Creepy Crawlers!

John Sain was a couple years older than me, which would have made him seven or eight. We always called him by his full name to distinguish him from his next door neighbor who was also named John. John Sain's father, Mr. Sain, had the caché of being retired military and having once killed a rattle snake in his garage with a garden hoe then called us kids in from the street where we were playing so that we could see first hand what these local dangers looked like. He even allowed me the honor of carrying the sack with the carcass around to the back of the house where we buried it. Mr. Sain once sucked blood from a finger I'd cut on a bit of glass while we worked together on a church-organized roadside litter clean-up crew. After spitting the blood onto the pavement, he told me it was to help avoid infection, which sounded both scientific and manly. Having such a father and being older, John Sain stood a little above the rest of us. He went to school during the day and so could only play with us in the evening and on weekends. When he was out there with us, it made our regular games special.

One day, I showed him some small plastic "army men" that I particularly treasured, which prompted him to invite me to his bedroom where he pulled out what he told me was an "army man making set." There was a small heating element, molds portraying the hollows of soldiers in various action poses, and pellets of lead. The idea was to choose a mold, put one lead pellet in it, melt it over the heating device, then, once the metal had fully liquified, you plunged it in a cold water bath to harden it. 

I expect Mr. Sain wouldn't have allowed John Sain to show such a "big kid" toy to a five-year-old, which is why we were being extra quiet and probably explained why he kept me at a distance as he worked. I admired how cautiously he handled the tools, how he used an oven mitt to handle the hot things, and the drama of the explosion of steam that leapt from the cold water bath. When he removed the newly shaped lead soldier from the mold, he handed to me saying, "You can't keep it" explaining that he would later melt it down again to make a new soldier.

This was the only time I got to see this toy, but I was sure I wanted one, badly. I begged my parents, who reminded me of Christmas and my birthday. I must have been consistent in my request for this toy because at the next gift-receiving opportunity I unwrapped my own casting set. I was only temporarily disappointed when the one my parents gave me melted plastic instead of lead and that the molds were of insects instead of soldiers. I suspect that the "Thingmaker featuring Creepy Crawlers" was considered a somewhat safer version of John Sain's set up, but it still involved heat, melting, molds, and steam blasts, although, to my disappointment, the instructions said to never try to re-melt cast figures. Still, I was absolutely thrilled. I can still experience the fumes of the melted plastic if I try, the heat on my hands, the electrical buzz of the heating element, the topography of the molds under my fingers, and the blasts of steam on my cheeks.

This was a toy I played with unsupervised, alone and sometimes with visiting friends. I emulated John Sain's authoritative caution, keeping others at a distance. Filling the molds took a steady hand. The whole process involved concentration, slow movements, and fine motor skills. The risk of doing things wrong was manifest. I didn't need an adult hovering over me to chirp "be careful" in order to be careful. I imagine my father must have helped me with the first batch, but from then I was on my own, a five-year-old with a toy that could not be sold today to children of any age, learning the kinds of lessons that simply can't be taught through theory. This is one of my earliest memories of play. To this day, I recall it as a kind of giddy balancing act. Always at the back of my mind was the reality that had been enforced by John Sain that one slip and I would be injured, perhaps badly. Indeed, without the danger, I expect it would have been a toy of a single day, something to which I'd never again return after that first afternoon, but as it was, I girded myself regularly. Each time I removed the box with its tidily organized interior from its shelf, I summoned a bit of courage as my heart beat with excitement that can only come direct experience. 

