"There's No Evidence. There's No Evidence."

Something truly remarkable has happened, something for which I've hoped, even dreamed. A politician has spoken, at length, about education without once mentioning those mythical "jobs of tomorrow," "the Chinese are beating us," or, in fact, saying anything about how our children must be trained to make American great again through their toil in the economy. Not only that, but this is a major politician speaking against high stakes standardized testing, who is opposed to using those test scores to evaluate teachers, who is skeptical of charter schools, who favors increased funding for poor and special needs students, and who is calling for a reduction of competition between teachers, schools, and students.

It's like a miracle. And making matters even more confusing is that it was Hillary Clinton taking part in a roundtable discussion with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). It's confusing because, as a man who participates in the Democratic party's nominating process, I've been expecting to caucus for Bernie Sanders, albeit not because of his education policies (although I think that joining the rest of the civilized world in providing free college education is a good idea).

Of all the politicians I've heard speak, I've never heard any of them say this:

"I have for a very long time also been against the idea that you tie teacher evaluation and even teacher pay to test outcomes. There's no evidence. There's no evidence."

I've read that Clinton is good friends with the head of the AFT, Randi Weingarten. Could it be that she's managed to get a woman who could be President to actually look at the research? I don't want to sound sarcastic here, but it really seems like an incredible thing to me. For so long, politicians from both parties, and indeed, politicians from around the world, have spoken from ignorance about teaching and learning, especially when it comes to young children. It's almost shocking for one of them to look at the current state of affairs and say, as those of us in the profession have been saying for years, "There's no evidence."

Regarding the ever-growing scandal that are charter schools:

". . . (Charters) don't take the hardest-to-teach kids. And if they do, they don't keep them."

 And:

"There is also great examples of excellent public schools, and they should equally be held up as models . . . They (charters) should be supplementary, not a substitute, for what goes on."

This is in line with what the great Albert Shanker, a former head of the AFT, was envisioning when he first proposed the idea of charter schools back in 1988, a concept that has since been kidnapped and tortured by for-profit (both in name and in practice) charter chains and the public school privatization movement.

And finally, with regard to funding:

I'm going to do everything I can to raise the federal contribution. There are two big areas of federal funding that I feel strongly about. One is the special ed funding, and the other is the Title I funding, the equalization of funding for poor schools . . . Those were the earliest levels of commitment from the federal government, and we haven't really, in my view, fulfilled either one, and we've gotten diverted of into a lot of other stuff. And so, I think I would do what I can to try to provide more support.

Yes, this is a bit vague, but at it's core is an understanding, I hope, that the federal government, over the course of the Bush and Obama administrations, has overstepped it's traditional and Constitutional role in public education, usurping state and local control of our own schools, emphasizing standardization (the enemy of quality education), mandating a curriculum (Common Core; and it is a curriculum), and tying funding and teacher pay to high stakes testing.

I understand that this is a woman who is after my vote, so, like with any politician other than Bernie Sanders (which is a big part of his charm for me), I cannot completely trust that her actions will follow her words, especially since she is so closely tied by money and history with the very Wall Street types who are driving corporate-style education "reform" for profit. Still, I can't help but be excited about this truly remarkable development: a candidate who actually seems to have a nuanced understanding of what's at stake, what's going wrong, and what needs to change. It's not everything, but it's a start.

We know that Jeb Bush is completely in the tank for the corporate-style "reformers," but as far as I know the rest of the Presidential candidates still have the chance to show me they understand. I may not vote completely on education, but what candidates say will go a long way in helping me make up my mind.

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Hoisted On Their Own Petard

If you've read here for any time, you'll know that I put little stock in academic testing, and least of all the sort of high stakes standardized data collection tests so beloved by the corporate-style public education "reformers." Still, it's impossible, when presented with the opportunity to hoist these charlatans and dilettantes on their own petard, for me to refrain from doing so. From the Washington Post's Answer Sheet:

The 2015 scores for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are out, and the new isn't good for those who think standardized test scores tell us something significant about student achievement . . . (M)ath scores for fourth-graders and eighth-graders across the United States dropped this year, the first time since the federal government began administering the exams . . . Reading scores weren't much better.

