Childism

If one believes that those with more money and social status are superior to those with less, we call it classism.

If one believes that men are superior to women, we call it sexism.

If one believes that those without disabilities are superior to those with them, we call that ableism.

If one believes that whites are superior to blacks, that's called racism.

If one believes that adults are superior to children? . . . We don't have a word for it. I suppose we could call it "ageism," but that term is already in use to connote prejudice against the elderly.

The other day, my daughter and I were discussing the demographic reality that young people, whatever their political or religious orientation, are overwhelmingly in favor of same-sex marriage, and that the most staunch opposition comes from the generations closest to the end of their lives. This lead us to wonder what prejudices we currently hold that will appall our children. We wondered if it wouldn't be about what we now so casually call "mental illness." After all, many indigenous cultures have considered those we label psychologically sick to be gifts from the gods, bringing them to the center of their lives rather than pushing them to the fringe as we do today.

But, in seems, "childism" could also be the next revelation in this ever-unfolding journey of enlightenment.

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Within The Lines

Some time ago, I received an email that read, in part:

. . . I was wondering if you could share your thoughts about coloring books and coloring within the lines. I have a 4 year old who loves to paint, but he doesn't paint within the lines, he doesn't draw tree and flower shapes as his friends do and such. I am not overly concerned about this, but I would love to get your opinion . . .

In kindergarten, Mrs. Jennings handed out pre-printed pages of train car outlines for us to color, each of us with a box car or passenger car or coal car that were, when finished, to be arranged on the walls of the room as a complete train. I felt somehow honored to have been entrusted with the caboose, for which I chose red with yellow accents. She gave us careful instructions, admonishing us to not only strive to stay within the lines, but also to use only horizontal strokes as we filled in the various white voids.

My rebelliousness is not inborn, but has rather has come to me with age. I didn't perceive Mrs. Jennings' instructions as anything particularly confining. To the contrary, I recall taking pride in adhering precisely to her rules, and in the end admiring how accomplished my caboose looked when all the crayon strokes went in the same direction. The completed train ran along the wall above the blackboard for the rest of the school year, where I often admired my own handiwork. From that point forward, whenever the opportunity came to color within the lines, I took it on eagerly, employing the techniques Mrs. Jennings had taught us.

I was a boy who enjoyed coloring books and could spend hours practicing and perfecting my side-to-side-within-the-lines technique. To this day, when I doodle, I often draw shapes or find shapes pre-printed on my page, then carefully fill them in. I find the process meditative.

What I don't recall is whether or not my classmates also followed Mrs. Jennings' rules, that perhaps in all fairness, may have been offered more as "suggestions," but were merely heard by me as instructions. The proof was right there on the wall of the room all year long, each train car colored by a different hand. I remember the train as a whole, but not its individual components other than my own and the wonderful black engine Mrs. Jennings colored herself. But I'm inclined to think, knowing what I know now about kindergartners, that the others did not stick as rigorously to her techniques.

Whatever we may now think of Mrs. Jennings' project, it seems apparent to me that she did one thing brilliantly: she did not make it into a competition by comparing our finished work or making us otherwise feel that we'd not toed the mark. There they all were in the end, side-by-side, inside and outside the lines, smooth strokes or scribbled, linked one after another along the wall. I imagine other children looked up and admired their own work, being pleased perhaps by their choice of colors or swirling crayon strokes, not even noticing or even being aware that there was anything wrong with a few stray marks outside the lines. I also imagine there were others who got the project done as quickly as possible, sloppily, not caring at all for the process, never even later noticing the train on the wall.

Each year, we do a handful of potentially "inside the lines" types of projects at Woodland Park. For instance, around Halloween we always spend at least one session painting jack-o-lanterns that I've pre-drawn in permanent marker on their paper. Naturally, I don't say anything about staying within the lines, but the lines are there and a few of the older children will always accept the challenge of staying within them. In the end, whatever they look like, just like in Mrs. Jennings' class, they all get hung up on the wall, side-by-side, equally, with no editorializing or comparisons from me. Some of the children will eagerly show their parents, "That one's mine!" while others can't be bothered to even look that way again.

