Trying To Learn About Freedom

It's been over six years now since our family unloaded most of our stuff, including our large house on its large plot of land. We didn't do it all at once, as one might imagine. It took us nearly a year, with countless trips to the dump, donations to Goodwill, and Craig's List sales, just to get our stuff down to a light enough load that we would even consider moving. And then there was still a year after the move where we continued to sort through our storage locker, the largest unit they had, going down three locker sizes over the course of the next 12 months. There are still a few pieces of furniture in there that really ought to be sent along to more useful lives, but the motivation isn't there since we're now down to the least expensive space they rent.

It wasn't always easy, especially as some of the stuff of which we rid ourselves had been with us a long time, decades in many cases, even since childhood. I literally said, "Goodbye," to some of the things, but as melancholy as the process sometimes left me, there is nothing like the feeling of lightness, of freedom, that comes from getting rid of stuff.

A year ago, we got a new dog, a puppy, a sweet girl that was named Stella by my three-year-old friend Brogan. If I thought I'd grown less attached to stuff over the past few years, Stella let me see that I'm still unhealthily attached to it, as she's finished tearing a hole in our living room rug that was started years ago by a former pet, shredded a pillow, and gnawed holes in the seat cushions of two dining chairs.

I said to my wife, a joke backed by despair, "She's destroying the last few sticks of things we own!"

It reminds me of something from Stephen and Ondrea Levine's book, Who Dies?

You see this goblet? For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it. I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over, or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, "Of course." When I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious. Every moment is just what it is, and nothing need be otherwise.

For the better part of six years, I've been trying to move in the direction of this kind of enlightenment, one of which I sometimes remind myself with the short-hand of "easy come, easy go," but the advent of Stella has shown me that stuff still has a hold on me. Perhaps it doesn't own me to the degree it once did, but I still experienced a small heartbreak when I came home to find the floor covered in the stuffing that once plumped our pillow, even if I intellectually knew it had always been torn to shreds.

For the past several years, I've been reading a book to the children by John Muth, entitled Zen Shorts. One of the fables features a bear who awakes to find a raccoon burglar in his home. Instead of reacting with fear or anger, the bear is sad that he owns nothing of value for the raccoon to take with him, so he gives him the old, tattered robe off his back. I may never get there, but it's a goal toward which my soul yearns.

I've scolded Stella when I've caught her destroying one of our possessions, just as we might scold children who are ripping pages from a book or using a marker to draw on the car seat. We want them to understand the value of things, of stuff, how it costs money, how it is scarce, how it is precious and must be preserved. But when I'm traveling like I am right now, my world of stuff reduced to only what my backpack can hold, I wonder why it is that we habitually attempt to teach our children those dubious lessons about stuff, while ignoring the far greater one they are attempting to teach us about freedom. 

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A New Understanding Of Phobias

The difference between your phobias and mine is that mine make sense.

I've always assumed that there were two kinds of irrational fears, the first being the kind that we learn in childhood, often through trauma. The second are those that have emerged through the process of evolution: it makes sense that the early humans with the capacity to learn a healthy aversion to, say, snakes would be less likely to be bitten by poisonous ones and would therefore be more likely to survive to pass on a tendency toward that specific caution through their genes. I could never quite wrap my brain around that explanation, however, and so assumed that most phobias were either the result of trauma, teaching/role modeling by loved ones, or, perhaps simply a hyperactive tendency toward caution.

So I found this fascinating:

Memories can be passed down to later generations through genetic switches that allow offspring to inherit the experience of their ancestors, according to new research that may explain how phobias can develop.

It seems that researchers at the Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta have managed to create a generation of lab rats with an irrational fear of the scent of cherry blossoms by associating the fragrance with a stressful experience in a previous generation. The brains of the trained mice as well as their offspring showed actual structural changes which caused all subsequent generations to share their cherry blossom aversion.

