Turtles All the Way Down

There are versions of the World Turtle story that can be traced to ancient Hindu mythology. The following version, which is most certainly a fabrication, is from J.R. Ross who associates it with the psychologist and philosopher William James. Upon finishing a public lecture on cosmology and the structure of the solar system, James was accosted by a "little old lady."

"Your theory that the sun is the centre of the solar system and the earth is a ball which rotates around it has a very convincing ring to it, Mr. James, but it's wrong. I've got a better theory," said the little old lady.

"And what is that, madam?" inquired James politely.

"That we live on a crust of earth which is on the back of a giant turtle."

Not wishing to demolish this absurd little theory by bringing to bear the masses of scientific evidence he had at his command, James decided to gently dissuade his opponent by making her see some of the inadequacies of her position.

"If your theory is correct, madam," he asked, "what does this turtle stand on?"

"You're a very clever man, Mr. James, and that's a very good question," replied the little old lady, "but I have an answer to it. And it's this: The first turtle stands on the back of a second, far larger, turtle, who stands directly under him."

"But what does this second turtle stand on?" persisted James patiently.

To this, the little old lady crowed triumphantly,

"It's no use, Mr. James—it's turtles all the way down."

This story has been used to make points about everything from the tension between faith and science, to the futility of argument and persuasion, to the so-called "problem of infinite regress." Lately, I've been thinking about in terms of one of the most current theories about the nature of consciousness. Usually called the Integrated Information Theory (IIT), it posits that everything in the universe, right down to the smallest particle is conscious, even if ever so faintly. The degree of consciousness within a system -- like a human being -- can be measured by how well the system integrates these tiny amounts of consciousness into the singular experience of reality.  

I've read two full books on this theory and still don't fully understand it, and the theorists themselves can't explain how this integration results in conscious experience (it's not called the "hard problem" for nothing), but what it amounts to, it seems to me, is that it's consciousness all the way down.

IIT is likely a passing fad. Theories about consciousness come and go, often inspired by our latest technologies. René Descarte, one of the towering figures in all of science, was impressed by the hydraulic figures in the royal gardens and developed a hydraulic theory of the action of the brain. 

Neuroscientist Patrick House writes, "It is often said . . . that theories of how the brain works latch on to whatever complicated technology or idea exists at the time. Hence, we got steam-based theories of the brain in the eighteenth century, loom-based theories in the twentieth, computational theories in the twentieth, computational theories in the twentieth, and quantum-computing-based theories in the twenty-first . . . Considered in the inverse, these criticisms represent a remarkable fact about nature. It implies that no matter how complicated a discovery we make, we find out shortly afterward that nature has already both known and taken advantage of the phenomenon. 

"Long before Newton discovered the laws of gravity, our muscles stretched in calculated attempts to defy it and our eyes tracked objects as arcs in the sky, which accelerated somewhere around ten meters per second squared. Long before we understood Earth’s magnetic field lines, birds and butterflies were using them to migrate, etc . . . One can only imagine what else brains might harness from the universe as future scientific fields that we have not discovered yet."

Of course, our species has had only had about 300,000 years to figure things out. In a universe that's 13.8 billion years old, and still inventing itself, it stands to reason that we are an infinitely long way from comprehending more than a sliver of a sliver of a sliver. It's humbling to consider, especially as an educator of young children who often show themselves to be closer to the core of the matter than all the scientists, theologians, and philosophers combined. It often seems like pure arrogance to think that I have anything truly important to teach these humans. 

What I've learned from the culture of childhood, the one that emerges when they are allowed to step away from our self-important nagging and instruction, is that to engage reality through wonder, awe, and play -- to feel too deeply, to laugh too loudly, and to love too hard -- is the best, and indeed only, possible use for our very short lives. 

Young children, like the ancients, the butterflies, and the little old ladies, already know that it's turtles all the way down. The rest is an endless series of theories and fads with which we play until we either break them or discover a something new. That is education.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

"I Can Pick Up This Whole School!"

Several of the kids were taking turns boasting about how strong they were.

