Indoctrinating Our Children

I recently heard an elected representative complaining that our schools need to "get back" to teaching "math, English, science, and history," and "stop indoctrinating our children."

Novelist Doris Lessing believed that every school child should be told this:

"You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself -- educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being molded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society."

I understand when a parent or politician is upset about "indoctrination." The word has come to be an epithet for whatever it is we don't want our children to know or think. But Lessing is right: it's all indoctrination.

Math might be an outlier, but English, science, and history -- especially history -- are all amalgams "of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture." The choices made about what we will teach children are inherently selective, political, and beholden to the status quo. What we are going to teach children about, say, the Civil War, and (more importantly) what we are to leave out, means eliminating an infinite number of perspectives. The result of an institution (or any power for that matter) choosing what to "teach" is always an attempt at "indoctrination" if only because there isn't time in the day to offer every perspective on every subject. Even deciding what is foundational and what isn't is an act of indoctrination.

Humans have always been indoctrinated, even if doing it through mandatory schooling is relatively new. Every child has always been indoctrinated into the ways of their family, their village, and even their wider culture, although for most of our existence this happened via the process of life itself. Much of what was learned by children was through example. There was little need for direct instruction because they grew up in a world in which their culture was something they could see, touch, and take part in. It emerged before their eyes as their elders foraged, hunted, cooked, procreated, and played. Of course, all bets were off if they found themselves in the next culture over . . . where things were done differently . . . For better or worse.

Lessing advocates for self-education as a counter to, or bulwark against, indoctrination. I talk about play based preschool as self-directed learning. In public discussions about indoctrination, you can be sure that someone will, often in frustration, say something like, "Educate yourself. Don't just swallow what the media feeds you." Good advice, although, sadly most of what passes for educating oneself involves scrolling social media feeds until something tells you what you already believe. I'm not saying that the internet can't be a good way to educate yourself, only that social media isn't the proper medium: it's algorithms essentially silo users by selectively feeding them a perspective that more or less jibes with what they already think they know, sprinkled with "outrageous" examples of the opposite. I'm not cynical enough to think that there is some cultural mastermind intentionally trying to indoctrinate me, but it is in the nature of algorithms, created by humans, to coalesce around one status quo or another. If I'm to use the internet for self-education, I must go out of my way to find a variety of trustworthy sources, which is hard to do, but not impossible. 

Perhaps the worst way to educate yourself on the internet is to rely on so-called artificial intelligence. AI is a fantastic tool for getting certain things done, but when it comes to education it cannot help but indoctrinate us, even as it creates the cheery illusion that its responses are comprehensive. It will invariably eliminate results that don't fit the status quo, it will always round the corners, and sand down the parts that stick out . . . Unless, you know enough to ask it to do otherwise. And even then, it remains a relentless servant of current prejudices and choices. People insist that there is a future in which this isn't true, but I don't have a lot of faith in that.

Lessing's suggestion is to read literature: "People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself." She's not entirely wrong. I say that as a devoted reader of literature. Sadly, I'm likewise aware that the gatekeepers of literature -- publishers, critics, professors, and so on -- choose what is available to me. We only know about Doris Lessing because she was one of the lucky few who were deemed worthy to have her work on the shelves of libraries.

As an educator, I don't want to indoctrinate children. I am genuinely motivated to allow them to educate themselves, even as I know that at some level I am taking part in molding them to "fit into the narrow and particular needs of a particular society." We all are.

The important thing, as Lessing cautions, is to always remember that this is what we are doing. I want the children in my life to know that I'm sorry, but this is the best I can do. And I want them to always be aware of the prejudices and choices that have created the culture in which they live. I will never tell them "Because I said so!" Doubt is healthy. Pushing back is the right thing to do. I want them to know that they should not blindly trust the status quo, especially when it doesn't serve them or those they care about. And I hope that when they find themselves at odds with society, they are capable of educating themselves in ways that help them self-actualize. 

This is why I choose play over direct instruction. At least the kids get to choose what they will learn from the culture that surrounds them, and they will know that it's always on them to become educated, not the institution or the "teacher."

To indoctrinate is human. To know we are being indoctrinated is how we set ourselves free.

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

It's My Birthday . . . Again

I went back last night to take a look at what I wrote here on my birthday last year (which was based on a post from 14 years ago when I turned 50). I'm happy to report that I still stand by (almost) every word, so I'm sharing it again today with a few edits to account for the passage of time.

Now I'm 64. It's not exactly a milestone birthday, but I nevertheless think that permits me the indulgence to offer a little unsolicited advice.

"Ninety percent of life is just showing up." ~George P. Atkins

That's a long time to have shown up, don't you think? Sixty-four years? I've seen well over half a century. I've lived in historic times. I should by now know most of what I'm ever going to know about life. I've still got my health, despite a few well-earned aches and pains. I love my work. This should be my time, baby!

"Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." ~Goethe

Here's one thing I know: Goethe was right, there is magic in boldness. If 90 percent of life is just showing up, then I'd say another 9 percent is boldness.