Please don't think I'm gloating, because the damage these "reformers" have done to our schools, and through them our children, is real, but I'd always assumed that their focus on testing, testing, and more testing would, at least, produce a generation of kids who are better at taking tests. Clearly, I was wrong.

For the past 15 years, lead by education dilettante-in-chief and world's wealthiest man, Bill Gates, the children in our public schools have been guinea pigs in a cruel experiment, one that the experts (and by that I mean actual classroom teachers) warned would end like this. Through two Presidential administrations, we have watched, many of us horrified, as first No Child Left Behind, then Race to the Top, and now the Common Core national curriculum (and it is a curriculum despite what its advocates claim), have methodically sucked the joy out of learning for a generation of young Americans. In an ominous moment from a decade ago, one that should have set off alarm bells, Gates himself said, "They have to give us the opportunity for this experiment," one that he predicted would take a decade to show results, more or less admitting that the corporate education reformers have no idea what they are doing other than, I suppose, getting paid. And that, as always with these guys is the bottom line: from their perspective their experiments are working out just dandy because they are making billions.

And in case you still hold out some vestige of an idea that their "hearts were in the right place," please know that they didn't even take the time for a single field test of their ideas. Not one. Nor did they consult with teachers. They didn't need to because they were mostly businessmen and they knew that (quoting Gates again) "unleashing powerful market forces" on our children would reap profits. Education, learning, and what is best for children has always been, at best, a secondary motivation.

The Obama administration has recently called for a reduction in standardized testing and even the Gates Foundation itself has called for a moratorium on some aspects of testing, so our push back is working. Parents continue to opt their children out of these tests and states are dropping out of the the Common Core in ever increasing numbers. The media is finally starting to stick their noses under the tent. We have unwillingly given Bill Gates his ten years, and more, to experiment on our children and, as we predicted, it has been a failure even if measured by their own measuring stick.

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This Is Why I Despair

I suppose I should get these two quotes out of the way first:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.  ~MLK

And:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." ~Mister Rogers

Like millions of people before me, I share these quotes, as I have before, in the hope that people will see their wisdom, and turn to children to love and help them through their fear, but this morning I feel I'm doing it as a kind of pantomime, trotting them out there without any hope that we the people will listen.

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorists attacks in Paris, the great Charlie Pierce wrote a wail of despair on Esquire.com:

Something awful has happened in Paris. Out if it will be born something awful in the collective mind and the collective heart and the collective soul. I wish I weren't so sure of this, but the planet looks awfully black from up here, and it doesn't look any different if you close your eyes.

I share his despair. Firstly, for the terrorist acts themselves, and secondly for the near certainty that we will respond exactly as they want us to -- out of fear. There is no military solution to terrorism. We should have learned that by now, we should know that a military response will just create more angry, desperate recruits, but the chicken hawks are out in force, having learned nothing. Treating this like a war plays right into the terrorists' hands, dignifying them and making them stronger. I had hoped we had learned that lesson after the most recent fifteen years of futile, fearful war mongering, most of my daughter's life. Indeed, we have been at war for most of my life, most of every American's life, and there are more terrorists than ever.

But the sabers are already rattling, our elected representatives are calling it "an act of war," which is exactly what the terrorists want. It's much easier to recruit angry young men to your cause if it bears in imprimatur of something as nobel as war and the spiral will resume: they kill dozens of us, we kill hundreds of them, they kill hundreds of us, we kill thousands of them; almost all innocent, many children.

