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!

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!

Fight As If You're Right and Listen As If You're Wrong

Socrates is arguably the most famous teacher of all time, at least in Western culture. His Socratic Method is a type of argumentative dialog between individuals, usually a student and teacher, that involves asking and answering ever more probing and confrontational questions. Ideally, the goal of these "arguments" is not to persuade or to "win" but rather to move the conversation ever closer to truth or wisdom or knowledge.

Perhaps the most inspiring thing about Socrates as a philosopher and teacher was his consistent assertion that despite his reputation as "the wisest man in Athens" he himself knew nothing. His wisdom did not consist of certainty, but rather in questioning, which is to say to look at all things, even the most sacred, from all sides, and to know that there was always another perspective he had not considered. 

Modern schooling tends to take the opposite approach, at least when it comes to the early years in which knowledge is viewed as a collection of correct answers that the children must be able to repeat on command. Children who challenge the "authorized gods" (as Socrates put it), who question, who argue, are viewed as problems. They might be humored for a bit, but ultimately, if they don't conform, they are punished with poor grades, low test scores, and sometimes, if they persist in arguing, worse.

Intellectually, most of us agree with Socrates: "(T)he life that is unexamined is not worth living." But among the very first and most important lessons we teach our children in standard schools -- if they are to be "successful" -- is to not question the correct answers. And by no means are you to argue. 

The result of decades of this kind of schooling is that few of us know how to argue productively. Almost everyone I know confesses to being "conflict averse." Arguments make them uncomfortable. It's no wonder because arguing these days, especially over politics, but really anything of importance, tends to be fraught, so much so that many of us have given it up altogether. After all, we all know, going in, that we’re very unlikely to change anyone’s mind, so why risk the vitriol, anger, and even the threats of violence that seem to lie just under the surface.

The thing is, study after study shows that if the goal is to learn something new, to make better decisions, or to be innovative, then the best way to make that happen is for people to fight over ideas. As Stanford business school professor Robert Sutton says, if learning or creativity is the goal, then “People would fight as if they are right, and listen as if they are wrong.” In other words, winning or persuading has nothing to do with this kind of argument. And while the latest science demonstrates the power of intellectual conflict, Socrates and his famous method has been with us for centuries.

As a preschool teacher, I want the children I teach to know that it's not just their right, but their responsibility to question the authorized gods. I want them to know that the most important thing they can do is to ask questions, especially inconvenient ones. I want them to know that their questions deserve thoughtful, honest answers, even if that answer is "I don't know." And the only way this happens is for me to give up on the idea of correct answers.

******

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 Agreements We Make With One Another

There was no reason for me to be close, so I kept my distance. There was no reason for me to be a part of their game, so I remained invisible.

It probably began days, if not weeks, before I understood it was a game, but it came to my attention in the form of a girl filling a plastic witch's cauldron with things she had scavenged from around the playground.

A friend said some words to her. Maybe he asked, "Can I play with you?" but it was more likely something along the lines of "What are you doing?" which is typically a better playground question if the goal is to be invited in. They began filling the cauldron together, discussing each item, coming to agreements over what went into the mix and what was cast aside according to some system known only to them.

A decision was made to add water to the cauldron. By now it was heavy with the debris they had meticulously collected. But not too heavy because it only took one of them to carry it over to the cast iron hand pump. While the girl held the cauldron, her friend began filling a smaller bucket, which he then poured over their collection. As they worked together, another child joined them. After a discussion that may or may not have included the phrase, "I've got an idea," they agreed to forego the unnecessary step of the bucket and slide the cauldron itself under the flow of water.

Agreement, however it is arrived at, stands at the center of our preschool, as it does in life itself. Conflict, all conflict, emerges from the inability to agree. These children were not playing a game; they were living.