"I can pick up this whole table!"

"I can pick up this whole school!"

"I can pick up this whole world!"

As their claims escalated ludicrously, some of their classmates called them out.

"No you can't!"

"You can't even pick up a piece of paper!"

"You can't even pick up a piece of toilet paper!"

It was all fun and games, of course, no one was serious. Then one of them said, "I can pick up the whole loft." The loft is a two level piece of furniture that stands in the corner of the room. I recall that when it arrived, decades ago, it came, ready-to-assemble, in cartons weighing a little over 250 pounds. I tossed this information out there, like a loose part, "The loft weighs more than 250 pounds."

The boaster paused, looked astonished, then said, "I guess I can't lift 250 pounds by myself."

A fellow boaster said, "Maybe we can lift it together."

The tone had suddenly changed from one of one-upsmanship to serious consideration of a job at hand. They agreed to try, approaching the loft with their muscles flexed, but they were unable to budge it.

Not stymied, they called out, "Hey guys! We need help!" and "We're going to lift up the whole loft!" As more and more children gathered, I began to get the idea that this might really happen. One or two of them could never manage it, but dozens, working together, likely could. What was the worst thing that could happen? It could topple over and land on the kids. They could succeed in lifting it, then drop in on their toes. I moved closer. As the children assembled, I called a couple of other adults over and we quietly strategized how we could make it safe enough, just in case.

At first, even with nearly twenty children, nothing happened. Their efforts were individual and uncoordinated. But they were still working on it. 

"We have to lift at the same time!" 

"We have to spread out!" 

"We need more people under the low part!" 

"I'll count to three!" "No, I'll count to three!" "Let's all count to three, then lift!" "Okay, guys, ready?"

They indicated their readiness with a sudden silence, then together they chanted, "One! Two! Three! Lift!" And the loft began to rise, all 250 pounds of it, hovering one then two inches off the ground. As agreed, the adults then stepped in and took much of weight as we helped them slowly lower it to the ground, cautioning about toes and fingers.

Sadly, this type of experience is all too rare in American schools, especially the farther one gets from the preschool years. Grades and scores and other assessments are individual things. Indeed, to achieve school-ish success in any way other than on your own is labeled as cheating and punished. Oh sure, there may be one or two tick boxes that rate a child's ability to cooperate with others, but no one takes those seriously. Teachers might assign a group project here and there, but we all know that the "smart" kids resent the "stupid" ones, concerned they will "hold them back" or not do enough of the work, taking relief in knowing that the grading, at least, will be individual. Working together to lift a loft, write a report, or solve a problem might be praised in the abstract, but every school child comes to know that at the end of of the day they will be judged not by what they have accomplished together, but rather by how well they compete against their classmates.

In school, to boast of one's prowess is no joke: it is the point.

People often try to make the argument that school must be this way because life is this way, but is it really? Yes, perhaps we do compete for jobs and promotions. There are some professions, like high-pressure sales jobs, in which employees find themselves pitted against one another, but even professional sports teams, like most employers, value teamwork above individual accomplishment. 

Even if we stipulate that the work-a-day world has certain competitive elements, that hardly comprises most of what makes life worth living. Most of what we do in our homes, communities, churches, and with our friends involves coming together around common problems, opportunities, or projects. Democracy itself, if it is to work, is far more akin to lifting a loft than competing for grades. This is what school, if it is to truly prepare children for life, should be about: people coming together to lift the loft.

One of the great American myths is this idea of a solitary hero who single-handedly saves the day, but it has never happened outside of a Hollywood movie. No doctor saves a life on their own. No engineer builds a bridge without the support of thousands. No community has ever been kept safe except by the actions of the community itself. No one has ever lived a joyful life unless they have spent it accomplishing meaningful things, shoulder-to-shoulder with others. That is what I wish for the children I teach -- a life in community.

