." Then the clouds returned, "But they might be mean again."

"They might. Then you'll have to tell them to stop again."

This occurred during one of our summer sessions at Woodland Park, so it was a collection of kids that had just come together for the first time. Some of them know each other from the regular school year, some from previous summers, but others are with us for the first time. I'd known the so-called "mean" boys for the past couple years, neither of whom have a mean bone in their bodies, but I could well imagine that whatever game they were playing might have come into conflict with the game of someone else. I'd just met the girl who had complained and her friend, a boy. Despite the tattling, however, it's clear to me that they are both sufficiently practiced in the playground arts. I didn't think they really needed me, but I nevertheless kept an eye on the four of them for the rest of the morning.

There was definitely a "them vs. us" dynamic. The boys were messing with the newcomers in a way that was meant good-naturedly, even if it wasn't being received that way. At one point a toy was mischievously taken, then returned sheepishly when it resulted in an uproar. The newcomers were firm in establishing their rights, even as the others seemed driven to test them. By the end of the day, things were more or less settled with the pairs opting to play distinct and separate games. The good news for me was that after that first exchange none of them sought my intervention. This is what they worked out on their own.

On the following day, we started with a bit more friction, although the negotiations tended to be carried out in more conversational tones rather than the raised voices from the day before. At one point I overheard the girl say, "Okay, if you don't be mean to us, you can come in here, but only for three minutes," a conditional invitation that the boys accepted with glee.

The day after that, one boy from each of the vying parties arrived on the scene earlier than their respective friends. They immediately fell into play with one another, the rivalry of the past two days set aside for the time being and put their heads together like old buddies. 

This was far from the first time I'd encountered "rivalry play." Indeed, it crops up regularly in any group of four and five-year-olds, kids banding together "against" one another, sometimes along gender lines, but usually along some other fracture like "good guys" and "bad guys." Sometimes there are taunts. Thefts are common. And, of course, there is conflict, which I think is often the real driving force behind this kind of play. Many of us adults have learned to be conflict averse, but the kids who involve themselves in these games, and at one time or another most of them do, seem to crave the conflict, almost as if they know they need the practice. I'm there to prevent violence, to coach if necessary, and to step in when the strong are victimizing the weak, but every time I impose my adult-ness onto these games I worry that I'm preventing them from learning what they crave to learn, so my goal is to stay out of it, while loitering with intent.

After a few minutes of playing together, the boys came up to me to announce, "Guess what, Teacher Tom? He told me that they aren't going to be mean any more!"

I said, "Right on!"

The boys stood face to face, holding one another's hands. They began to giggle while jumping up and down. When their friends arrived, they informed them of the agreement they had forged. To an outside observer the games the four played for the rest of the day may have been indistinguishable from the games they had been playing on the previous two. There was still plenty of bickering, badgering, and bossing, but now it was conflict amongst friends and no one was being "mean."

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If you like my blog, you'll love my books! Teacher Tom's Second Book is now available in the UK, Iceland, and Europe, as well as the US and Canada. And if you missed it, Teacher Tom's First Book is back in print as well. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Play Instead of "Playishness": Making Things Suck Just a Little Bit Less

I've been seeing lots of lists lately of ways educators do play-based education via computer. In fact, I had several emailed to me by teachers who are offended by my assertion that hours a day of remote learning, especially for young children, sucks and that, at best, we might be able to make is suck a little bit less. These lists include things like "math games" and doing yoga and STEM challenges and scavenger hunts. In other words they are lists populated with classic examples of what I call "playishness".

Playishness is how I talk about those things that might seem like play, but are really just exercises in direct instruction using toys, movement, and art supplies instead of lectures and text books. Often you find these sorts of things under the heading, "play with a purpose," a sure indication that what you're going to do is not play at all, but rather the same old adult-directed "activities" dressed up as play. It's the difference between, say, a physical education class where kids are made to participate in a soccer match whether they like it or not, and simply turning them loose on a playground. Some of them might still choose to play soccer, but most won't, choosing instead to test themselves or their world in any number of ways, building a curriculum from the real world around them rather than the artificial one of activities that adults have constructed for them.

Can real play happen through a computer screen? Sure. It happens every time a child sits down in front of a screen of their own volition to play a video game of their own choosing or to pursue their curiosity through self-directed research about fossils or spiders. It happens when a child is free to walk away and do something else whenever they chose. It happens when a child is actively engaged, in their own way, rather than according to the instructions of an adult. 

