"A Culturally Induced and Perpetuated Lie"

"Look what I made, Teacher Tom."

She had used a hot glue gun to piece together a sculptural object from junk.

I said, "I'm looking at what you made."

Sometimes they want to tell you what it is. Sometimes they just assume you know what it is. Sometimes it just is what it is. 

"Look what I made" is right up there with "I have an idea" and "Let's pretend . . ." when it comes to the phrases I most like to hear in life, and especially in preschool classrooms. Making things is a central part of what makes us human. There is real magic in collecting parts of the world around you and recombining them. When we do it purposefully it's an act of invention. Recombining them without purpose is an act of discovery. Recombining them over and over again is an act of exploration. 

In his 1971 manifesto published in Landscape Architecture magazine entitled "How Not to Cheat Children: The Theory of Loose Parts," Simon Nicholson wrote, "Creativity is for the gifted few: the rest of us are compelled to live in environments constructed by the gifted few, listen to the gifted few's music, use the gifted few's inventions and art, and read the poems, fantasies and plays by the gifted few."

He then goes on to declare this to be a "culturally induced and perpetuated lie." It's a lie that has only become more pronounced in the intervening half century. 

There was a time, not so long ago, when if you wanted a house, you built it yourself. You didn't hire architects and contractors, the "gifted few," but rather picked up your tools and got to work, relying as much as possible on the materials at hand, including your neighbors.

The composer, John Phillip Sousa worried about the advent of recorded music: “There are more pianos, violins, guitars, mandolins, and banjos among the working classes of America than in all the rest of the world . . . But once machine music arrived, children, understandably, turned on the machine sat home to “listen to the machine’s performance” rather than engaging in study to learn how to play the piano, violin, or harp themselves . . ." These machine performances were the product of the gifted few.

The walls of my grandparents home were decorated with artwork created by the people who lived in the house, folk art, something that is now left to gifted few.

I love to cook, especially when I get to use products that I've brought home from the local farmer's market -- or better yet, food that I've foraged or grown myself -- but increasingly cooking is being left up to the gifted few in the form of frozen, canned, and otherwise pre-packaged meals, or perhaps delivered, completely assembled, to your doorstep.

The other day, the host of a sports radio program to which I listened as I drove my car simply for the purpose of re-charging the battery, was complaining that "they" had not yet created a robot would do her laundry and clean her house. Of course, we don't need robots for that. There are already laundry and house keeping services that will provide the "gifted few" to do those chores for you.

This boy used a glue gun to make a handle from wine corks, then fixed old CDs to it. It was a sunny day. He discovered that he had invented a "flashlight" that if angled in just the right way, could be directed wherever he wanted. The concept went viral as other children made their own flashlights. It didn't occur to anyone to ask this "gifted" boy to make one for them. They did it themselves, innovating their own versions, creating a community of the "gifted many."

Perhaps I'm stretching the meaning of the descriptor "gifted few," but the point is that all these things we turn over to others means giving up opportunities to invent, discover, and explore for ourselves. Certainly, the hope is that technology will "free" us to be creative, but as anyone who has ever lived in the modern work already knows, it remains damned neigh impossible to free ourselves up. Whatever happened to the promise of a paperless office? And when we do find ourselves "free," so many of us turn to entertainment, watching the shows and movies created by the gifted few, scrolling our feeds comprised of the work of the gifted few, and playing the games created by the gifted few. Perhaps we read the books written by the gifted few or peruse the arts and crafts made by the gifted few, but when do we invent, discover, and explore?

"No thank you, I don't dance." "I can't draw a stick figure" "You don't want to hear me sing" "I leave the repairs to the professionals" This is the result of that culturally induced and perpetuated lie. 

We've evolved as a species to create our environments using the materials at hand, which is what a loose parts environment is all about in preschool. It's an active process by which we engage our full bodies, discovering metaphor and connection, making and finding new things as we try this and try that in a process of trial and error science. We see it as human nature in our young children who have not yet learned the lie of the "gifted few." When children find themselves in places that give them permission to be who they need to be, to move as they wish, to handle and manipulate what they wish, to mold and shape what they find into something new, we see an essential aspect of humanity that the modern world actively suppresses with it's lies about the "gifted few."

"Look what I made." "I have an idea." "Let's pretend . . ." These are the things that make us come alive as humans.

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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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