The moment the loft's long legs touched the ground, the children cheered. Spontaneously. For themselves. Together they had done something that had at first seemed like an hyperbolic boast. They hugged and jumped up and down, saying things like, "We did it!" These are the best educated people on earth.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

Making Repairs

If I were a toy manufacturer -- or a manufacturer of anything, for that matter -- and I really wanted to know how sturdy my products were, I’d test them in a preschool classroom. I can’t count how often things get broken the first time we play with them. It’s not because the children aren’t careful. They’re mostly under 5-years-old and they’re playing with those toys exactly the way they should be playing with toys, which is to say, like mad scientists, poking, prodding and seeing what else this thing can do.

Things break. It’s in the nature of exploration to test the limits and that sometimes means that things get broken. And when they do, it’s an opportunity to repair them.

Years ago, for instance, one of our bathroom sinks was clogged solid. A child had apparently poured a cup full of hard red wheat berries down the drain. One of our parents said that she would take care of it. The next day she arrived in class with a European brand vacuum cleaner that had a special attachment made for sinks. She’d never had the opportunity to use it at home and wanted to give it a try. She took several children into the bathroom and they blew those wheat berries out of our pipes. The kids came pouring back into the room cheering like they’d won a championship, then escorted their friends back in to demonstrate their handiwork.

One of our most popular playground "activities" was to gather around the workbench as I made repairs to our cast iron water pump.

The day, the plumber installed new toilets was a major event.

Books often need repair. I love that inexpensive printing and binding techniques have made it possible for small, non-profit operations like ours to afford an extensive library, but those 2-staple bindings are not designed to last in a multi-user environment. Fortunately, one of my predecessors had the foresight to purchase a special book-binding stapler, which I use to return loose signatures to their proper place.  

I typically start by holding up the damaged book at circle time saying something like, “Look what happened. These pages came out of the book. Now no one can read it.” I try to infuse it with the kind of serious concern that an unreadable book deserves. The statement never hangs in the air very long before someone pipes up with, “We could try to fix it.” That’s the cue to break out the special stapler, make a show of repairing the book, which is almost always followed by cheering.

We had 3 plastic pizza-wheel type cutters that we used as play dough toys. One of their handles snapped under the pressure of someone who really wanted to make sure he was getting all the way through to the other side. We had a long discussion about how to go about fixing it, settling on tape as the solution. When it broke again after a couple weeks, we opted for tape and glue along with the support of popsicle sticks.

What I noticed about this repaired dough cutter is that in spite of there being two un-repaired wheels available, this one became the cutter of choice. Sometimes they even fought over it, "I want the one we fixed!" "Well, then I'm next!"

Kids often bring books to me and say, “I’m reading the one we fixed,” usually showing me the page we returned to its rightful place, even sometimes pointing out the new staples.

It’s important that the children are learning that broken doesn’t need to mean forever and that sometimes, in fact, the repaired item is more valuable because its been repaired. 

It occurs to me that these are concrete examples of a larger lesson we want our children to learn about damage and loss. We can’t help feeling sad or disappointed – that’s normal – but we needn’t give-in to despair. Repair is often possible. Sometimes our “repairs” return things to a like-new condition, as with our books or a friend to whom we genuinely apologize for an inadvertent hurt. Sometimes, in spite of our best efforts, we can never completely return things to the way they once were, like with our dough-cutter or a betrayal of trust. We can still use that dough-cutter, but we’ll always have a reminder in the form of duct-tape and popsicle sticks that it can be broken, which probably makes us use it a little more cautiously than we once did, but we can use it nevertheless.

Of course, there are some things that can’t be repaired. We’ve taken apart enough old vacuum cleaners, radios, and other machines in class to know that some things are broken for good, but you never know what those things are until you first try to repair them.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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 Present is Our Business

As a cooperative preschool, each family is responsible for sending an adult (usually a parent) to school with their child one day a week to work in the classroom as an assistant teacher under my supervision.

When I began teaching, cell phones were fairly common, but smartphones were still in the future. Even so, we, as a community, identified these devices as a problem for the classroom because they distracted parents from the job at hand, which was to keep the children safe enough and help them when they needed it. Our rule was that if you had to take a call or answer a text message, you were to let the rest of us know so that we could cover for you while you left the room to deal with your emergency. 