Lead is a hazardous substance, especially for young children, and while the box assured us that the plastic was non-toxic, I still wonder about the fumes it released while being heated. I'm not writing about this to "sell" anyone on the idea of purchasing such a toy for their own kids, but only to share what is one of my earliest memories, which is to say, an experience that made a significant impact on me. The two-time Nobel prize winning chemist Linus Pauling tells of a similar experience with an older boy who had a small home chemistry lab, saying that he was "simply entranced" by the experiments he was able to perform. I don't have a story anywhere near as dramatic, but to this day, I love few things more than cooking over gas flames on my stove top and undertaking art projects that require a steady hand and full concentration. I have no idea what impact my childhood experience had, whether it simply revealed something that was already there or inspired me to something that might have never been otherwise discovered, but I do often think of John Sain, Mr. Sain, and the Thingmaker as I work around heat or when I'm engaged in anything that requires a slow and steady hand.

What I do know, however, is that I have a fine memory of childhood, a real experience that is as much a part of me as the finger from which Mr. Sain sucked blood. There is truth and falsehood mixed up in it, science and myth. It lives not just in my mind, but also in my body and soul, having been fixed there by the manifest danger and the full concentration it demanded.

If you think melting and casting might be something you want to try with your own preschoolers, here is a version I came up with for the kids at Woodland Park to try. It still involves real risk, concentration, and a steady hand, but without some of the unnecessary hazards.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

Why We're Here on Earth

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different. ~Kurt Vonnegut

Circle time was a perfect example of its type. We spent a good 10 minutes making up painful, icky, cold, and silly things to sit on, including a discussion of what exactly constitutes potty talk, we sang a song, then we gave each other compliments (which was mostly saying "I love you"), finishing by counting all of the links in our compliment chain aloud (371, give or take). And then we were done. You know, we just farted around.

The hamster wheel doesn't come apart on it's own. Someone has to work on taking it apart, removing the wheel from its stand.

I'd been wondering why someone would be doing it every day. I now know who's been doing it.

And I also know why: he's just been farting around.

Kids have been asking why we have this giant pencil. I tell them it's for drawing and writing.

They've figured out, however, that it's just for farting around.

Sometimes we fart around by putting cowboys in Wyoming and grandpas in Ohio and Winnie the Pooh in Georgia . . .

. . . or by lining up the "big boys" . . .

. . . or combing the ponies' manes.

We fart around with our whole bodies . . .

. . . inside and out . . .

. . . or up in the trees.

It's why we're here on Earth. Don't let anybody tell you different.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

The Case Against Professionalism

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.      ~J. Robert Oppenheimer

When architect Simon Nicholson first proposed his theory of loose parts ("How Not to Cheat Children") in 1971 he asserted that the "gifted few" (professionals) got to have all the fun. They designed the buildings, created the music, wrote poems, did the science, and then the rest of us were left to just sort of live with, but never touch, change, or question their work. His big idea was to give amateurs, and especially children, the ability to do the fun part themselves by filling their spaces with "loose parts" that they were free to manipulate, connect, and transform.

It was a radical idea, one that holds the potential to turn education upside down. It was an idea in keeping with the ideas that had been emerging over the preceding 70 years from education pioneering amateurs like John Dewey and Maria Montessori right through Loris Malaguzzi and even Mister Rogers. The idea was to put the "fun part" of learning into the hands of the learners themselves, to allow children to determine their own curriculum from the loose parts of life.

Those of us who have embraced play-based learning strive to do this, but we continue to be outliers. Most "professional" educators today have acknowledged the theory, then absorbed it into their professional work, manipulating it to fit in their professional orthodoxy, and generally colonizing it with their professionalism. It is in the nature of professionalism to accept the current "environment" and only consider change that can happen within that current environment. If they stray beyond the current boundaries, they risk being deemed "unprofessional," which is the kiss of death. That's why, you can today find preschool classrooms with "loose parts" corners that are little more than a few tidy baskets of bits and bobs, just another watered-down concept that allows the profession to say, "See? We're open to new ideas."  

I'm not blaming the educators: I'm blaming professionalism. Professionals have a lot to lose, amateurs and children do not. As philosopher Marshall McLuhan puts it, "The "expert" is the man who stays put."