Rats are not humans, of course, but the implications are fascinating. I've often wondered about the phobias of the children I teach. I once taught a boy who had an irrational fear of pinecones and it was a dark, dark day when he finally looked up into the branches of the pine tree on our playground. I was sure his parents had done nothing to "cause" that particular phobia. Another boy became hysterical whenever we sang the "Happy Birthday" song. He was fine with all other songs, but that one put him over the edge. When our daughter Josephine was an infant we lived within a block of the Pike Place Public Market where I would take her nearly every day, often stopping in front of a tank of Dungeness crabs where I figured she would be entertained while I had a cup of coffee. When she later developed such a full-on crab phobia that we had to take special routes through the supermarket to avoid passing them, I figured it was all my fault, but this morning I'm telling myself that the blame really belongs to a traumatized ancestor.

For the most part, this falls into the category of information that is interesting, but not particularly useful. I have always taken children's seemingly irrational fears seriously (even while I'll admit to  having sometimes teased adults), because the fear is clearly real, even if I don't share it. The source of that fear is immaterial. But it is still a compelling idea.

Perhaps more interesting, however, is the question: If phobias can be inherited in this multi-generational way, what other of our brain changing experiences, positive or negative, do we pass on to our children and their children? Fascinating.

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Pursuing Their Passions

I don't own a television, or rather, the television we do own has been living in the back of a closet for six years, which means I should have a very nice, hardly used set for sale. If I were home, however, instead of traveling in Australia for five weeks, I might have been tempted to turn it on to watch the Olympics. I like this every four year ritual (ignoring its social and economic challenges) of the world's nations coming together for this festival of athletics and unity. And I am particularly fond of seeing the world class athletes compete in sports I don't normally get to see.

One nice thing about traveling right now is I've been able to switch on my hotel room TV each night to watch badminton or rowing or cycling or equestrian events, all of which show me a glimpse of world class hard work and dedication of which I was previously ignorant. When I sit down to dine alone in a restaurant, I tend to chose one where I can do so in the company of those table tennis players and divers and kayakers and water polo players who have worked their entire lives for this moment. For a brief time, I feel that I become enough of an expert on their endeavors to become a fan, to root for this or that athlete or team. And because I'm not watching on American soil I'm free from the jingoistic coverage that focuses all the time on "U-S-A! U-S-A!" which frees me to really enjoy the individual and team effort regardless of the color of the uniforms.

I am particularly a fan of women's athletics. I always have been. In fact, the photo at the top of this post is of the cap I brought with me on my travels: a souvenir leftover from the days of the Seattle Reign, a member of the old ABL, the professional women's basketball league that pre-dated and proved the concept for today's WNBA, a league that was, incidentally, owned by the players themselves. I can't really explain it, but I find myself more inspired by watching women compete at a high level. It's a prejudice, I know, but it just feels like there is something more "pure" about it. Being in Australia, I've seen a lot of rugby over the last few weeks, but I've been absolutely thrilled by the speed and athleticism of the women's game (a version called 7's). The US women's gymnastics team has been stunning; Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hozzu dominating; and I was genuinely moved by the Egyptian beach volleyball team showing up with their arms and legs covered, and wearing hijabs instead of those skimpy two-piece suits in honor of their religion.

And I've been watching the Olympics with the sound off. I don't need the commentary because even while I don't always understand everything I'm watching, I'm tired of hearing the sexism. I don't need to hear about the physical appearance of these accomplished, powerful women. I don't need to hear a man (and its mostly men, although women do it too) categorize their emotions into tidy feminine boxes. I don't need to hear these female athletes being compared to better known male athletes. If these women are an inspiration to me, I can't even imagine how much of an inspiration they are to girls around the world, but it's simply wrong that so much of what is said and written about them undermines what makes them great. 

To be honest, I think that's what appeals to me the most about women's athletics. Sure, I enjoy the sport, the power, the speed, the skill, and the strategy, but most of all I think of all those little girls who are watching along with me, and planning for their own futures as women pursuing their passions. We just need to turn off the sound and let them do their own thinking about what it means.

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Obedience, Duty, Loyalty

In case you haven't picked up on it over my past few posts, I'm not a fan of the idea of obedience. As Utah Phillips sang, "I will not obey." He also sang, "I was always willing to agree." I think this is the proper and natural stance of human beings in the world.

As I'm traveling around Australia, I've been talking about the concept of obedience. It's one that for many is an "of course" when it comes to children. Of course, children must learn to obey adults. Of course, they must learn to mind their elders. Of course, it is the duty of children to do as they're told.