As smartphones became ubiquitous, we stuck with this policy, although things became a little more complicated. It's hard to tell a parent not to take pictures of their children doing remarkable or cute stuff. The smartphone made documenting through photos an accessible and valuable tool for educators as well. And sometimes the children had pressing questions that we could answer with our amazing pocket computers. Yes, there is at least as much power in wondering as there is in knowing, but there are also times when only knowing will do, especially in an educational context. 

Talking, texting, and scrolling, however, weren't acceptable "on the children's time."

Our debates over these devices, and screens in general, are all over the place. Are they changing the minds of our children? Of course they are. That's true of every technology, from fire to quantum computers. As Marshal McLuhan pointed out, every new technology (or in his terminology every new "medium") is simply an extension "of some human faculty -- psychic or physical . . . The wheel is an extension of the foot . . . the book is an extension of the eye . . . clothing, an extension of the skin . . . electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system." Our modern devices are definitely changing us because they take certain of our abilities and turn them into superpowers. 

And yes, for every superpower we embrace, we lose whatever it was we relied on before. The composer John Phillip Sousa was concerned that the advent of recorded music would mean that average people would no longer learn to make their own music . . . And he was right. Far fewer of us can play musical instruments or carry a tune than previous generations. "The discovery of the alphabet," worried Socrates, "will create forgetfulness in the learner's souls, because the will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves . . . You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing." . . . And he was right, most of us no longer have memories capable to holding, say, the entirely of Homer, as was common in Ancient Greece.

This is the story of technology. Hopefully, we gain more than we lose as we adopt and adapt, but we'll never really know until we've already become something new. And this will be true of such things as the smartphone as well.

That said, one concerning impact of smartphones is that adults are not talking to babies as much as they did in the pre-smartphone era. A recent study found a significant association between maternal phone use and a reduction the amount of speech infants were exposed to. "Overall, researchers found that phone use was linked to a 16% decrease in maternal speech directed toward the infant. The reduction was more pronounced during short phone use events of 1-2 minutes, with speech dropping by 26% during these periods . . . The findings suggest that even brief interruptions caused by checking a phone can sharply decrease verbal engagement with an infant."

This is concerning because caretaker speech is foundational to language development in young children and is associated with early vocabulary development. Smartphones, in effect, are taking parents away from their children for significant chunks of time even if they are physically present. That said, maybe it's not so concerning because today's mothers are spending almost twice as much time with their children than mothers in the 1960's and fathers are spending nearly 75% more time with them. Childhood independence, time spent engaging the world while off a caretaker's radar is associated with greater creativity, lower levels of anxiety, and enhanced basic skill development . . . So maybe it's not so bad that today's smartphone using parents are hovering a little less.

My point isn't to make a case one way or another, but rather to say that as important adults in the lives of young children, it serves us to remember that much of what people predict for the future, including scientists and technologists, is fear mongering and hyperbole. History and philosophy, I think, are often better guides when it comes to the future than these secular prophets. 

But more importantly, the children in our lives are not their future selves and our world is not the future world. Our children are who they are right now, living in a world as it is, and so are we. What they most need from us is to love them for who they are right now in the world as it is right now. The future isn't our business, even if it can be alternatively frightening and exhilarating to contemplate. The present is our business and when love stands at the center of it, the rest revels itself as little more than noise. When we know this, we can trust ourselves and our children. That is what we all need.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

"I Can't Let You Push People"

"I didn't do it!"

I'd seen the boy push his friend, knocking him to the ground. He was still lying there, whimpering.

His mother had told me, crossly, that she believed in punishment. She understood, however, that I was not going to resort to punishments, although she doubted that I could stick to that, not with her son. "Punishment is the only thing that works," she insisted.

"I saw you push him," I replied matter-of-factly. I strive to never threaten children, even with the volume of my voice, although I will, when I want to make sure my point is made, speak firmly, which I did then, "I can't let you push people."