The children took turns pumping until the cauldron was full, or at least as full as they collectively agreed it needed to be. Now it was too heavy for a single carrier, so they circled around the cauldron and lifted it together. Walking with it was a complicated matter: they had to agree about where they were going, at what speed, and who would have to walk backwards or sideways. Maybe it was still too heavy. They staggered a bit under its weight before another friend joined them, dashing in to slide his arms under cauldron. When another playmate tried to squeeze her body in amongst them, it became clear that they could lift it, but not effectively carry the heavy thing, even when they all worked together.

They agreed they would need to put it down, which they did, carefully, not spilling more than a drop or two.

As they discussed their next steps, someone said, clearly enough for me to hear it, "I've got an idea! Let's use the wagon!" This was met with approval, with the exception of one girl, the girl who had tried to squeeze in. She objected. "I'm using it." I'd previously noted her idly pulling the wagon, alone, watching the cauldron situation from afar. She had abandoned it briefly to help.

"Please!" the other children begged. "We just need it for a second." The girl stood with her back to the group, apparently considering what to do. It wasn't long before she relented, "Okay, but I want it back when you're done." Another agreement.

Now the challenge was how to get the wagon to the cauldron. It was on the other side of the row of tree rounds that line the upper level of the sand pit. One child attempted to lift it, but when the others didn't join his effort, he gave it up in favor of what the group decided was a "better idea," which was to pull it around to the side. It appeared to be the work of a single child, so the others stood around watching as he wheeled the wagon the long way around. He struggled, however, when it came to the steep part of the slope, so other children, spontaneously, pushed from behind.

Then, the wagon in place, a small miracle happened. The girl who had started it all, easily lifted the heavy cauldron all on her own, placing into the bed of the wagon. As it turns out, it could have been carried by a single child, but they had collectively agreed that together was better, even if that made things more complicated, perhaps even more difficult. The agreement, not the project, was clearly the important thing.

The project, this project of life itself, continued to play out for some time as the wagon, propelled over difficult terrain made its way in stops and starts around the space, eventually winding up back where the whole thing had started. The cauldron hadn't, after all, mattered. The debris and water it held didn't matter. Whether it was a witch's brew or a soup didn't matter. Indeed, even where they were going with it didn't matter. All that mattered, all that ever matters really, in the end, are the agreements we make with one another.

******

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!

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!

Consciously Constructing Memories to Be Empowering Rather Than Traumatizing

Yesterday afternoon was gorgeous -- sunny, warm, with a gusty breeze. My wife Jennifer and I had just voted so I decided to cycle to city hall where they have a ballot drop box in the lobby. 

On my way home, I took a familiar route, riding a well-paved bike track that runs between a public golf course on one side and a large, well-used city park on the other. I was the only cyclist along this segment. I was accelerating. I was taking in the scenery, breathing deeply, letting my mind wander a bit. I thought I heard someone say, "Watch out!" I turned my eyes toward the voice and saw a man wearing a yellow shirt and sun hat standing some distance off in the sports field to my left. Visions of a soccer ball, or perhaps golf ball, flashed briefly through my head. But seeing nothing to warrant alarm, I refocused forward just in time to see a thin string across my path at handle bar level.

The next thing I knew that thin string was cutting into my forearms and biceps. 

The next few seconds passed like minutes. In that condensed moment, I recognized that a kite had come to earth, its string caught in the top of the fence on one side, while the wind filled the downed kite making the line taut right across my path. I watched the string dig into my skin. I knew I needed to stop, but with my arms pinned by the string I struggled to get my hands to my brake levers. Meanwhile, the pain of this extreme rope burn was cutting right through any endorphins I might have been producing. I imagined I saw friction smoke coming from the wounds. I wondered if it would cut to the bone. I contemplated throwing myself off onto the pavement. I considered what I would do if the string somehow slid up my arms to my neck.

From the perspective of someone watching, this all probably happened within three or four seconds, but this morning I'm recalling it as something that happened in an immeasurable space of time. I fought through the string to get to my brakes, let the bike fall to the ground, and pulled the string out of the gashes on both arms. 