I understand why professional educators want to be seen as professionals. If nothing else, being a "professional" often carries with it both prestige and money. That's why we fight for the recognition. I have nothing against prestige and money, but I resist, at some level, being a professional in the name of . . . well, professionalism. I strive for a professionalism that constantly questions the status quo: one that abhors staying put, that recognizes that, at its heart, learning always involves upsetting the status quo.

As adults, we become experts by learning the rules of our professional environment and that's useful, of course. It allows us to navigate the professional world efficiently, which is one of the hallmarks of professionalism. But it also tends to blind us. When we learn those lessons too well, when we get too wrapped up in the jargon and "best practices," we have a tendency to stop noticing possibilities that fall outside those rules.

This is, I think, what Oppenheimer was referring to as well. He certainly wasn't saying that children know their physics as well as the father of the atomic bomb. Rather, he's pointing out that children, as amateurs, haven't yet had their sensory perceptions boxed in by all those professional assumptions. They're inclined to ask questions a professional would never think to ask. They consider objects in ways professionals would never imagine. They see possibilities where professionals see obstacles. Even a child can see the insanity of creating an atomic bomb, while the professionals went right ahead and created a way to destroy life on earth.

Children are classic amateurs, or even dilettantes (in the best sense of that word). They're not incompetent, but rather free from the systems of conventions and agreements, the environment, that too often captures professionals. Amateurs dispense with the professional jargon that often seems designed to exclude amateurs. Amateurs retain the freedom to ask questions that professionals cannot conceive of asking because to become a professional, to be considered a professional by their peers, they have mastered the assumptions and "problems" of the world as the other experts know it. Curious amateurs are inclined to question whether they're even addressing the right problems.

We see this phenomenon all the time in education. Go to almost any online resource for educators and you'll find professionals asking professionally appropriate things like, How do we get children to learn letters sooner? Or How do we improve compliance? Or How do we measure learning more accurately? Or How do I motivate these children? Or How do we get children to listen?

Being a professional too often means losing the ability to perceive the profession's own assumptions. "Professionalism" means delivering curriculum, adhering to "best practices," aligning with standards, and achieving measurable results. That's the professional environment. Anything outside of that is, by definition, unprofessional.

Meanwhile, children are asking valid questions that fall beyond the scope of the professionally accepted ground rules; genuine questions like Why do we have to learn this at all? Why can't we think about something more interesting? Who got to decide that this crap matters? Why can't we just go outside?

In our work with children, these are the questions play-based educators ask: the amateur's questions. The children's questions. We fight to remain connected to our amateur status. 

I've never done most of the "professional" things that educators in normal schools do. Instead, I create environments, I pay attention to the children, I respond to what emerges from their play, and I trust the children's competence. I listen to the questions the children are asking. Instead of being professional, I strive to remain curious, to retain the capacity to be surprised, and to be willing, at any moment, to abandon any plan when something more interesting emerges. I'm more interested in children learning to motivate themselves, to assess their own learning, and to practice life itself within the context of community.

This is what play-based learning is all about. It's what pioneering amateurs like Montessori, Malaguzzi, and Mister Rogers understood. They distrusted expertise that had, as it always does, become disconnected from direct experience. They wondered what would happen if we stopped deciding, in advance, what learning is supposed to happen, and instead let the children pursue learning that is meaningful to them.

Of course, children are not merely amateurs—they are also novices. They don't know what they don't know. It is also part of our job to keep them safe enough, to provide information that they need, and to help them figure out how to be part of a community. But we err when we make the mistake of trying to professionalize childhood. We cheat children when we forget that childhood is, and always must be, a season of life when curiosity matters more than expertise.

That's why children need play, the natural environment of amateurism. Not because play prepares them for the real world, but because it preserves ways of seeing that the rest of us too often lose. Our job is not to rush children toward professionalism. Our job is to create beautiful environments, keep them safe enough, answer their questions, and then stay out of the way as much as possible. The future doesn't belong to the experts who stay put. It belongs to those who can still discover possibilities where everyone else sees only the way things have always been done.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

To Live an Abundant Life

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've 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.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

Who are You?