"I didn't do it!" he shouted again, on the verge of tears himself.

The temptation is to keep pressing, to get him to confess, but there was no point. Everyone involved knew what happened. I was knelling by the fallen friend. I'd already determined that there were no external injuries, so I was rubbing his back. "Malcolm is crying. I'm taking care of him."

"I didn't do it."

This time I let his denail stand. This is the greatest flaw in the theory of punishment: fear of it makes it difficult, even impossible, to come clean and face the harm for which you need to make amends. The threat of harm makes it impossible to deal with the real harm. There are far too many adults in the world like this boy, people in positions of power, people who cannot come clean no matter what. When punishment is off the table, however, it clears the way for making amends.

I focused all of my attention on Malcolm. He shook his head when I asked him if anything hurt. I continued to rub his back. 

Again, the boy said, "I didn't do it," but without energy, almost pleading. I did not need to punish him because he was punishing himself, facing the natural consequences of his behavior, his entire being focused on it. He wasn't denying it any longer, but rather, wishing with all his being that he hadn't done it. We call it regret. It's not uncommon for adults to assert, "I have no regrets." It's meant as a statement of bravado masquerading as strength, but all I hear is a pathetic, "I didn't do it."

We have all done regretful things and the only way to move beyond them is to take responsibility by striving to undo the harm we have done. Punishment leads only to denial. I don't believe anyone who says they have no regrets because none of us has undone all the harm we've caused. "I have no regrets" is just more denial.

Regret is a great teacher, but only if we manage to not allow it to become guilt. And the way to do that is to strive to make amends.

The boy stood watching us as tears brimmed. He picked up a toy truck and tried to hand it to Malcolm, but it was refused. He squatted down and put his face into Malcolm's, "I didn't mean to."

Malcolm replied softly, "Yes, you did."

Now the boy broke into a full cry, "I'm sorry!" He dropped down beside Malcolm, putting his arm around him, his hand replacing mine on his back. Malcolm put his hand on his friend's head and they lay there for a time, in the dirt, a picture of regret and forgiveness.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

When Will We Wake Up?

German psychologist Karl Groos was among the first researchers to take play seriously. Working in the late 1800's, he is credited with what has been called, alternatively, the training, practice, or instrumentalist theory of play. In his book The Play of Animals, he wrote, "The animal does not play because he is young. He has a period of youth because he must play."

The basic idea is that mammals enjoy a relatively long juvenile period because they need that time to play, which is necessary to develop the skills and habits necessary for survival. Humans have evolved by far the longest period of youth of any species, mammal or otherwise, which means Homo sapiens "must play" for at least a decade, perhaps longer, in order to fully develop their capacity for survival.

While some of Groos' ideas have fallen by the wayside, this central idea, the practice theory, remains at the center of play research. During the mid-twentieth century a companion theory of play emerged, usually called the social bonding hypothesis. As science writer David Toomey puts it in his book The Kingdom of Play, this theory posits "that as animals nip, tussle, and give chase, they are learning -- in the phrase memorialized by kindergarten report cards -- to 'play well with others.'"

I find myself often reflecting on these theories as I watch children play. 

Fighting and fleeing remain essential for other species. Nearly every day, I see rabbits playfully chasing one another which is clearly increasing the likelihood that they will be able to evade coyotes and other predators. All spring I've been watching mocking birds fight off the ravens, a skill that I see them practice among themselves as fledglings throughout the summer and into the fall. 

Modern humans, fortunately, generally have little need to do all that fighting and fleeing as a matter of survival. We aren't nearly as concerned with being eaten by, say, a bear or a tiger, as our ancient ancestors were, yet our young still engage in play fighting and games of chase. That's because evolution operates on a scale of millennia and even as we've reduced the risk of becoming prey or the necessity to be predators, the play, or training, instincts remain.