The same goes for drawing or painting "tree or flower shapes." A few times a year, usually with our Pre-K kids, we attempt "art" projects that involve following step-by-step instructions. For instance, I challenge them each year with "If" paintings with a proscribed process of 1) conceiving and articulating a concept, 2) drawing the picture in pencil, using an eraser if necessary to get it "just right," 3) tracing over the pencil lines with permanent marker, 4) choosing colors, and finally 5) painting. My object is not for them to produce a work of art so much as to expose them to a 5-step process. Most of them, as I did with Mrs. Jennings' instructions, take it on as it's intended, a challenge not unlike balancing across a beam or assembling a puzzle. There are always one or two, like me, who really dig on the process itself and work through it several times, taking pride in their work. And, yes, there are almost always a few who either don't or can't accept the challenge.

I'll always remember Jarin's "If" painting from several years back. Drawing was not one of his fortes, but he gamely joined the others at the table, starting with the concept: "What if 1 were 2?" As the others went about putting wings on elephants and candy on trees, Jarin sat there with pencil poised over paper, his mind apparently blown by this idea -- What if 1 were 2? As the others marched through the steps he remained there seemingly both stuck and struck by this impossible mathematical concept. In the end he wound up with a paper topped with his question "What if 1 were 2," a pair of very faint pencil marks, and nothing else, but what a lot had gone on inside his head during the time he struggled with this big idea.

I didn't hang the "If" paintings on the wall, but if I had, Jarin's would have looked feeble compared to the "tree and flower shapes" of his friends, and how unfair it would be to judge the work he did that day by this "painting."

It's as impossible as expressing Jarin's concept, I suppose, to expect humans to not, at least at some level, look around at what the others are doing and compare them with our own children. How tall are the other kids his age? Are any other 3-year-olds still in diapers? Everyone else seems to be able to draw a tree or a flower or to stay within the lines. And there is certainly some valuable data to glean from this, especially if one's child appears to be an extreme outlier, but there is real danger, I think, when this kind of thing makes us feel competitive or inadequate on our child's behalf.

The paintings on the wall, the test scores, the grades only measure how well a child manages to stay within the lines, which is, after all, at best, a limited grounds upon which to form judgments. It tells us nothing, for instance, about what happens along the way.

Coloring within the lines is a fine thing, but all you need to do is take a look at the paper train that is humanity to know that life itself is an outside the lines endeavor and that each of us strays outside them every day. If our child's caboose or box car diverges from some arbitrary "norm" it is indeed not cause to be "overly concerned." In fact, it is usually cause for celebration.

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This Is Life Itself

I estimate that over the past four years, we've seeded our outdoor classroom with at least 10,000 florist marbles, or "jewels" as the kids call them. They've come from spring cleanings and garage sales and thrift shops. At any given moment, however, we may, if we really hunt, be able to locate a few dozen, but that's on a good day since so many have found their way under the sand or wood chips or have made their way home in children's pockets.

A couple weeks ago, we had one of our good jewel days as a team of boys, working together, mostly in the sand pit, located a large collection. The team of collaborators started with just a couple kids, but had expanded to a half dozen or so as the project took off. They then, by a process known only to them, decided it was time to clean the jewels. It turned into an elaborate procedure, with everyone talking at once. They set up shop atop the unicycle merry-go-round, an impractical place from my perspective, but it wasn't my project. They found an old mesh produce bag and moved their jewels from the buckets they carried into the bag. The buckets were then rushed up to the cast iron pump for water, which they carefully poured over the bag, retaining the jewels while washing away the sand. An old piece of mesh shelving then turned up, which they propped on the unicycle merry-go-round to use as a sort of draining board, then poured the bag full of jewels onto it.

It was, in other words, a typical preschool project.

As this was happening, another preschool project was in full-swing in the playhouse only a few feet away, as a team of girls were engaged in a cooking game, making soup from wood chips and water, with everyone talking at once and many hands making light work.