The problem is that we all know that the things that we learn in childhood are the things we know as adults. And in adulthood, obedience is a dangerous thing. Obedient people are those who look to others to do their thinking for them, and because they don't think for themselves they are more easily lead astray. Every atrocity ever committed on the face of this planet was done by people who were simply following orders, obeying, doing their duty, being loyal.

I usually ask the people who have come out to hear me speak if they know any obedient adults. The answer is usually "no." But I think that's because in adulthood we call it "duty" or "loyalty," fine sounding attributes that hide the potential for doing the most awful things. Most often we think of soldiers or even police officers, but there are plenty of businesspeople out there committing heinous acts out of loyalty to their "stock holders," or lawyers who cause greater injustice in the name "doing my duty to my client." And naturally, we all know adults who insist upon the obedience of others, those authoritarian "daddy" types who, I'm certain, were expected to obey when they were young and are now turning the tables because that's the only world they know: someone must be obeyed and now it's their turn.

From where I sit, obedient people, or those who insist upon obedience, are broken people, humans who have never learned the lessons of equity, cooperation, and agreement that we seek to foster at the Woodland Park Cooperative School.

I assure you that whenever you hear a call for obedience, duty or loyalty you are being asked to do something that is not in the best interest of you or others. Say to them, "I will not obey, but I (am) always willing to agree," then listen and work with all your integrity to come to that agreement.

"Agreement is sacred." I've shared this before and I'll probably share it again

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The Path Of A Moral Education

My father-in-law, now deceased, was a brilliant, thoughtful man, a well-read university professor who liked to challenge himself and others with the ideas he found in books. He was the one who introduced me to the two great English philosophers of the 18th century, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, thinkers who bookended the 1700's with their opposing concepts of the nature of man. First there was Hobbes who started from the proposition that man is essentially evil and that without the strong controlling hand of institutions like governments, church, and schools, life would be "nasty, brutish, and short." Decades later Locke entered the fray with the idea that man is essentially good and that the purpose of institutions was not to control, but rather help us achieve our highest potential.

The founders of American democracy, the first modern democratic nation, were heavily influenced by Locke, and those of us who work as play-based educators are part of that same tradition. We are here not to control our charges, but rather to support them as they strive to make sense of the world. That said, it's impossible to not see the influence of Hobbes everywhere we turn, from the behavior of governments to the scourge of spanking and the oxymoronic concept of "tough love."

Most modern psychologists have settled on the idea that humans are born neither "evil" or "good," but rather blank slates and that their behaviors and beliefs, wether "evil" or "good," are a result of their environments. In other words, their morality is learned behavior.

Scientists now are challenging that idea:

A 2007 study by Yale University's Paul Bloom . . . and Karen Wynn, as well as J. Kiley Hamlin from the University of British Columbia, shows that six- and ten-month old babies can assess individuals based on their behaviour towards others. The trio presented babies with scenes involving shapes that represent both "helper" and "hinderer" characters. When asked to point at or touch the character they liked best, in an overwhelming number of scenarios, the babies almost always chose the "good guy." . . . In 2010, Bloom's research also proved that babies as young as three months old can make moral judgements about right and wrong.

This rings true for me, as I'm sure it will for anyone who plays with children for a living. This isn't to say that there isn't a lot of learning (both pro-social and anti-social) that ultimately goes into moral development, but it does strongly support the bedrock principles of our Locke-ian educational and democratic pursuits.

I would say that most of the children I teach don't come from strongly religious families, yet I've found in all of them, nevertheless, a strong sense of morality. Time and again, when not subjected to the distorting pressures of artificial competition, punishment/rewards, or the expectation of obedience, children almost always err on the side of fairness, compassion, and empathy. Oh sure, they squabble over toys and whatnot, and sometimes resort to force, even physical violence, to get their way in the heat of the moment, but with calmer heads (either once the emotions have died down, or those of outside observers) these "good" traits are always win out. The children can all always eventually demonstrate that they, without lectures from me, understand the difference between right and wrong.