As our species' has moved away from a world of eat-or-be-eaten, however, we have moved toward a world in which "playing well with others" is increasingly essential. When I watch children wrestle, I don't see fighting. I see children engaged in a deep connection in which they must remain constantly aware of the emotional and physical state of their playmate. They quickly learn that if they aren't careful, if they hurt themselves or someone else, the game will come to an end. The motivation to keep the game going, as Peter Gray points out in his book Free to Learn, is a powerful motivator in many of these social bonding games. 

Sadly, many adults break up this type of game as a matter of course, and we should if someone is getting hurt or when actual fighting breaks out. But when we understand the function of this type of play, when we stand near, but without intervening, we see that they are exploring one another. Yes, they may take things right to the edge, sometimes going a little too far, but that's vital to understanding limits. Most of the time when I watch children wrestle, they are looking into one another's faces, beaming, but also "reading" expressions as a way to understand where those limits are.

We see this happening in all manner of play as children bicker (negotiate) their way through their dramatic or constructive or artistic play. When modern schools limit play, they rob children of the opportunity to learn how to play well with others and replace it with adult imposed rules enforced by the threat of punishment. In other words, instead of learning to play well with others, they learn to obey, which is not the same thing.

Play creates major challenges for modern schooling, which views wrestling and running, and, frankly, most other play behavior as, at best, a way to burn off excess energy (which was, not incidentally, the leading theory of the purpose of play during the Victorian era before Groos and others started taking play seriously). At worst, play is seen as a distraction that must be strictly curtailed and limited to recess. And according to the Center for Disease Control, the average American school child spends less than 30 minutes a day at recess, barely enough time to get a game going, let alone learn anything from it.

In other words, the evolutionarily necessary urge to play has essentially been banned in our schools and replaced by a system of rewards and punishments. 

To paraphrase Groos, our children have a period of youth because they must play. For most of human history this wasn't even something we had to think about. It was a given that children would play. They had the time, space, and permission to train themselves in necessary physical skills and learn to play well with others. The only children in today's world who get to play in this way are those whose parents make a special effort to make it happen.

We bemoan the fact that today's youth are increasingly unfit, uncoordinated, anxious,  dependent, depressed, and socially awkward. We blame screens, diet, vaccines, and pretty much everything except the obvious. Children must play, but we just don't let them. It's a crisis with an obvious solution. When will we wake up?

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

We are All Self-Educated

 

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school

It's a wonder I can think at all.

And though my lack of education hasn't hurt me none

I can read the writing on the wall.  

                             ~Paul Simon, Kodachrome

The first thing I do upon awakening in the morning is to go to the bathroom, something I learned how to do alongside my mother. She didn't teach me, exactly, but I have memories of her being there, conversing with me as I sat on the little varnished pine potty seat with a blue and yellow figure of some sort painted on it. It was an intimate moment, the two of us in that little room, me on the seat and mom knelling beside me. I do remember standing up, then looking back down to see the yellow liquid I'd made in the white bowl. 

Next I go to the kitchen where I make a cup of coffee. I distinctly remember learning to make my first cup of coffee. I was a freshman in college, living in the dorms. Several of the guys swore by it as a late night or early morning study aid, so I went to the supermarket, purchased a jar of Folger's instant, then followed the instructions on the side of the jar. Since then, I've learned to make coffee in every way imaginable, sometimes by following the instructions and other times by watching someone else then imitating them.

I take my cup of coffee to the chair by the window where I fire up my computer. Dad bought the family an Apple II Plus computer in 1979, the year they were released. He spent a week or so learning to code a simple game that involved a crude monster that ate floating letters of the alphabet. I liked playing the game, but it wasn't until the mid-80's that I had a computer screen of my own, a device connected to a Wang brand mainframe that needed a room all for itself. Yes, this was about the time that Microsoft's PC was beginning to populate every desk top, but our office manager placed his bet on Wang. There were no instructions or training for using the computer terminals on our desks: we were expected to figure it out and we all did, mainly by goofing around on it, asking each other questions, and sending massive numbers of messages, then leaning around the corner to ask, "Did you get it?" before shaking our heads in disbelief at this modern age in which we lived.