Up the hill another group was collaborating on the swing set. Across the sand pit, yet another project team was engaged in some task on the concrete slide. There were others at the workbench.

As the great John Dewey wrote, "Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." And life itself, for the most part, is doing projects with other people. At least that's what I've found during my half century on the planet: we get together around a challenge or question, then figure out how to get it done. It's true in business, in the arts, in politics, you name it, and the people who thrive, the one's who "succeed" are those who have had the opportunity to develop the skills and habits of self-motivation, sociability, and working well with others. 

At bottom, this is why standardized education doesn't serve children, why it doesn't serve society: it pretends it is preparation for life, yet one of the worst things you can do in traditional school is collaborate. They call it cheating or plagiarism. They urge children to strive to compete against one another, to outscore their classmates on tests, to bring home the highest grades, to view their fellow citizens as impediments to success rather than as partners. This is preparation for a life of failure, because despite our mythologies about the solitary hero, the John Wayne or John Galt, no one can do it alone. That's why when we give awards to people for their supposed individual achievements, the first thing they do is start thanking all the people who helped them get there, often even saying their award really belongs to others.

A non-standardized education looks like this, like children coming together around their own challenges or questions, then figuring out how to get it done together. We urge children to help one another, to share information, to collaborate, because this is how we learn the traits required to live a successful life. This is life itself.

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"We Were Mean, Then We Were Nice"

Since quite early in the year, several of the girls have enjoyed playing "family." Often this game involves everyone taking the role of an actual member of one of their own families. For instance, they might play Cecelia's family or Clara's family. No girl plays herself, usually assuming the role as their own mothers. Some of them can really do spot-on impersonations of their moms, uncannily imitating their gestures and facial expressions. Sometimes boys (or me) are recruited to play the less desirable role of father.

Not long ago, a family encampment sprang up, using a few of our loose parts as props. One girl was cooking, sending the others out to forage for various things she needed, everyone coming and going in a busy game that might have looked to an uninitiated observer like the girls were just collecting a small pile of rubbish. As the game evolved, they moved down to our new playhouse.

It wasn't clear to me that they had abandoned their former home, but a group of boys didn't hesitate. I arrived on the scene to find them wantonly destroying the girls' work. And as if to make sure I was left with no doubt, one of them said as I approached, "We're destroying the girls' house."

This has been an off and on challenge this year, with a group of boys lurking about pretending to be the nemeses of the girls, usually keeping it to themselves, but occasionally doing things like this. It has caused more than a few major conflicts. I said, "Were they finished using their house?"

"We don't know."

"I wonder how the girls are going to feel when they see you've wrecked their house."

That stopped them for a moment as they all peered down the hill to where the girls were playing, oblivious to the destruction. "They would probably feel bad."

I said, "I think that's how I would feel if you broke my house."

Then, "We don't care, right guys?" They turned together conspiratorially, chuckling, confirming, "Yeah, we don't care."

Like I said, it was unclear whether or not the girls had simply moved on or if they were planning to return, but the attitude of not caring got under my skin a bit, especially since this had become something of a pattern. I said, "I care." Then elaborated, "If you break someone's things, on purpose, and don't care, then I would call that mean." I instantly wondered if I'd gone too far, if I'd perhaps projected my adult perspective onto something that was really none of my business, but for better or worse, the words were out there. In the moment, I reflected on the fact that I'd at least spoken my own truth, but I would say no more.

The word "mean" seemed to stop the chuckling as they milled around for a moment, the boys studying their toes. There was quite a long pause, during which I fought the urge to fill it with more of my words. It's in the pauses that thinking can take place. Finally, one of the boys said, "We were going to build it back, right guys?"

"Yeah, we were going to build it back better."

As the boys got to work translating "better" as "bigger," I went down to where the girls were playing. I wondered if the boys had been motivated to make things right on my behalf or the girls'. I hoped my words had prompted them to reflect on their behavior, it's impact on others, and sparked the urge to make amends. I worried that they were merely acting to assuage my disapproval. I'll never really know.