I recently heard an author being interviewed. He said that one of his high school teachers claimed that the entirety of Ancient Greek philosophy could be summed up in Socrates' instruction, "Know thyself."

So who are you?

How would you answer that question? 

There isn't an easy answer. Am I what I think? What I believe? What I feel? 

I often find myself mulling poet Walt Whitman's famous lines: 

Did I contradict myself?

Very well then, I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I think that's probably how most people feel about ourselves, which is why it's impossible to answer the question "Who are you?" We are different people in different situations, often contradicting ourselves. I am one person when I'm at a dinner party and another when I'm being interviewed. I'm not the same person when I'm at work as I am when I'm home alone. Some would say that this apparent multitude is just our singular self being viewed from different angles: that who we are in any given moment is just a matter of perspective. This answer is, of course, satisfying, although it implies that there is a central core of who we are that is unchangeable, even if it's not fully knowable. 

Perhaps "Know thyself" is an impossibility. Perhaps we can only know ourselves through others.

Maybe I am the person my dog thinks I am. In that case, I'm pretty awesome.

Maybe I'm the person the guy who flipped me off in traffic thinks I am. In that case, I'm a dangerous idiot.

I know that when I leave this earth, I will become the a sum of the stories people tell about me.

Young children don't care about what I think or believe or feel. They know me for what I do. They know me not by my thoughts, but by my actions. They know me not for by my beliefs, but by my words. They know me not for my feelings, but rather by my tone, posture, and expressions. They know who I am through my responses to what they do and say. And this is also how they come to know who they are.

Humans who have been tortured by isolation, like prisoners in extended solitary confinement, report feeling unreal, invisible, and disconnected from their selves. That's because our self emerges in relationship. I know I'm funny because other people laugh. I know I'm trustworthy because other people trust me. In know I'm lovable because I am loved.

Young children already understand something that most of us spend a lifetime trying to figure out: we are what we do together.

They come to know me through my responses to them, and they come to know themselves through my responses to them. Who we are is not hidden somewhere deep inside, waiting to be discovered. We become ourselves every time we interact with another person.

Perhaps that's what it means to know thyself.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

What Are the Babies Crying About?

Young parents with a crying infant know that behavior is communication, although it may take weeks or months to figure out exactly what it is their babies are communicating. Does this cry mean I'm hungry? Does that one mean I'm in pain? Frightened? Tired? 

Coming to understand our new babies generally involves a lot of trial and error as we try one approach after another. If they reject the breast then we check their diaper. If they don't respond to singing we try rocking, bouncing or cooing. In other words, we try everything we can think of from burping to taking them for a drive until we hit on the proper response. 

The one thing every new parent learns is that the proper response to their baby's cried request or query or demand or complaint, is to do something to change their environment or their situation within the environment. It's not our babies that need to change -- they are the one perfect thing in an imperfect world. Their crying is feedback on their experience in that imperfect world and their place in it. And in this business of being an adult caretaker, the customer is always right, so we do what we need to do to make the world, at least for a time, a bit more hospitable. Then we do it again and again until one day we decide, usually gradually, but sometimes abruptly like on the first day of school, that it's not the world, but the child that must change.

This is the beginning of what we call "education." Behavior continues to be feedback: I need more time. I need to go outside. I need to know everything about this mote I've discovered under my fingernail. That's why I'm covering my ears. That's why I'm bouncing off the walls. That's why I can't keep my eyes on you and attend to your irrelevant blather. The adults have decided that they will no longer respond to their request or query or demand or complaint by doing something to change their environment or their situation within the environment, but rather strive to change the child, to invalidate their communication with, say, scolding, bribing, shaming, and even punishing. I've known far too many children who have been kicked out of preschool because they are unable to change to suit this or that environment or curriculum or methodology. 

