Playing Our Way to Culture

"Octograbbers" was a Woodland Park fad for a time. To become an Octograbber, you had to have two of our playground shovels, one in each hand, which, of course, limited your ability to use your hands. If you wanted to pick something up, and that was a big part of the fad, you had to use your shovels like a pair of tongs in order to "grab" things. I have no idea where the "octo-" part came from, except to guess that it had something to do with octopuses. 

It started with a couple boys, spread to a wider group, and grew to include an ever-evolving collection of children to the point that there was daily bickering over shovels. It then ebbed and flowed, only dying out completely when the school year ended and the children scattered to their separate lives. 

Play theorists tell us that human culture is, at least in part, a product of play -- music, dance, art, fashion, and fads, but also social norms, customs, beliefs, values, and symbolic systems like language and communication. These are not instincts we are born with, but rather behaviors that we learn, which is why culture traditionally varies so much from place to place. We're likely the only preschool on earth to have played our way to a the specific cultural phenomenon of Octograbbers, but I reckon that every preschool has experienced its own unique cultural trends, for a week, a month, or a year . . . Or longer, as returning children revive certain games or themes year after year.

Culture emerges wherever humans come together, but it's not just humans.

I've written before about the resident orca pods in the Pacific Northwest that have been observed swimming with dead salmon on their heads. They were first noticed in the 1980's. The behavior seemed to then disappear for time before reemerging again recently, like a retro fad. The leading theory is that it's a form of social fad, one that is not shared by other orca pods around the world.

Bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia carry sea sponges on their snouts as protective tools for foraging on the seafloor in order to prevent injuries from the sharp rocks and corals. This behavior is mostly found in females and is passed on by dolphin mothers to their daughters, in what researchers point to as evidence of a cultural tradition being passed along through the generations. Again, other populations of bottlenose dolphins don't engage in this specific behavior, although they likely have their own, unique cultural practices.

Cultural behaviors begin in play. Humans and marine mammals aren't the only ones. Ravens, chimpanzees, and other species have played been observed playing their way to unique manifestations of culture. We spend a lot of energy in the play based world trying to "defend" play by pointing out the "academic" learning that happens, but most of what is learned through play is cultural.

I'm currently re-reading George Eliot's Middlemarch. In some ways it's a typical Victorian novel, set in an inward-looking rural county. There are occasional references to the king and parliament and London and the wider world in general, but mostly what occupies the people is what's happening amongst themselves, their unique Middlemarch culture. This is how humans have lived for most of our existence. This is what we're evolved to attend to: our immediate world of fellow humans. The modern world, however, is increasing destroying these unique, local cultures, homogenizing it, and putting it online. Of course, there are unique, online communities, but they lack the physical proximity that characterizes the cultures of play based preschools and orca pods. This is not to dismiss the experiences of those who thought they were all alone, only to find their community online, but at the end of the day, if that doesn't ultimately lead to physical proximity, the opportunity to actually "play" together in a daily, consistent, give-and-take way, the culture that emerges, I fear, will be impoverished.

Maybe this is just an old man's perspective, but I grew during the emergence of TV and mass media in general. I still remember local newspapers and radio programs that were all about my own unique pod or county or preschool, where everyone knew one another, or at least knew someone who knew someone, but today culture is increasingly global. I think half our stress comes from the fact that we haven't evolved to attend to the whole world: we've evolved to attend to what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, and that includes actual, embodied human beings with who we can create meaningful culture on a local level.

The mother of one of the core Octograbbers told me that her son was at first upset to find that his new kindergarten didn't have full sized shovels, just little spades. She told me that she knew he was going to be okay, however, when he came home a few days later talking about playing "Baby Snow Leopards." At the end of the day, creating culture together is a central aspect of how humans have evolved to connect. It gives us the sense that we belong. And it begins with play.

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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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