Sitting near the girls' play, it was evident to me that their abandoned home was entirely forgotten. Meanwhile, the boys had used all of the materials at hand. From where I sat, I could see them milling around their handiwork, eyeing the girls on whose behalf they had labored. I imagined they were waiting for a response. When none was immediately forthcoming, however, they took matters into their own hands, approaching the girls as a group, saying, "We fixed your house."

It confused the girls who interrupted their play to peer up the hill to where the boys pointed.

"We destroyed your house, then fixed it better."

"Yeah, we were mean, then we were nice." 

I'll never know.

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This Is How Self-Government Works

It doesn't take much reading here to know that I'm interested in the politics of education and, frankly, government in general, and specifically self-governance. Being cynical about government is as American as apple pie, of course, and to the degree that there are individuals who use government for their own personal gain and aggrandizement it's an emotionally, if not intellectually, valid stance, but ultimately to be broadly cynical about government is to doubt that Americans are capable of governing ourselves.

I recognize that I'm an idealist. There is little doubt that powerful interests have leveraged their financial superiority to more or less purchase the men and women who are supposed to serve as our representatives. There are more of us, of course, regular work-a-day citizens, but their money multiplies their influence, especially since lobbying and bribery of both the legal and illegal sort is simply part of their work-a-day lives as corporations and wealthy individuals. With the pressures and pleasures of living, many of us have limited opportunity to take part in self-government. Some even make a conscious effort to avoid politics altogether, not even voting, which is the minimal requirement of democracy. I consider those people traitors, even as I understand the frustration and despair that drives them from the public square.

On my best days, despite what I know about the realities of American politics, I still see "government" as the name we give to the things we've chosen to do together, be it building roads, running fire departments, or establishing libraries. The prevailing cultural idea during most of my adult life has been to doubt government's ability to do anything well and to instead look favorably upon private enterprise and those so-called "free market forces." We've tried disastrous experiments based on this notion, having turned institutions like prisons and healthcare over to the highest bidder. Even a large portion of our military at war is now staffed with highly-paid mercenaries. And now, powerful political and corporate interests have allied themselves in an attempt to privatize education in order to, in the words of Mr. Free-Markets himself, Bill Gates, "unleash powerful market forces" on our schools.

Listen, there are some things that are probably best created in the hothouse of free market competition (as opposed the faux competition in most of our market segments which are dominated by virtual monopolies), but when the desired results cannot be measured in profit, like with prisons (which should be measured by how many criminals we reform), healthcare (which should be measured by public health), military (which should certainly be measured by something other than profit), and education (which should be measured by the critical thinking skills of our youth), then it's a terrible model. These are not things that should be done for profit, but rather things we must do together, and that requires government: good government, and that means transparency, participation, and ample opportunity for citizen input.

When citizens sit on the sidelines, government still functions, just not necessarily on behalf of we the people. No the void we leave in our cynicism is filled by powerful monied interests, the investor class, those who benefit the most from the privatization of governmental functions. When citizens step up to our responsibilities of citizenship, however, no force can stand in our way. We tend to think our political system is too divided and corrupt to work any longer, but that is objectively not true, or at least not always true.

Bloomberg Business recently published a series of charts illustrating how quickly major things have changed in America over time, tracking such social issues as interracial marriage, prohibition, women's suffrage, abortion, same-sex marriage, and recreational marijuana. In each case, we see issues that start as impossible to achieve, that were opposed by powerful political interests. In each case, however, we see state-by-state public support of these issues slowly mounting, sometimes over the course of decades, until bam suddenly there is a surge of support as the American people rise up, together in the act of self-governance, to demand federal action. We don't always rise up, but when we do, we can't be stopped.

One of the defining characteristics of these major changes is that they require an upheaval of politics as usual, often making allies of former enemies, bringing together citizens unwilling and unable to remain stuck in the easy political straight jackets the entrenched elites seek to make for us. Indeed, they find that if they want to retain their power they had better run around to march in front of the parade and pretend to be leading it or else be trampled under our feet.