But they need to learn to adapt, we argue, it's a life lesson. The world is the way it is. We say this even though we've all discovered that the real world simply doesn't box us up in packages of two dozen people of like age, sit us in chairs, face us forward, silence us, and compel us to attend to whatever nonsense is on the pre-planned agenda for the day. We say that we are preparing our children for reality, which is to say an unchanging world that will only accommodate requests or queries or demands or complaints within a limited range. There will be no taking you for a drive or cooing or laying you down for a nap on the top of a running clothes dryer (the thing that finally soothed our infant daughter for a time). We continue to do this even though it is demonstrably untrue that this is the way the real world works.

On the contrary, we double down on changing the child to suit this mythical "real world." If you don't keep up, if you don't shut up, we will label you. If you don't know this week's spelling words this week, you're "behind." And you remain behind even if six months later you demonstrate you know how to spell those words because the curriculum has been cranking out new spelling tests in the meantime. 

It's like a train that continues to chug along even when passengers are falling off. Instead of stopping to let them hop back on it continues moving forward expecting the children, children who are screaming "Wait!" to just, somehow, catch up. And if the child won't or can't run after the train, they are labeled as deficient in some way and specialists are called in to fix the child who has all the while been clearly saying, through their behavior, This sucks for me!

In the actual world, however, there is always another train. In the actual world, unlike school, you can take a taxi or ride a bike or walk or opt to go somewhere else on an entirely different timetable. Or just choose to not go anywhere at all. The real world may have its tracks and obstacles, but ultimately it is infinitely malleable. 

What if this were the core lesson of school? What if instead of being charged with shaping all children according to some artificial and arbitrary norm, we made them into places that strive to understand the children's requests or queries or demands or complaints?

Awhile back we were in New York to visit our daughter. While there, we went to see the world premier of a documentary about performance artist Taylor Mac's 2016 "24-Decade History of Popular Music", a 24-hour, one-time-only show about the American experience. The show featured dozens of costumes by the designer Machine Dazzle. During the question and answer session following the screening, an audience member asked Mac to name his favorite costume. He seemed genuinely stumped before good-naturedly refusing to answer the question, quoting author Iyania Vanzant, "Comparison is an act of violence."

Our schools are simply not designed to support each child in achieving their own unique potential, which is what our babies are always calling out for if we would only listen. Instead they are in the business of comparing, measuring, grading, and ranking with some sort of arbitrary standard or norm in mind. This is harmful and limiting not just to every child, but every human. It's violence.

What if we instead saw education as a process of trial and error, one that sought above all else to understand what each child is crying about; what they are communicating about the environment and their situation within that environment? What if, as educators, we dropped our measuring sticks, forgot our timetables, ditched our curricula, and focused instead on listening in order to properly respond to what the children are trying to communicate? Maybe then we would have an educational system that truly prepared our children to engage fully with life itself.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

International Day of Play: Protect Play, Protect Childhood

Today is the third annual International Day of Play as established by the United Nations. This year's theme is Protect Play, Protect Childhood.

In their call to action, the UN through it's agency UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund), is calling on governments, businesses, and other stakeholders to:

1. Scale up services, including parenting programs, that promote play and attachment
2. Enable access to pre-school and learning through play for every 3-6 year old
3. Ensure every child has access to safe, inclusive, and well-maintained play areas

The United Nations was founded in 1945 in the aftermath of World War II with the express mission of maintaining world peace. In that same year, Loris Malaguzzi founded the first schools that today are knowns as Reggio Emilia, believing that democratic education was essential to creating a peaceful society. Maria Montessori, the creator of her Montessori approach to early childhood, explicitly saw her work as the path to lasting peace. Mister Rogers wrote, "Peace means far more than the opposite of war." He saw nurturing empathy, emotional intelligence, and human connection in children as foundational to creating a more peaceful world: he was explicit about helping children become the kinds of people who can create peace.