As David Wong wrote in his excellent Cracked piece in the aftermath of the last terrorist tragedy in Paris:

Whenever some notorious rapist is caught, exactly 100 percent of the conversations or Internet comment sections about the subject will say, "I hope he gets raped in prison!" . . . See, because that would "even the score." But even five seconds' consideration demonstrates how monstrous that idea is: "rape is awesome, as long as it's targeted toward people who deserve it!" No, the cruel reality is that if that guy gets raped, the score isn't Rapist 1, Society 1. It's: Rape 2, Society 0

And the same applies terrorism:

So the next time you turn on the news and see that terrorists have blown up 10 children with a car bomb . . .  Realize that the scoreboard lies. It will tell you that winning the game means dropping bombs that you know full well will splatter ten times as many children as collateral damage. The score -- the real score -- would then be: Violence Against Children 110, Humanity 0

This is where the war mongers step in with their mockery, "So what do you suggest? Inviting them in for tea and cookies?" That is an actual quote from this weekend. "I suppose you think we can make them stop with understanding and tolerance." This is why I despair, because this, I know, is the overriding attitude of we the people. It's the mentality of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and it's the mentality of the spanker, the one who persists in beating children even as he knows that with each swat, he is increasing the odds of that child resorting to violence himself, of behaving like a bully, of suffering depression, of becoming alcoholic, of struggling in relationships, in school, and in life in general. We should know that engaging in the barbarity of killing more of their children won't finally bring them around to disavowing their own barbarity, yet the only alternative we the people can see is that those channeling the voice of reason want to "let them off the hook" with the tea and cookies of understanding and tolerance.

This is why I despair.

There is a reason that these criminals are so easily able to recruit (mostly) young men to their insane "cause." I'm not an expert on the Middle East, but I've learned a little something about human beings over my half century and the only way you get people to commit atrocities like this is if they start off feeling sad/afraid/helpless. For young men in this state, these feelings are easily turned into rage at the world (young women tend to turn those feelings inward toward self-injury). When we declare a "war" we give them a noble cause -- these young men are responding to a call to arms. We make their leaders into great generals, we make their horrible acts into a kind of patriotism, we make their dead into martyrs.

The first thing we need to do is to stop the war rhetoric and treat their leaders as we do common criminals. Our goal should be to find them, arrest them -- not assassinate them, not torture them -- and make them stand trail. That is what civilized people do, transparently, according to rule of law. Let their prospective recruits see that we are nothing like the barbarians: we are fair even when we're angry, even when we're afraid. Show the convicts in shackles, sure, behind bars, pathetic, weak and alone, like common criminals, not war martyrs.

But more importantly, and what should be so obvious that I shouldn't even have to mention it, is that we must work to address the root problem, which I'm assuming is largely poverty (again, I'm no expert on the Middle East). If we reduce the desperation, we reduce the pool from which they can recruit. This is not about religion, it is about despair.

Of course, that's easier said than done. It requires turning to the only real solution we ever have to any human problem: talking and listening. This is what the war mongers mock as "understanding." But, of course, talking and listening does not mean being namby pamby: it just means trying to understand -- not necessarily agreeing -- just understanding. Nothing can be solved unless we first understand. The worst way is this knee jerk, blood-thirsty eye-for-an-eye crap, which, as Gandhi points out, "makes the whole world blind."

This morning, I'm more convinced than ever that this is the only way forward and I'm equally convinced that we the people will not even attempt the first step along that path.

I will be in the street, driven by my despair, to protest this new war; it's the only way I know how to be a helper. Look for me.


Update: Since I wrote this post, Charlie Pierce has had some time to reflect and his newest piece lays the blame, and finds a part of the solution, right where blame and solutions often lie: the bankers, states, and conservative oligarchs who bankroll groups like ISIS. It's not about religion, it's about how the Middle Eastern elites retain power.

It's time to be pitiless against the bankers and against the people who invest in murder to assure their own survival in power. Assets from these states should be frozen, all over the west. Money trails should be followed, wherever they lead. People should go to jail, in every country in the world.

And I will add, their wealth should be confiscated and used to help the poor in their own countries, salting the fields from which terrorists seek their harvest.

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That Future Child Does Not Exist

I have spent my adult life trying to figure out why parents and society put themselves into a race -- what's the hurry? I keep trying to convey the pleasure every parent and teacher could feel while observing, appreciating and enjoying what the infant is doing. This attitude would change our educational climate from worry to joy. ~Magda Gerber

It seems to me that the greatest gift we can give to other people is to let them know we love them just as they are. That we've all heard this before in some version or other makes it no less profound and no less precious.