In the meantime, I'd figured out that that the man in yellow was the kite flyer. There was a fence and a good 100 feet separating us. I yelled at him. This was his fault. I was in pain and I wanted him to know he was to blame. I wanted him to pay for it. I'm pretty sure I didn't swear, but I might have. He said he was sorry. It bothered me that he remained where he was, though in hindsight I realize that he was winding up his string as fast as he could. What else could he do?

He offered to call an ambulance. He offered to call the police so I could file a report. My wounds were deep, narrow gashes in my skin. The one on my right forearm was bleeding slightly. They looked ghastly, they hurt like the dickens, but for all that had happened they appeared, thankfully, superficial. By now, my yelling had lost its energy. I said that it seemed like an overreaction to call 911, plus I didn't want to spend the rest of my day talking to authorities. But what if it was worse than it appeared? He gave me his name (Tony) and phone number. He could have been lying, but I didn't think so. He seemed genuinely upset. Indeed, at one point he pulled his sunglasses from his eyes and said, "I want you to see my eyes so you know I'm sincere. I deeply apologize." I regret that I didn't immediately accept his apology.

I few minutes into all this, a young man showed up in a golf cart. I think he might have been an employee of the golf course. He said he'd seen it happen, that my wounds looked terrible, and that I should file a police report. After he drove away, I returned to Tony to say that maybe I would file a police report. Tony agreed and even offered to call. But when I considered what I was going to say to the officer, I waved him off.

I mean, what would I say? Here was a guy flying a kite in a field. It had fallen to the ground in just a manner and at just a time that it coincided with me, another guy engaged in an innocent hobby. What else could he have done? What else could I have done? This was an accident in the purest sense of the word.

I rode the rest of the way home, washed the wounds, and slathered them in Neosporin. I told Jennifer the story. We went around a couple of times about calling my doctor or going to urgent care, but the pain had receded, and I had other things to do. I noticed one of my neighbors outside tossing a tennis ball for her dog. I know her to be both compassionate and wise, so I went out to tell my story to her. She imagined that I might be feeling traumatized and offered to fetch me some big bandages. We wondered together about calling the police, but what was there to report? As we spoke a couple of other neighbors came by. I again told my story and we stood around joking about the stories I might fabricate about the scars I was sure to have.

I went back inside and texted Tony. I wrote:

Hey Tony. This is Tom, the cyclist who got caught in your kite string. I've washed up and applied Neosporin. I'm sorry I yelled at you. I think it's going to be okay, but I'll let you know if it's anything more than superficial. Flying kites is probably the most wholesome hobby anyone can have. Don't let this stop you!

Within seconds my phone rang. It was Tony. By now a couple hours had passed. He told me that he was sick to his stomach, that he had been running over and over in his head what he could have done differently. He thought that maybe he should have shouted, "Stop!" instead of just "Watch out!" He told me he was going to buy a pocket knife so that he could cut the string if something like that ever happened again. He apologized once more and this time I accepted it.

I'm writing about this here for a couple reasons. The first is that I'm currently reading a book called Why We Remember by memory researcher Charan Ranganath, in which he explains what we know about how memories are constructed. Things like this can be stored as trauma, but it's not necessary. I am consciously attempting to process this experience as life-affirming and humanity-affirming. Yes, I was hurt, but I'm emerging stronger, and I will have scars to prove it. When we suffer things like this, our minds tend to flash back on specific moments. In this case, I keep seeing the string burning into my skin. Each time I see it in my mind's eye, I turn my actual eyes to the long, thin scabs that are forming on my arms, then think about the unique story I will have to tell each time someone asks about my scars. This is also the story I'm telling myself, consciously constructing the memory in a way that will be empowering rather than traumatizing: a story about "survival" (in the broadest sense of the word), but also compassion and forgiveness. I mean, in the long run, poor Tony is the one who is likely to be the most traumatized. I meant it when I said I wanted him to keep flying his kite.