Our work as play-based educators has always aligned with the higher ideals that underpin the United Nations. In our world of competition, colonialism, and war, a world that I worry is on the verge of forgetting the promise of democracy, our work with young children stands in contrast, even opposition. Play is not always peaceful, but that's the point. Peace is not the absence of conflict; it is knowing how to resolve conflict without resorting to violence or force. Play teaches us the power of good faith negotiation, compromise, cooperation, and the sacredness of agreements. When children grow up in safe environments in which they have permission to pursue their instincts to play, the most important lesson they learn is how people can come together and work something out. 

When we protect play we protect childhood, but we also protect and promote the promise of peace. I'm always proud of the work we do with and for children, but today is the day for all play-based educators to hold their heads high, even as we bend to the child before us. Play is the path to peace.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!

Jumping Up and Down and Throwing Ourselves to the Ground

Jumping up and down on the bus downtown

We are brash -- we all fall down

We take out our brains

And shake 'em all around

              ~Jim White, Crash Into the Sun

The way the game worked, as far as I could tell, is that an ever-changing cast of children jumped up and down, while some of them periodically threw themselves onto the ground, which was hilarious. As an adult who makes a study of children's play, I saw that it was a connecting game, one that allowed children of various ages and developmental stages who didn't know one another particularly well to get to know one another a little better.

Growing up, I often played impromptu games like this. Dad would, say, bring the family along to a company picnic and while the adults made tedious small talk, the kids would introduce themselves to one another with purposeless games. Maybe it would be rolling down a hill together or playing chase or jumping up and down and throwing ourselves to the ground. This would then, given enough time, typically transform into more sophisticated play that involved sorting ourselves out by age, gender, and temperament in which agreements were made through a process of invitation ("Let's pretend . . .") and bickering ("No, I get to go first!"). As long as we didn't interfere with the grown-up fun, as long as we avoided getting too badly hurt (physically or emotionally), our games would be allowed to evolve in this way until it was time to go home. 

Without fail, I would have learned something new, even if it wasn't particularly useful. But sometimes, that new thing we discovered together -- that game, that cultural reference, that way of being in the world -- would be transformative. 

In his book The Kingdom of Play, David Toomey writes:

Natural selection possess a number of specific and well-defined characteristics. It is, for instance, purposeless. It has no intention, and no objective, and as Darwin averred, it “includes no necessary and universal law of advancement or development.” It is provisional. The evolution of any organism is a response to whatever conditions are present at a given place and moment. It is open-ended. The evolution of any organism has no moment of arrival and no end point . . .

This is only one of the ways in which play and natural selection are similar. As Toomey puts it, "(I)f you could distill the process of natural selection into a single behavior, that behavior would be play. Alternatively, if you were to choose an evolutionary theory or view of nature for which play might seem to be a model, it would be natural selection."

"We're here on this Earth to fart around," wrote Kurt Vonnegut. And farting around, which is to say playing, is our natural response to the conditions in which we find ourselves. Humans, however, are forever attempting to squelch play, to forbid or at least suppress farting around. We tell our children they must get ready for the future by putting their noses to grindstones. Meanwhile the rest of the universe plays, making "the future" a place we cannot even imagine, even as we will help create it. We've collectively determined that having a clearly defined purpose is morally superior to not having a purpose. We praise those hard-chargers who unswervingly chase their goals, while dismissing the rest as muddling deadbeats. But that, in the scope of time and space, is an anomaly. It's a mean denial of the very essence of life itself, which "in the most fundamental sense, is playful."

We tend to forget that nothing is a finished product. Everything continues to purposelessly evolve at every level -- from the microscopic to the universal -- forever transforming itself; endlessly becoming something new. And it seems that the mechanism for doing that is play.

We cannot steer it. We can only take part, jumping up and down and throwing ourselves to the ground alongside those with whom we find ourselves. And, if we're doing it right, it's hilarious.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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!