I think that's what we do when we simply let ourselves be with young children, without that sense of possession or protectiveness or responsibility that too often attends our interactions. It's in those moments of two humans simply being together that we convey this vital knowledge of unwavering love to even the youngest children, who themselves are then permitted to be, without the obligations that come with being possessed, protected, or a responsibility.

I'm grateful to such blog-o-sphere guides as Janet Lansbury and Lisa Sunbury who continue to educate me about the ideas of Magda Gerber, and it's this idea of sincerely and carefully observing (what I think I have previously understood incompletely as "waiting") that resonates the most with me. But this observation is an essentially academic act, I think, without our own appreciation and joy in what the infant is doing or what we are doing together. Not only do we ourselves come to a deeper understanding of the child, but it's only through this heartfelt appreciation and joy that we actually convey to children the unconditional love that is our gift.

It may seem strange, I suppose, for many of us to understand that we, at best, stand on the planet as equals with all the other people, including young children. We are each fully formed, fully valid, fully functional human beings no matter our age. Naturally, we have different lots in life, different blessings and challenges, and are on our way to different places, but we always remain, most of all, worthy of being loved for being exactly who we are.

Parents and teachers traditionally see our role as helpers, instructors or guides; agents for moving young children through the world from point A to point B along their developmental track, ticking off milestones in baby books or report cards like we might a shopping list, taking pride in each "accomplishment." We can't help but look ahead, to anticipating the next destination, worrying about the next bumpy patch, feeling guilty about our failings when we lose our way or fall behind schedule. It makes us impatient, lead-footed, prone to live outside the present moment as we move relentlessly toward a future. We forget to just be with our children as they are right now. That future child does not exist: this is the real child, the one before you right now, and she is perfect.

We are, in fact, at our best when we manage to successfully override those urges to help, instruct, or otherwise guide a young person and instead give him the space and time to struggle, to practice, to come to his own conclusions. This, not our superior experience or intellect, is the great gift we have to give to children: to stop, to really see who they are right now, and be with them in appreciation and joy, loving them just as they are.

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The Three Little Pigs

"Everybody knows the story of the Three Little Pigs. Or at least they think they do." That's how Alexander T. Wolf starts off his first person narrative of Jon Scieszka's The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!

For the past several years I've picked a fight with our 4-5 year olds about the classic fable, usually by telling it the way I learned it, with the silly pigs who built their houses of straw and sticks being eaten by the big bad wolf. The wolf, in turn, is eaten by the smarter brick house pig when he tries to climb down the chimney and falls into the soup pot. The children have heard tidier versions and shout out at me that the pigs and the wolf are not eaten, but rather escape and go away hungry, respectively. I argue, as I would with you, that it doesn't make sense for the pigs to get away because it's a fable, and fables are for teaching lessons, and the lesson is that you get eaten if you are foolish enough to build flimsy houses; and the wolf has to be eaten because he's "big and bad." I sway some of the kids, but others are steadfast in their versions, insisting, for instance, that "I've seen the movie!" or, once at least, "Pigs aren't meat eaters."

I love discussing art and literature, even Faulkner, with children. 

Once we get to the point of conceding that we'll just have to agree to disagree, I present them with The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!  I emphasize the "true" part of the title. This year, when we finished reading the wolf's version, an untrustworthy narrator's account with lots of pleas of innocence of motive even while confirming the fundamental facts of the story, some of the children agreed that this sounded like what probably happened while others disagreed. One child, being both diplomatically and philosophically correct, suggested that maybe both stories were true, shrugging and saying, "All wolves eat pigs." There was opposition to this point of view in the form of, "Wolves can just eat dog food."

The following day, I reminded the children of our discussion, then said, "I just found the real story of the Three Little Pigs!" presenting them with Eugene Trivizas' The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. There was a great deal of shouting as several of them either owned it or had read it. At our Halloween party during which I'd had a moment of having to quiet 100 or so kids over a book, Devrim's older sister Meyra, an alumni now in first grade, told me that her teacher had taught them to do silent twinkle fingers when they wanted to let everyone know they either owned or had read a particular book. I told the kids this story and we decided we would try it. I thought, Yes!

"One day the mother called the three little wolves around her and said, 'My children, it is time for you to go out into the world . . .'"