The children in our school make their own rules, agreements about how we want to treat one another. Year after year we find what is often called the Golden Rule, like a biological imperative, woven through them. As the King James version of the Bible puts it, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," an idea that underpins all the major religions. But the children sometimes go even farther than that, removing themselves from this tit-for-tat equation, often agreeing to simply do no harm to others, without any consideration for themselves.

This is pure good and these fundamental moral concepts form the core of how our species has not just survived, but thrived. The degree to which humans grow to be "evil," therefore, is the degree to which we've taught evil, either overtly as in the case of teaching racism, or through our own behaviors as in the case of day-to-day selfishness. From where I sit, the greatest teachers of evil are the notions of competition and the idea that those with greater power can command obedience through punishments and rewards. It is from this soil that evil grows.

The path of a moral education is not a straight or smooth one, of course. Even as we're born with essential "goodness," there are conflicts and challenges and as natural scientists children must explore the full range of human potential though their play, some of which, if engaged in by adults, we might place into the category of "evil." But with children we must view that behavior as experiment, as part of the process of learning to follow their own inner light which, if we don't pervert it, will naturally shine on what is best about humanity: compassion and fairness.

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"Jobs Of Tomorrow"

I graduated in high school in 1980, nearly a decade before the internet even existed. Yesterday, marked the 25th anniversary of the first website, a text only page with instructions on how the world wide web worked, with links to documents detailing, among other things, how to set up your own server. Today, of course, the internet is pervasive, but even when my own daughter was born in 1996, we were only just beginning to realize how significant it might become.

On the one hand, I want our elected leaders, our representatives, to talk about education, yet whenever they do, from whatever party, from whatever nation on earth, I find myself grinding my teeth and wishing they would just shut up. The world over, if there is a single issue upon which all our politicians agree it's on being dead wrong about education. Everyone of them seems to believe that the primary reason we educate children is to prepare them for those "jobs of tomorrow." We must get them "college and career ready." Indeed, it is vital to our nation's survival that we "out educated the Chinese" (an actual Barack Obama quote).

Education is about much more than mere job training, but even if it was only about teaching kids how to earn a greasy buck, those guys have no way of knowing what those jobs of tomorrow will be. None of us does. We can guess, but we would be wrong because whatever the next big thing is going to be, it hasn't yet been invented. I guarantee that my high school guidance counselor knew nothing about computers, let alone the internet. Yet our "leaders" keep insisting that teachers, even those of us teaching preschoolers, are responsible for preparing children for an unknowable job of tomorrow. What they mean, of course, are the jobs of today, the jobs of rote and drudgery that no one wants to do, so we double down on the drill-and-kill of getting kids ready for jobs that simply won't exist when they are ready to enter the workforce.

All photos in this post courtesy of the Woodland Park Cooperative School's jobs of tomorrow training program

The proper career aspiration for a preschooler is, and always has been, "princess" or "cowboy." And the role of education in a democracy is, and always has been, to prepare children to take on their full roles as self governing citizens; adults who are sociable and cooperative, with the creativity and critical thinking and skills required to adapt to whatever the future brings. The only way to assure that is to allow them to pursue their own passions and interests through their self-directed play. If our children have that, then the future, for all of us, will take care of itself.

When we talk of the "jobs of tomorrow" we are always blowing smoke because you and I have no say in it. The jobs of tomorrow will be created not by us, but rather by the children we are teaching today. They are the ones who will be inventing whatever it is that will be, a quarter of a century from now, the next internet. The only thing we do know about those jobs is that we know nothing at all. Meanwhile, it's our job to keep them safe, let them play, and get the hell out of their way.

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Greatness

There comes a time during every school year, often just before Spring break, but it can happen any time, that I find myself in a kind of doldrums, a spell during which I fear we've already done everything there is to be done, that I've already trotted out all my best material. Oh sure, there's always spring itself with its flowers, seed planting, the return of insects and the like, and yes, I always have the kids upon whose interests and passions any self-respecting teacher in a play-based curriculum relies to lead him. And I know it's a personal problem, one of being a man who's been circling the sun for over a half century. I mean, it's not a problem for the kids to be building with the unit blocks yet again. They're perfectly contented, even excited, by the prospect of making another painting at an easel. Playing with water still holds the same fascination for these 3-year-olds as it did for the 3-year-olds last year and the year before.