Change happens slowly, then suddenly, a theme that also runs through evolutionary science.

In our time we are watching this happen with same-sex marriage and probably the end of the prohibition of marijuana. I also assert that we are witnessing a similar phenomenon when it comes to education, as momentum continues to increase for citizens to reclaim our schools from those who would turn them into test score coal mines. Slowly, our movement has spread, and change is happening state-by-state. More and more politicians, from both parties, are seeing the light and beginning to sound like they're prepared to march with us. We're not at the tipping point yet, but it's not far off now.

We are at an interesting moment in our citizen-lead revolution in education. Last week, a group of 12 institutionalized civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the National Urban League, and La Raza, issued a statement urging us to not opt out of high stakes standardized testing, taking the side of the powerful elites from whom they have come to rely on, in part, for their funding. Grassroots education civil rights groups and individuals have responded strongly, boldly showing these vaunted institutions how they are wrong. Teacher Jesse Hagopian, writing on behalf of the Network for Public Education, schooled them in the Washington Post on the failings of high stakes testing, especially as they impact poor and minority children, followed a couple days later by a piece from Wayne Au, professor and editor of social justice teaching magazine Rethinking Schools, in which he follows up by  exposing the financial conflicts of interest that may be behind their support of the corporate agenda, asking the question, "Just whose rights do these civil rights groups think they are protecting?"

And just like this rift on the left, we are seeing rifts on the right as well as Republican governors are rejecting the federal Common Core curriculum, while Republicans in Washington DC continue to be cheerleaders.

This is what happens whenever the people lead major change in America, when citizens rise up and demand change. The old alliances fall away and there is a political realignment more in keeping with the will of the people. It's messy, noisy, and it takes too long, but this is the way democracy is supposed to work.

People, too accustomed to the cynicism that the monied elites rely upon, often feel like there is nothing they can do, but look at what is happening. Look what can happen. None of us have to do it all, we just have to do our part, talking to our friends and families, reading, sharing our opinions, and, when necessary engaging in small acts of civil disobedience like opting our children out of high stakes testing. This is how our parade is made, this is how self-government works. And this is how we are going to transform public education in America.

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!

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Learning How I Learn

The way most of our day works, children move freely about the place, engaging with the activities, objects, and people they find there. As a preschooler, my own child was a generalist, by which I mean she made a point of spending at least some time at each station each day, trying her hand at the art, sensory, construction, and other activities her teacher prepared for her. She wasn't always drawn to the activities per se, but rather the people, both the parent-teachers and her classmates. At the end of the day, at least, that's what we wound up talking about on the way home, the people.

Other children prefer to remain in the center of one activity or another for as long as our schedule allows. That might mean an hour of scooping and pouring water or playing princesses or driving cars on roads made from blocks. Parents sometimes worry about these kids, wondering when they are going to finally "move on." I hear them sometimes urging, "Don't you want to try the art project? It looks fun!" or "I see fresh, pink play dough over there." When these parents bring their concerns to me, I tell them that their child is just "going deep," which is, after all, what they are doing, mastering an environment or process.

There is no right or wrong way to do this, of course, and most, as they get older, tend to find more of a balance, perhaps not engaging with everything, but at least flowing from one thing to the next if only to remain close to particular friends.

And some kids come in knowing their passion, more or less demanding their needs be met.

I start each year by telling parents that I will not bring letters or numbers into the classroom, except as they occur incidentally, unless and until the children bring them in. A few years ago, a two-year-old boy did exactly that, entering the classroom in search of "the A-B-C's." Each morning, the first words out of his mouth, even before greeting me, were, "Where are A-B-C's?" I accommodated, of course, cycling through our alphabet blocks, alphabet cookie cutters, alphabet puzzles. As the year went on, I would sometimes "forget" the A-B-C's which caused him to hunt for them in books or packaging or by making them himself with pencils or play dough.