Few kids felt that this was the "true" story, although many declared it their "favorite," citing the pneumatic drill (jack hammer) and dynamite, specifically. This really is a fantastic twist on the traditional story that ends where the classic begins, with a flimsy house of flowers being the best one of all. I mentioned that "everything in this story is the opposite" of the original story, but no one took the bait. I suggested a few other avenues of discussion, but we mostly wanted to talk about the dynamite and the fact that we either owned or had already read this book. In a different year, the focus was on the chains, padlocks and steel plates.

Then I said, "Now I want to read you the real, true, extra real, true story of the Three Little Pigs. It's so true it's just called, The Three Pigs." This one is a challenging read aloud book in that it is a surreal take on not only this fable, but literature in general, with the characters leaving the story, including breaking the fourth wall, to travel through nursery rhymes and legends, ultimately arriving back home with a dragon buddy who intimidates the wolf.

"Once upon a time there were three pigs who went out into the world to seek their fortune . . ."

At the end, a parent-teacher, clearly impressed by the book, said, "What a crazy story!"

Our discussion revolved around what a crazy story it is.

Then, I said, "If you're looking for ideas for stories to write in your journals, maybe you'll want to write the actual true story of the Three Little Pigs."

Two girls took me up on it. I'm sorry, but I've not included the illustrations.

This is the true story of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. Once upon a time there was three little pigs. The mama said one day they have to go off on their own and she said to be careful of the big bad wolf. This is a true story. This is the mommy pig (illustration). She said the little pigs truly, truly, truly had to go off on their own. And the big bad wolf was hunting and hunting and hunting and he found the pig's house. And he huffed and he puffed and he couldn't get the house down and he didn't know what to do. So he had to get a drill, but he didn't have a drill. So he asked for one from the pigs, but they didn't give him one and they put him in jail. The big bad wolf was looking for another pig and he found one in another house. This is the big bad wolf again (illustration).

And the second one:

The first little pig built his house out of bricks. He asked a flamingo if he could have some bricks and he said, "Yes!" And the second little pig asked a polar bear if he could have some hay and the polar bear said, "Yes!" The very last pig made his house out of sticks. He asked a kitty if he could have some sticks and the kitty said, "Yes!" And the mommy pig was happy because she did not have to take care of her children pigs anymore. They had built their own houses.

As historian and social critic Arthur Schlesinger wrote, "(Fairy tales) tell children what they unconsciously know -- that human nature is not innately good, that conflict is real, that life is harsh before it is happy -- and thereby reassure them about their own fears and their own sense of self."

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Eleven Things To Say Instead Of "Be Careful"

In yesterday's post, I riffed on what is popularly called "risky play," what author and consultant Arthur Battram argues we should call "challenging play," what I want to re-label "safety play," and what one reader pointed out used to just be called "play."

Whatever we call it, readers overwhelmingly responded favorably to the notion that we need to give children more space to engage in their self-selected pursuits, even if they sometimes make us adults nervous, while at the same time expressing dismay at how difficult it is to break the habit of constantly cautioning them with "be careful." As I wrote yesterday:

Adult warnings to "be careful" are redundant at best and, at worst, become focal points for rebellion (which, in turn, can lead to truly hazardous behavior) or a sense that the world is full of unperceived dangers that only the all-knowing adults can see (which, in turn, can lead to the sort of unspecified anxiety we see so much of these days). Every time we say "be careful" we express, quite clearly, our lack of faith in our children's judgement, which too often becomes the foundation of self-doubt.

A couple readers asked about alternatives, such as saying, "pay attention to your body." For me, "pay attention" has the same flaws as "be careful." They are commands that give children only two choices -- obey or disobey. On top of that, they are both quite vague. Better, I think, are simple statements of fact that allow children to think for themselves; information that supports them in performing their own risk assessment. This reminds me of the "good job" or "well done" habit many of us adults have acquired, in that we know we ought not do it, but can't help ourselves. So, in the spirit in which I offered suggestions for things we can say instead of "good job",  here are some idea for things to say instead of "be careful."

"That's a skinny branch. If it breaks you'll fall on the concrete."