It's not that I'm bored, it's rather that I somehow worry, because I'm not a child, that the children will be bored, that they'll arrive in the classroom and sigh in unconscious judgement of me, "Not this again!" But you know what? It's never happened.  Not once has a child arrived at school to express the kind of world weariness that all too often plagues adulthood. This is the greatness of children.

It's this that drives me to rail like I do against the rising tide of rote and routine that so-called education reformers seek to foist upon childhood. This is why I stand against the testers and standardizers, the prophets of rote, the businessmen who want to make a business of growing up. We spend most of our lives, frankly, fighting against the the deadness of routine, against the tedium of commutes and meetings and schedules and doing things we really hate doing. Children are not made for this. Hell, none of us are made for this, yet "for their own good," these fun-stealers are committing their time and treasure to robbing all of us of springtime.

I don't know how other teachers are doing it, administering those tests created in meeting rooms by people who spend their days in front of computers, teaching from textbooks published according to the mandates of the hidebound Texas board of education, being helpless as another half hour of recess is being cut from their day. The kids may not be bored with it yet, of course, because of their greatness, but mark my words, we'll make cynical old farts of them by middle school. Middle schoolers do sigh, "Not this again!" the cry of those who once knew what it meant to be great.

I will not be party to squashing greatness. On the contrary, I'm here to bask in it, to be inspired by it. To learn again how to play, for instance, with some pieces of cardboard that one of our parents couldn't bring herself to throw away. Thank god for her and for the children who know how to be alive. It's here that creativity, indeed our humanity, comes into full bloom. It's from this soil that greatness sprouts.

When I hit the doldrums, I proudly and selfishly count on the children to show me how to live again.

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Some Reflections From The Road

I'm not by nature a happy traveler, yet here I find myself in the midst of a five week barnstorming tour of Australia that has taken me all over Queensland and New South Wales and will take me next to both South and Western Australia in the coming weeks. Since the middle of last month, I've rarely slept two nights in the same bed. I've traveled by plane, train and automobile. I've literally slept in pubs, chapels, a child's play room, and tomorrow night I'm apparently bedding down in a mansion.

I actually got to sleep for two nights in this chapel, where I also presented workshops.

This is the third time I've been Down Under in the past four years and at every stop I find educators and parents who, shockingly, have come to hear this preschool teacher from Seattle speak. I'm in equal measures flattered and inspired by these grown-up people who come together wherever I go in the interest of making the lives of young children better. I talk about play mostly, sharing some of the things I've learned over the two decades I've now spent working with young children on a daily basis, doing a job I'm finally starting to really understand. And like happens with the children I supposedly teach, I feel that I'm learning far more from the incredible people who come to hear me than they can possibly learn from me.

My bedroom was behind that door to the left of the alter.

It might sound like false modesty, but I assure you it's not. Everyone I meet knows more than me. Everyone I meet is more accomplished than me, at least when it comes to their schools, their communities, and their way of working with children.

I've been forced to reflect on why it is that I get to do things like this, even as an unhappy traveler. In the past few years, I've been invited to speak in my own country as well as Greece, Iceland, England, China, New Zealand, and right across Canada.

That's the wonderful Prue Walsh presenting at the Village Ways conference at the Dusty Hill Winery. I had to follow her! Yikes!

Of course, the fact that I've become an obsessive daily blog post writer is the biggest thing. I stand out, I think, by virtue of having published at least five posts a week since 2009. In fact, there were two years in there (2011 and 2012) during which I wrote 363 posts, taking only Christmas morning and New Year's Day off. I've since cut back to only around 260 posts a year, but it's still a lot and people have noticed. So, one of the secrets to my blogging "success" had been sheer volume.

As far as content, I'm all over the place, I think, although for the most part I'm writing about play and the politics of education, subjects that appear to be universal. Prior to becoming a parent I spent 15 years as a freelance writer. I expect that has contributed as well.