The second reason I'm writing about this is here is to point out that as important adults in the lives of young children, we can play a significant role in how they construct and store the memories they are making every day. When we support them in telling their own stories about their challenging experiences, we are giving them the opportunity to create memories that tell an autobiography of resilience and survival. People are always saying stupid things like "There are no accidents," but they're flat out wrong. There are accidents. The emergent now is always an accident. Bad things happen in our lives no matter how wholesomely we live them. At the end of the day, it's the stories we construct about them that determine how they ultimately impact our lives.

Meanwhile, I've awoken the find that my wounds are slightly better this morning, itchy and sore, but well on their way to being part of the legend of me. Later today, I'll reach out to Tony to let him know how I'm doing.

******

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!

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!

Self-Directed Learners Live in a State of Alert Awareness

Psychologist and author of the book Changing Our Minds, Naomi Fisher, once told me that her three-year-old son took an early interest in numbers. One day as they walked together through their neighborhood, he noticed the house addresses. "Did you know," he asked his mother, "that there are lonely numbers and friendly numbers?" He had, she said, "discovered odd and even numbers."

I doubt there is an educator on earth who would "teach" this mathematical concept in these terms. Indeed, most school curricula don't introduce the idea until first or second grade when children are twice Naomi's son's age, and even then it's typically done using the dry convention of numerals and ciphering, rather than the rich, relevant metaphor of lonely and friendly numbers on a street of houses.

As a preschool teacher, I've known hundreds of children who discover mathematical, scientific, literacy and other concepts well before they're "supposed" to. Parents have been taught by our educational system to treat this as a matter for pride in their obvious genius, to jump on it, to get them enrolled in advanced enrichment programs. The truth, however, is that sometimes their youthful proclivities foretell an abiding passion, as was the case with Dr. Fisher's son, but generally their epiphanies are indicators of nothing more than a typically curious child taking note of their world.

As a teacher in a cooperative school, my entire classroom career has been spent in the company of both children and their parents, and often even grandparents. I recall having a conversation with one of these grandparents who was visiting for a week. She wanted me to know that her grandson's obvious brilliance was the product of his mother's genes, who had, she assured me, been a genius child. She also let me know that she loved her daughter, but was disappointed that she had "wasted" her genius on such commonalities as stay-at-home motherhood. If she had anything to do with it, she was not going to allow the same thing happen to her grandson Max, which is why she was saving up to pay for expensive private schools. She also let me know, kindly but firmly, that she disapproved of our play-based curriculum. Perhaps it was good enough for the rest of these more common kids, but her grandson, she assured me with a wry nod, needed something more.

It was both sad and touching, mainly because I knew the mother (her daughter) and she was fully onboard with her son spending his childhood at play. In fact, she was considering avoiding school altogether, opting instead for a self-directed version of homeschooling called unschooling. "Max has already taught himself to read," she shrugged. "He's shown me that he's his own best teacher." 

Not every child is a literacy or mathematics prodigy, of course, but they all, if allowed to be their own teachers, are driven to discovery. I've rarely met a parent who was not, rightly, blown away by their preschooler's capacity to learn in this way. "Children who don't go to school," explains Dr. Fisher, "live in a state of alert awareness because they're not expecting to be told what to do and not expecting to be evaluated." It frees them up, she says, to look for patterns and make connections. A child who has not yet been taught the dubious lesson that they need adult instruction and approval for their learning instead comes to rely upon their own curiosity, which is what play-based, or self-directed, learning is all about.

In his book The Search After Truth, rationalist philosopher Nicholas Malebranche writes, "The mind does not pay equal attention to everything it perceives. For it applies itself infinitely more to those things that affect it, that modify it, and that penetrate it, than to those that are present to it but do not affect it." This is the idea behind not just self-directed learning, but learning in general up until the relatively recent advent of what we today call school. "Schools are the new bit," says Dr. Fisher. "Sadly, society thinks that self-directed learning has to end at seven."

Yes, Max had taught himself to read, but his driving interest during his grandmother's time with us was working with his buddies to construct devious traps. They would spend their days snickering and scheming, using scrapes of wood, fabric, old mesh produce bags, and whatever came to hand to create contraptions that they were certain would ensnare a classmate or two. His grandmother was appalled, whisper-begging me to guide them into more useful endeavors. Then one day, a trap made of rope was sprung on his grandmother, who found her ankles tied together as she tried to traverse the playground. As the boys cackled, I helped extricate his grandmother who was laughing along with them. I couldn't help remarking, "Pretty genius, huh?" 