It's at this point in my typical morning that I begin writing a blog post that will appear right here. It's hard to pin down when I learned to write, although it logically came along with learning to read, which happened for me over the course of my first grade year. I know that I didn't think I read at all when I arrived in elementary school, but on my first day in class Miss McCutcheon had placed on our desks a construction paper cut out of the character Ted (a stuffed bear) from the Dick and Jane readers. She had written T-E-D across his belly and I knew without being told that it said "Ted." Mom had read to me at home from picture books and I guess I'd just picked some of it up because as it turned out I could read anything Miss McCutcheon put in front of me over the course of the year. I often think that I didn't learn to read as much as discovered that I could.

As for being a writer, as opposed to being merely literate, that has been a process of unlearning most of what my teachers ever taught me about composition and re-learning by reading and writing nearly every day over the course of decades, a process that is ongoing.

I write about all sorts of things, but what I mostly write about is early childhood. I took a couple relevant university courses back in my early 20's and then a couple more 15 years later. But almost everything I've learned about ECE has been on the job, first as a babysitter, then as a children's baseball coach, then as a parent in with a child enrolled in a cooperative preschool, and finally as a classroom teacher myself, a journey that I've been documenting here since 2009. I've learned from books, blogs, conferences, mentors, colleagues, and mostly from the children themselves. This too is an ongoing process.

My point is that here I sit, a man who holds a high school diploma and university degree, the definition of an educated man, but most of the learning I actually use in my day-to-day life came from life itself, not any sort of curriculum. I was an engaged student, one who did all the assignments and received mostly good grades, but the only aspects of my nearly two decades of schooling upon which I regularly rely are the proposal writing vocational skills I learned as a college senior and the memories that guide me in what not to do as an educator.

When I would complain about the irrelevancy of my schools' curricula as a student, adults would assure me that it was all necessary foundational learning, but looking back on all those tedious writing exercises, those worksheets, those nights of grinding through mathematical equations, I see little connection to the educated man I am today. I don't think those adults were lying to me, I believe that they believed the myth of foundational learning, just as most adults continue to believe it today. It would be a horrible thing to finally admit that all those years, over all those generations, have been wasted, so we cling to these unproven ideas of how learning happens because to admit otherwise would send shock waves though society.

Most of the important learning I've done has been decidedly extra-curricular, which, I would assert, is true of all of us. We are all self-educated despite those years of schooling. We learn in the company of other humans, both children and adults. We learn from having the time, space, and autonomy to question, explore, and experiment. We learn when we find ourselves in stimulating environments, especially those we are free to manipulate. We learn when the adults in our life love us and have our best interests at heart. When these conditions are met, the curriculum emerges, unique for every one of us, and that curriculum is life itself.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

Humans in Motion, Thinking, and Learning at Full Capacity

As you step onto a preschool playground or a play-based classroom, the first thing visitors are struck by is the never-ending swirl of bodies in motion. Adult visitors to Woodland Park have always stopped at the gate or doorway seemingly afraid to get in the way as children move from one thing to the next, leaping, skipping, swinging, crawling, jumping, jiggling, bending, and reaching. Even when children stop to greet the newcomers, they are in motion: kicking a leg for no apparent reason, clapping their hands, bouncing up and down. Sure, some of the children might remain relatively still for a few minutes at a time, but even the ones curled up with a book are bouncing a foot. Even the ones pretending to be a baby under a blanket are wiggling.

"Sit as little as possible," wrote the influential philosopher and notorious nature trail hiker Friedrich Nietzsche, "do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement."

A mountain of studies back up Nietzsche's assertion. When we move our bodies our visual sense is sharpened, our ability to concentrate is enhanced, comprehension is boosted, information retention is increased, and self-regulation improves. Cognitive scientist Sain Beilock even asserts that "(m)oving the body can alter the mind by unconsciously putting ideas in our heads before we are able to consciously contemplate them on our own time." (Italics are mine.) In other words, our bodies can know stuff through movement for which our brains aren't yet ready. And it doesn't necessarily have to be robust movement either: one study found that when people doodle while listening to a lecture they retain nearly 30 percent more of the information. By now, most of us know that our brains alone don't do our thinking, but rather our whole bodies, other people, and even things are involved, not just intellectually, but emotionally as well. 

