"Reasoning is a Social Activity"

Humans have large brains, at least compared to other animals. We generally associate this relatively massive brain size with higher intelligence, which may or may not be true depending on our definition of intelligence. Not to mention that we are increasingly coming to understand that the thing we call our mind may not even reside in our brains, or at least not entirely, but is rather found throughout our bodies, even extending into the world beyond ourselves.

In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari, argues that our species evolutionary advantage is the result not of our individual intelligence, but rather our capacity to coordinate and cooperate. He points out that Neanderthals were likely individually far more intelligent than Homo sapiens, but we left them in the dust because of our ability to work together. They were old-style mainframe computers while we were networked PCs. 

Indeed, many scientists now believe that our oversized brains are a direct result of the need for extra brain-power in order to deal with the complexity of our own social groups. 

We are not, as it turns out, particularly good at thinking about abstract concepts, but when it comes to thinking about people, we're whiz-bang. Indeed, when we must consider abstract concepts, we tend to think more clearly and accurately when we are interacting with other people, say, through in dialog.

It's this phenomenon that thrills me most about working with young children. The stereotype is of adult teachers conveying learning to their young charges, but the most profound learning usually happens when I know nothing at all about the topic at hand.

Take dinosaurs, for instance. I know little from my own education. And much of what I do recall is so outdated as to be useless. But when the subject comes up in preschool, the children themselves are fully capable of cobbling together a perfectly age-appropriate curriculum on dinosaurs. First one child will share what they know, then another adds on, then another. They question and debate. They use big words like Tyrannosaur and carnivore, in context, often pausing to define them for those who don't know. They discuss complex concepts like evolution and extinction, often arguing over exactly the same points that scientists argue over. They discuss spans of time, geological processes, and even the genealogies of species. The level of discussion soars well beyond what is typically expected from individual preschoolers as they teach and learn from one another.

This is how humans evolved to learn. Our brain-bound approach to learning asks individuals to noodle things out on their own, but we when we are engaged in social interactions with other people we enter a higher state of alertness that sharpens both attention and memory. This is how we are driven to educate ourselves: through and with other people. It's why we grow bored with directive lectures, for instance, because it forces us to sit quietly within our own heads where psychologists tell us we're only capable of attending to a single train of thought for about eight seconds. It's why kids start goofing off with one another when we expect them to spend extended periods of time attending to instruction without interacting with peers. They know that if they are going to really pursue a thought, it must be done in conversation. They intuitively know that in dialog, our so-called "window of consciousness" can stay open indefinitely.

As Annie Murphy Paul writes in her book The Extended Mind, "We did not evolve to solve tricky logic puzzle on our own . . . so we shouldn't be surprised by the fact that we're no good at it, any more than by the fact that we're no good at breathing underwater. What we did evolve to do is persuade other people of our views, and to guard against being misled by others. Reasoning is a social activity, in other words, and should be practiced as such."

This is the central advantage that play-based learning has over standard schooling where we are scolded to keep our eyes and hands to ourselves, focus on the teacher, and "do your own work." In play we are free to learn and grow as we've evolved to learn and grow, engaging with our fellow humans in a state of heightened alertness and connection that makes us far bigger than our individual selves. 

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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