This year, I have a boy who is all about trains in much the same way, the difference being that he doesn't bother asking me. Instead, he brings trains into everything he does no matter what I do. He paints trains, he tells stories about trains, he chugs around outdoors playing engine. But mostly, I find him lining things up, making trains from whatever material comes to hand. I've seen book trains and bear trains and rock trains and trains made from fire trucks with their ladders lined up as tracks. Anything that can be sequenced, becomes a train or a train station or a train engineer.

Traditional schools, those that rely upon adults telling children what to learn and when to learn, give children very little choice in how they learn, starting from the false assumption that everyone is a generalist in search of a broad body of more superficial knowledge. This is particularly hard on children who instinctively "go deep." On the other hand, when the children themselves are in charge of what and when to learn, we take advantage of each child's intuitive knowledge of how they best learn.

In the end, learning how to learn, learning how I learn, is probably the most important "academic" knowledge there is. And the only way to learn this is through the freedom to figure it out.

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!

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Public Relations Hacks

From a purely public relations point of view, the supporters of federally mandated Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and their attendant emphasis on high stakes standardized testing are losing in a landslide. Last week, a Fairleigh Dickenson University poll was released showing that only 17 percent of Americans approve of the standards while a full 40 percent disapprove, which is the category into which I fall.

Last week, fake news host John Oliver of Last Week Tonight spent 18 minutes on a well-researched and hilarious take down of high stakes testing. If you've not seen it, it's worth it:

The grassroots movement to opt out of high stakes standardized testing is significant and growing. The billionaire-funded corporate reform initiative is fighting back. Unfortunately for them, they're fighting, instead of listening. They see this as a public relations battle, rather than an honest disagreement about how we should be educating our children. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been saber rattling, trying, I guess, to show up as a strong leader, encouraging the troops, who are out in force right now to decry Mr. Oliver's viral rant, especially at Education Post, which appears to primarily publish material from corporate reform associated writers. If you must, here are a couple pieces, here and here, in which the writers outrageously suggest that those of us who stand against turning our schools into testing factories where our children labor for the profit of companies like Pearson Education are, in fact, elitist racists.

If you do click through, please make sure to look at the comments. I particularly enjoy that they are overwhelmingly from readers who disagree with the authors. It's interesting how both Education Post writers attempt to engage disagreement in the comments by first pointing out an area of agreement before disagreeing. I spent many years in public relations doing PR hack work: this is classic PR hack work.

Please take a moment to read Jesse Hagopian's response (which has been picked up by the Washington Post) to those accusing us of, if not racism, at least race and class insensitivity.

The ever-insightful Anthony Cody does an excellent job of responding directly to the paid corporate shills in a concise response over on his blog Living in Dialog, asking the simple question:

We have ruled our school system by the accountability system chosen by these reformers now since 2002. And where can they point to school systems that have been greatly improved?

Their answer, of course, has to be PR hack work, because the "accountability" regime, after more than a decade, has failed to budge the needle. Indeed, there is no evidence whatsoever that the billions spent so far on these corporate reform initiatives have done anything other than to throw our public schools in to disarray, making children, parents, and teachers miserable, and this is particularly true of children from poor and minority backgrounds over whom they pretend to wring their hands.

No, as Oliver points out, the only ones benefiting from the corporate reform drive are for-profit corporations and the army of PR hack workers they have hired to support them. Or as Cody writes:

(Billionaire) Eli Broad looked around and saw that there were hundreds of bloggers that are discrediting HIS project, and they seemed to have some strategy, they even met together in conferences. So thank goodness he had the funds available to hire people (like those at Education Post) to be his friends, and defend him and his fellow billionaires. I guess that is why rich people never have to be lonely for long, so long as they can find people willing to be their friends in exchange for some of their money.