Mangroves

I think people appreciate that I'm not an ivory tower academic or pundit, but rather, like most of my readers, a classroom teacher and parent who is just trying to figure this thing out as I go along. Folks have asked me if I would ever consider hitting the road full time. Absolutely not. The classroom is where I belong. If I had to give up one or the other it would be the traveling.

Then there is the gray beard. From the time I was a teenager I was interested in the cache that gray gives a man, even once going so far as to inquire at a local drug store after gray hair dye. The sweet clerk, laughed as she said, "Oh honey, they don't make gray hair dye. No one would buy that."

A tableau from Aussie World

And finally, we come to the uncomfortable truth that I am a middle aged white male in a profession dominated by young women. I would be an ass to not acknowledge the boost that this accident of my birth and longevity has given me.

I'm about halfway done with the trip. I've seen old friends and made new ones. I've had experiences and collected stories to tell when I get home, like when the reception clerk asked me, "What kind of accent is that?" When I answered, "American," she replied, "I thought so, but I didn't want to insult you." I'm by turns exhausted and fired up. I arose this morning at 4 a.m. to get this posted, then catch a shuttle to the airport. I can't wait to find out what this day will bring even as I'm dreading my time on the road.

Macadamia orchard on a sunny day.

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Democracy And Education

As part of a conference at which I was presenting in the state of Queensland here in Australia, I had the opportunity to visit what is called the Ration Shed Museum in the town of Cherbourg, the site of an aboriginal reservation that was created by the 1904 "Aboriginal Protection Act." Tribes from all over Queensland and New South Wales were forcibly re-located here, and as European colonists did wherever they went, they took it upon themselves to control every aspect of the lives of these formerly free people.

Matthew, our aboriginal guide, went to great lengths to emphasize that there was no intent to place blame or to make anyone feel ashamed, but as a man of European heritage in the company of citizens of Ireland and South Africa, also of European backgrounds, it was impossible to not feel at least some sense of shame if only on behalf of our ancestors.

As we watched a video detailing the history of the place, we learned about the schools that were established for the education of these "primitive" people, schools chartered to teach children about keeping their noses to the grindstone, obedience, and a very narrow range of vocational skills. It was impossible to not see parallels with the current state of education in America and around the world. After several decades of trending in the direction of truly democratic education over the course of the 20th century we have now seen a sudden shift over the past twenty years in the direction of those aboriginal schools. Oh sure, we don't say it aloud anymore, but it's clear that those who designed such disasters as No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Common Core federal curriculum are seeking to create the modern day versions of obedient domestic workers and field hands.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the great John Dewey's seminal work Democracy and Education (this links to a long, fantastic article I urged you to read):

Did you attend a public school in the United States and perform in a school play, take field trips, or compete on a sports team? Did you have a favourite teacher who designed their own curriculum, say, about the Civil War, or helped you find your particular passions and interests? Did you take classes that were not academic per se but that still opened your eyes to different aspects of human experience such as fixing cars? Did you do projects that required planning and creativity? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you are the beneficiary of John Dewey's pedagogical revolution.

Today, we are facing the same sort of pushback against democratic education that John Dewey faced back at the turn of the last century. They claim they are only doing what is best for the poor "primitives," and perhaps they believe they are, but at what cost? The battle lines continue to be drawn between those of us who believe that the purpose of public education is to create citizens with the critical thinking and creative skills to take part in the great national project of self-governance and those who would use schools to turn children into malleable worker bees. While Dewey's ideas shaped the schools we attended, the so-called education "reformers" are shaping the schools of our children, something that if left unchecked will result in the end of our nation.

You think I'm exaggerating? Do you honestly think a man as demagogic and autocratic as Donald Trump would have had a prayer during your own childhood? Of course not. Our parents and grandparents no matter what their political leanings would have chased him out of the building with pitchforks. Trump is the result of this anti-intellectualism and the intentional dumbing down of America; not the intended result, of course, but an accident that could easily have been predicted.

The skills and habits of citizenship (critical thinking, questioning authority, living a well-rounded life not always tethered to the almighty dollar) are the diametric opposites of the those required to succeed in the nose-to-the-grindstone, do-as-you're-told future the anti-Dewey forces have planned for us.

A return to the promise of progressive education may not save us, but it's the best hope we have.

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