"I'm going to move away from you guys. I don't want to get poked in the eye."

"That would be a long way to fall."

"When people are swinging high, they can't stop themselves and might hit you."

"That looks like it might fall down."

"Tools are very powerful. They can hurt people."

"I always check to make sure things are stable before I walk on them."

"Sometimes ladders tip over."

"You're all crowded together up there. It would be a long way to fall if someone got pushed."

"When you fall on people, it might hurt them."

"You are testing those planks before you walk on them."

"That's a steep hill. I wonder how you're going to steer that thing."

UPDATE: 

One of my most important mentors, Tom Drummond, kindly chimed in on Facebook with a few suggestions of his own . . .

"You've got strong hands."

"I saw you pause to think about that first."

"You did it."

"Masterful."

"Last year you couldn't manage to do that."

"It's amazing how much control you have over your body."

"Both dancers and rock climbers know balance is in the center of their bodies."

"It's called having a strong core."

"Two years ago a child was hurt when he forgot to look at what others were doing up where you are, so it's not just about you."

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Safety Play

Yesterday's post included a set of photos of a boy playing around under the swings as a classmate was swinging. It wasn't a particularly risky activity in my view. I mean, I was standing right there, taking pictures, discussing it with him, and it didn't set off any alarm bells for me in the moment, although after the fact, while going through them, it occurred to me that it was something that would be scuttled in other settings. My lack of concern probably stems from the fact that it's far from the first time this sort of thing has happened:

In fact, I think what caught my attention about it was that it was the first time I'd seen a kid do more than just lie there giggling. Of course, many schools have removed their swings altogether, so maybe the very existence of swings is shocking to some. 

I imagine that in some dystopian future we'll become notorious for being the only school left with a swing set, let alone for not having a set of rules about how the kids can use them. That's because, in our five years with swings, since our move to the Center of the Universe, we've not found a need for safety rules, because the kids, the ones that live in the world outside our catastrophic imaginations, haven't shown a particular propensity to hurt themselves or one another.

Oh sure they get hurt like all kids do, like all people, but most of the injuries don't come from what people call "risky play," but rather from day-to-day activities, things you would think children had mastered. For instance, the worst injury we've seen during my 15 year tenure at Woodland Park came when a boy fell on his chin while walking on a flat, dry, linoleum floor. He needed a couple stitches. Another boy wound up with stitches when he fell while walking in the sandpit. 

Increasingly, I find myself bristling when I hear folks talk about "risky play," even when it's framed positively. From my experience, this sort of play is objectively not risky, in the sense that those activities like swinging or climbing or playing with long sticks, those things that tend to wear the label of "risky" are more properly viewed as "safety play," because that's exactly what the kids are doing: practicing keeping themselves and others safe. It's almost as if they are engaging in their own, self-correcting safety drills.

When a group of four and five year olds load up the pallet swing with junk, then work together to wind it up higher and higher, then, on the count of three, let it go, ducking away as they do it, creating distance between themselves and this rapidly spinning flat of wood that they've learned is libel to release it's contents in random directions, they are practicing keeping themselves and others safe. They don't need adults there telling them to "be careful" or to impose rules based on our fears because those things are so manifestly necessary to this sort of thing that they are an unspoken part of the play.

When children pick up long sticks and start employing them as light sabers, swinging them at one another, they are practicing keeping themselves and others safe. The safety is built into it.

When children wrestle they are practicing caring for themselves and their friends.

When preschoolers are provided with carving tools and a pumpkin they automatically include their own safety and that of others into their play. Adult warnings to "be careful" are redundant at best and, at worst, become focal points for rebellion (which, in turn, can lead to truly risky behavior) or a sense that the world is full of unperceived dangers that only the all-knowing adults can see (which, in turn, can lead to the sort of unspecified anxiety we see so much of these days). Every time we say "be careful" we express, quite clearly, our lack of faith in our children's judgement, which too often becomes the foundation of self-doubt.

The truth is that they already are being careful. The instinct for self-preservation is quite strong in humans. It's a pity that we feel we must teach them to live within our catastrophic imaginations.

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