With only a 17 percent approval rating and thousands of families opting out of their high stakes standardized tests and now apparently losing such opinion-leaders as John Oliver, the reformers must be feeling a bit desperate. Not long ago corporate reform poster-child Michelle Rhee was on the cover of Time magazine. Now she is responsible for a struggling anti-teachers union PR hack outfit called StudentsFirst. It wasn't so long ago that the movie Waiting for Superman debuted, a slick PR hack job that condemned public education as a failure, while holding up the corporate reformers as visionaries. Now we've learned that the successes touted in the movie were houses of straw, blown away by real world wolves when the movie cameras looked away.

They seem to think it's a PR problem. It's not a PR problem and they won't fix it with PR hack work no matter how many billions they spend. Students, parents, and teachers from all walks of life and from across the political spectrum are opting out because it is the only option they've left us. From the beginning they have designed their federal education policies to be all-or-nothing mandates with no opportunity for input from those most impacted. The only path they've left us is civil disobedience so that's the path we're taking.

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!

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Cameras And Photography

Last fall, I mentioned that we had purchased a pair of super tough, waterproof, shock-proof, freeze-proof cameras for use by the kids. The idea was to see what would happen if young children were given the chance to use these tools without adults hovering over them, worried they would break them. It was a two part experiment: the first being to see if these cameras really could stand up to a year in a play-based preschool, with the second being to see what the kids photograph if left to their own devices.

Our Panasonic Lumix (DMC-TS4) cameras have lived up to the hype. Nine months later, both are still in perfect working order, despite having been repeatedly dropped on concrete, down stairs, and from the branches of trees. They are still working like new despite having been lost outdoors for more than a week in the midst of winter, plunged underwater, and otherwise abused. 

We now have a rather large collection of photos, which I upload at the end of each day onto a computer donated by one of our families, which we use exclusively for this purpose, letting them run as a slideshow for the children and parents to view.

I would say that most of the photos the children have taken this year have been of the "accidental" variety, meaning that they are the result of kids just goofing around while figuring out how the cameras work. Whereas, I'm from the simple point-and-shoot school of classroom photography, the kids wound up playing around with all the various settings and features, not usually knowing what they were doing, snapping dozens of shots of their own toes and thumbs, the backs of heads, and such super close ups that they are a study in black. One of the most common comments about young children and technology is something along the lines of, "My two-year-old knows more about my smart phone than I do." This is why: they just play with it, unafraid of breaking it, deleting things, or wracking up huge bills, the way many of us might.

Of the intentional photos, the first thing that jumps out at me is how much more prominently we adults feature in the children's photography than the regular photo streams that emerge from our school. Obviously, adults tend to focus on the children and what they're doing, but these photos of moms and dads serving as parent-teachers in partnership with children are probably a much more accurate photographic representation of what our school is all about. 

More than one child has spent a classroom session documenting every square inch of his mother, her toes and ankles, the downy hairs on the back of her neck, the curve of her back, her ears, nose and fingers, every detail lovingly documented. It's rather touching to come across these impromptu and candid photo sessions.

Of course, that also brings me to one of the aspects of the experiment that I was concerned about going in: the kids are liable to take less than flattering, sometimes even embarrassing, photos. These intimate photo sessions, for instance, often include some images that might not pass Facebook's community standards. They are loving, yes, but also a bit revealing. These, I show only to the "model," allowing her to keep or delete them according to her own sense of modesty. And, of course, there have been a few sessions in which one or more kids skulked around the place gigglingly documenting everyone's butts, cracks, tattoos, underpants reveals, and all. After we've had our laugh, those get deleted as well.

That said, of the thousands of images, there are hundreds of "keepers," mostly portraits of friends and family that deserve to be preserved, but recently, I suppose because the cameras have now been with us long enough that they are not "special," I've been noticing more of what I would call "artistic" efforts. Last week, for instance, one of our boys, normally engaged in the center of activity and typically, then, the subject of photos, spent a day on the sidelines, being intentional about his efforts. Watching him, it was like watching a professional at work, carefully capturing moments, arranging things, taking and re-taking the same or similar images. I even heard him ask a friend to move because, "You're blocking the light."

The photos illustrating this post are some of his work.

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