Early on in the pandemic, I "hosted" some video conference "play dates" with groups of former preschool students. My full agenda was simply to say "hello" to my friends and to provide a forum in which they could say "hello" to one another. Some of them told us about their lives, others showed us their toys, danced like "silly heads," and we even sang the occasional song without my insisting that everyone join in. Some tried making the other kids laugh. They inspired one another into imitation with stories, antics, and showing off. Others played with their toys while the rest of us goofed off in the background. Some just watched. At any given moment half of those little Brady Bunch boxes were empty because the kids had left to do something else. One girl gave us a tour of her house, ending in the back yard when she stumbled and dropped the computer in her wading pool. It was a new landscape that they explored the way children do. 

There was a limit to how long our sessions could be so it cut off after an hour or so, but I've since wished we had purchased the opportunity to have unlimited time. What if we'd just left the screens on all day, allowing life itself to be the curriculum? What if instead of treating the screens as adult-created activity delivery systems, we allowed them to serve simply as windows through which we could interact when we wanted and how we wanted? At least, that's how I treated those short one-hour sessions, talking occasionally, striving to not dominate, trying to create space for the children to make it their own. 

Of course, I was counting on those children's parents to ensure their safety, so my full focus could be on observing (what little there was to observe) and listening (what little I could make out with so many children talking at once). In other words, the children's parents, by necessity, were my co-teachers during that time online. So please understand, I'm not offering this as a solution to anyone. You don't need to tell me that not every family is in a position to co-teach with professional educators in this way. The fact that so many families can't participate in the lives of their own children is a big part of the reason our preschools have become activity factories designed to keep children busy all day while their parents go to work. What we as a society are confronting right now is not a crisis in education, but rather a crisis of child care, and computer screen windows will never be able to provide anything close to high quality child care. This dynamic is as clear as day to all of us even as we try to make the most of it.

I'm just here to say that what we did together online sucked in comparison to actually being together, but it sucked a little bit less because it did, most of the time, at least feel like actual play instead of playishness, and it took a village to make it happen.

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If you like my blog, you'll love my books! Teacher Tom's Second Book is now available in the UK, Iceland, and Europe, as well as the US and Canada. And if you missed it, Teacher Tom's First Book is back in print as well. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

How Viral Learning Works

A parent asked me if we could use medical feeding bags, the kind used in hospitals for patients who can't feed themselves. I knew what she was talking about, but had never given them much thought, let alone wanted one for the preschool. My rule of thumb, however, is that if anyone wants to contribute 20 or more of anything we'll take them. She had 30 so I had no choice but to say "Yes."

They came in two large boxes, one of which I put on the workbench along with a couple of old tempera paint jugs full of water and for the rest of the afternoon we roamed the playground experimenting with them.

The kids who play at Woodland Park are already experts on water and gravity, so it wasn't long before one of them figured out that the water only ran through the hose when the nozzle was lower than the bag of water. This knowledge went viral the way knowledge does in a play-based curriculum, where the children mostly teach one another.

As I watched the play unfold, I began to think of the virality of knowledge. Even before the pandemic, in this age of the internet, we all know about videos and articles that "go viral" through the democratic process of sharing, but this, what the children were doing with the feeding bags, has always been with us. As I heard children urge one another with invitations like "Try this!" or "Look what I did!" I recognized that this is how humans have always educated ourselves, with one person discovering something, then excitedly sharing it with others.

In 1439, when Johannes Guttenberg invented the printing press, very few people could read. In fact, if I understand my history correctly, it was primarily the domain of the clergy who needed the skill to read and create Bibles. But the printing press suddenly made printed matter widely available. With no notion of formal literacy education, Europeans were left to learn to read on their own, passing on the knowledge from one person to the next, from one generation to the next. 

Literacy rates steadily climbed for a couple hundred years, then surged around the time of the American Revolution when Thomas Payne's pamphlet Common Sense became a runaway hit, selling over half a million copies and 25 printings in its first year. It's estimated that 2.5 million colonists read it, an astronomical number for the time. Historians credit this viral document with inspiring the 13 American colonies to ultimately declare their independence from British rule.

People wanted to read, they needed to read, so they learned to read. A similar thing has happened, albeit at a faster pace, with computer technology. I have a distinct memory of Dad buying an Apple II+, a machine that came with no software. Instead it came with thick instruction manuals that taught us how to write our own programs. You could take classes on "how to work your computer." Today, our two-year-olds are teaching themselves as these technology skills have gone viral. The idea of a computer class today is laughable, just as a reading class would have been laughable in 1776. 

As I watched the kids figure out how to use those feeding bags, teaching one another, I thought of other kids who are sitting at their desks over worksheets or tests or homework. There is no virality there. In fact, we call it cheating and you're reprimanded if you share your answers or peek over someone else's shoulder. That's why this sort of learning is so hard.

It's too bad because sharing is how good ideas get big.

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If you like my blog, you'll love my books! Teacher Tom's Second Book is now available in the UK, Iceland, and Europe, as well as the US and Canada. And if you missed it, Teacher Tom's First Book is back in print as well. Thank you!

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