Another great 20th century philosopher and psychologist, William James once observed that one of the best ways to overcome mild depression or ennui is to stand up straight, pull our shoulders back, hold our head high, and move confidently. More contemporarily, Katherine Isbister, a professor and researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz, talks of what she calls embodied self-regulation. "Changing what the body does," she writes, "can change our feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. 

(If you are interested in digging deeper into any of this, I highly recommend Annie Murphy Paul's book The Extended Mind.)

One of the foundational myths of schooling is that we must somehow get the kids to stop moving around in order to focus, but the exact opposite is true. Some schools have even gone so far as to cut back on recess in elementary school in favor of more "seat time." The evidence, however, tells us that the more children move, the more clearly they think. This evidence is so clear and so compelling (and by now, so widely known) that the fact that our schools persist in forcing even preschoolers to spend large chunks of their days sitting quietly is outright malpractice.

What visitors see as they stand in the doorway of standard classrooms are humans whose minds are torn between obeying the adults by sitting still and their natural urge to actually think and learn through movement. 

What visitors to a play-based classroom are witnessing are humans in motion, thinking, and learning at full capacity. 

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

I Trust Children With Freedom

I trust children with freedom from the moment they are born.

Yes, I must keep a sharp eye on a toddler around traffic because they've not yet developed the judgement to be cautious around moving cars. Until they do, it's my responsibility to protect them from their own inexperience and serve as an extension of their executive function.

Yes, contemporary life requires us to, at least sometimes, be in certain places at certain times. Toddlers have not yet developed the ability to consider the future in concrete terms. Until they do, it's my responsibility to serve as their scheduling secretary.

And yes, toddlers are not always aware of the conventions of courtesy, those words and behaviors that remove some of the pain and doubt from our social interactions. Until they do, it's my responsibility to help them develop a theory of mind by showing them how their behaviors impact others, and to role model courtesy in my interactions with them.

But that doesn't mean I don't trust them with freedom. 

As an educator, I undertake my responsibilities by ensure that the places in which we gather are safe enough so that they may exercise their freedom without undue risk. I am responsible for creating predictable routines so that they may exercise their freedom with a degree of confidence about what the future holds. And I am responsible for role modeling the courtesy, the human dignity, that is due all free human beings, themselves included.

There are those who would say that what I'm calling "responsibilities" are just a new way to talking about bars in a cage, and they certainly can be used in that way. They often are. The reason that I feel I must assert that I trust children with freedom is that too many adults conflate their responsibilities toward children with being their superiors in all things. It's one thing to prevent a toddler from running into traffic "for their own good" and quite another to insist that they attend to this particular dull lesson, to walk in straight lines, or to sit obediently at a desk for hours on end "for their own good."

I trust children with their own curiosity, with their own questions, and with their own pursuit of answers because the freedom to think for oneself is the freedom that makes the other freedoms -- freedoms of speech or assembly or the right to vote, for instance -- mean anything at all. Maybe the reason so many believe that children can't handle freedom and autonomy is that we are judging their capabilities within a system (standard schooling) where freedom and autonomy aren't welcome: where children are not trusted with freedom.

Freedom is meaningless without responsibility. I am responsible for keeping children alive and relatively unharmed because without life there is only the freedom of the grave. For the same reason, I must prevent them from harming others and role model the alternatives. And I am responsible for allowing them to see that their own freedom is only possible when we take responsibility for how we treat others, because without it we are alone and that way lies insanity.

Freedom and responsibility go hand-in-hand. It's tempting to say that they lie on a spectrum and that the goal is to find balance. But the truth is that one simply does not exist without the other. They are indivisible. Freedom without responsibility is psychopathy. Responsibility without freedom is slavery. 

I trust children with freedom because they are my fellow human beings. And what I've found is that when children are trusted with freedom can also be trusted with responsibility, because they are one and the same.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!