It wasn't likely that Max would grow up to be a professional trap maker, but that's beside the point. He is, however, currently pursuing a theater degree with the same joyful passion with which he explored traps. The beauty of play-based learning is that it is always relevant to the learner and that is what's important if are goal is live a life of alert awareness.

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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!

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!

Can We At Least Agree to Stop Sucking the Joy Out of Their Lives?

I was sitting on a bench near a playground merry-go-round watching our three and four-year-olds play. A pair of boys decided they wanted a spin. They mounted the apparatus, then one of them turned to me, "Teacher Tom, you push us."

I answered, "Sorry, I'm busy sitting here. You'll have to find someone else."

As the first boy tried pleading with me, the second said, "I'll get my brother to push us. He likes doing the things I like," and jogged off in the direction of where their classmates where playing. He called out to them, "Who will push us?" They ignored him so he returned to the merry-go-round. As he mounted it, he gave it a little push with his foot and the two boys began turning slowly.

As the momentum began to die, a couple of girls found their way to the merry-go-round. Without being asked, they decided they were going to push it "fast." The boys were delighted. Working together, the girls managed to get it up to speed, then the two of them jumped on as well. More children began to arrive in twos and threes, many pushed before jumping on. One of the original boys, leaning into it, head tipped back, began to chant, "Oh yeah, it's spin time! Oh yeah, it's spin time!"

The children began jumping off and on as they spun. Many of them fell to the ground upon dismount, most doing so intentionally. Occasionally, one of them would be trampled as they lay there in the path of the pushers. Some of them cried out in objection, while others squealed with delight. It was the kind of wild, breathless fun for which these machines were designed, even if adult imposed rules too often forbid it.

They were learning something, because we are always learning something when we play. I could write a list here of all the things I imagine they were learning, or exploring, or discovering. I could put those guesses into a report of some sort. Indeed, if I were so inclined I would have already filed dozens of reports on the children playing together on the merry-go-round going back to September. I could then take all those reports and compare them to today's report and use this data to pretend that I know what they have been learning over the course of months. I reckon I could even devise some sort of pre and post-test that would allow me to compare the children's progress, identify those who are behind and assign those poor kids some merry-go-round homework so they could catch up with the others. Perhaps some would need tutors or the support of specialists. I might even decide to rank the children on various measures that I have identified as important about merry-go-round play, assigning each of them grades based on my assessment of where they fall on an arbitrary scale of learning I'd devised based on data that I and others have collected over generations. I could then use this data I've amassed to devise a merry-go-round curriculum, one that allows me to "teach" children how to play on a merry-go-round, imagine myself an expert, seeing to it that all the children became merry-go-round proficient . . .

This is ludicrous, of course. I could do all of that and not only would I be no closer to knowing what these children were learning, I would have wasted vast amounts of time that I could have otherwise spent doing something more productive, like scratching my ass. No one can ever know what another person is learning. Each of those children on the merry-go-round are learning something different, something unique, something that applies only to them and their lives, and even the person doing the learning often doesn't know what they've learned, and no amount of testing, grading, or data collection will change that.

This is the great fraud of our educational system, this hubristic notion that adults can somehow measure learning, yet for generations we have put children through the processing plants we call schools, marching them into the test score coal mines, subjecting them to our experiments like lab rats. It's led to a grotesque narrowing and standardization of what we call education based not on learning, but on what we can most easily measure.

I am comfortable knowing that children are learning because they are playing, and that's enough. Indeed, I have no choice because to believe otherwise, is to buy into the lie that anyone can possibly know what these children are learning. It would mean that I must take part in sucking the joy from their lives and I will not knowingly be a party to that.

"Oh yeah, it's spin time!" That's all I need to know.

******

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!

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!