"Experience is the name we give our mistakes." ~Oscar Wilde

Of course, boldness must be formed from something; otherwise it's just brashness. I've found one does need at least a little genuine, deep-down confidence to credibly pull off boldness, and that can only come from experience or out-of-this-world innate talent. Since I never discovered my world class innate talent, I'm left to rely on experience. I'd say that 90 percent of boldness comes from that confidence. And 90 percent of that confidence comes from experience. And experience is the name we give our mistakes.

So, you know, the secret to life is to boldly show up and make some mistakes. The days may be long and the decades short, but there's always time to show up.

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

How About We Stop Asking Children Such Stupid Questions?

They say there are no stupid questions, but I beg to differ. We hear stupid questions almost every time adults and young children are together. 

For instance, a child is painting at an easel, exploring color, shape, and motion, experimenting with brushes, paper, and paint. There is an adult watching over her shoulder who points and asks, "What color is that?"

This is a stupid question. 

Here's another example: a child is playing with marbles, exploring gravity, motion and momentum. An adult picks up a handful of marbles and asks, "How many marbles do I have?"

The adult already knows the answer. The child probably does as well, in which case, the adult is distracting her from her deep and meaningful studies in order to reply to a banality. Or she doesn't know the answer, in which case the adult is distracting her from her deep and meaningful studies to play a guessing game.

In a moment, these stupid questions take a child who is engaged in testing her world, which is her proper role, and turns her into a test taker, forced to answer other people's questions rather than pursue the answers to her own.

If it's important that the child know these specific colors and numbers at this specific moment, and it probably isn't, then we should do the reasonable thing and simply tell her,"That's red," or "I have three marbles." If it's not new information, and it probably isn't, she's free to ignore you as she goes about her business of learning. If she didn't know, now she does, in context, as she goes about her business of learning.

This is one of the greatest offenses we commit against children in our current educational climate of testing, testing, and more testing. We yank children away from their proper role as self-motivated scientists, testing their world by asking and answering their own questions, and instead force them to become test takers, occupying their brains with our stupid questions.

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

"Be Good, Be Careful, and Have Fun . . . In That Order"

Much of my work as an educator is informed by my memories of childhood. I grew up in neighborhoods in which I was free to roam, with or without other children, largely unsupervised by adults. That's how I remember it. My mother confirms the essence of my memories although not always the specifics. 

For instance, I have a clear memory of her regularly, in the tone of a joke, saying to me as I walked out the door, "Be good, be careful, and have fun . . . In that order." She insists she never said it, but it's such a strong memory for me that I adopted it as a sort of mantra for my own parenting. Who's right? Probably her. Does my memory count as a "false memory." Maybe.

"You have to begin to lose your memory," writes philosopher John Locke, "if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all . . . Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing." But what is memory exactly? Today, we know a lot more about how memory works. We know, through experiment, that each time we recall a memory we alter it and that the things we recall most often are the memories that differ the most from actual events. We are, in fact, more creative storytellers than journalists when it comes to memory.

I've discussed this phenomenon with many people, all of whom agree that it must be true . . . For other people. They then tell me of a cherished memory that they know is entirely factual, but that a loved one denies ever happening, their point being that their loved one is misremembering. 

I've come to the opposite conclusion, however. I believe that my mother never said, "Be good, be careful, and have fun . . . In that order" even as I continue to remember her saying it. It makes sense from the perspective of the science. I've thought about those "moments" over and over. I've shared those "moments" with others. I've changed my opinion about what those moments meant to me. Those "moments" even shape my current life. And those moments likely never happened. I've thought about it a lot. It's me, not my mother, who has been actively recalling, and therefore, altering what really happened. For whatever reason, I've manufactured a memory.

I recently had a similar thing happen when I had lunch with an old girlfriend who I'd not seen in decades. Some of our memories matched, but the things I remember most clearly, the things I've thought about the most, never happened . . . At least as she remembers it. 

Yet even if our memories are unreliable and unstable, there is a basic truth in Locke's assertion. When we think of our lives, we are thinking of all those things that lead up to, and include, this day. 

"You can't change the past," we say, but obviously we can and do. The fact that we all do it, tells me it's an adaptive trait. As cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman points out in his book The Case Against Reality, we've evolved not to commune with the "truth," but rather to perceive the world in ways that support our survival. In fact, Hoffman takes it a bit further, stating that it is a near mathematical certainty that the things we perceive do not exist as we perceive them, but rather we perceive things in way that support our survival. Nicolas Malebranche, a contemporary of Locke's, wrote, "The mind does not pay equal attention to everything it perceives. For it applies itself infinitely more to those things that affect it, that modify it, and that penetrate it, than to those that are present to it but do not affect it." This, of course, explains "selective memory," but it also, I think provides insight into why our memories are ultimately so unreliable. And why we must become creative storytellers in order to make sense of ourselves and our lives.

One of the reasons I like working with young children is that they do not possess decades of conscious memories. They are much more who they are, rather than who they were. And I, as an important adult in their lives will be part of the memories that will eventually become the raw material for the story they will weave about themselves. I take that responsibility very seriously, which is why I strive to first love them, then, secondly, get out of their way. Even if my mother never said those words, "Be good, be careful, and have fun . . . In that order," the story I've created about them embodies her love for me, the love that gave me confidence, that made me feel secure enough, to venture out into the world without her in order to, as she jokingly commanded me, have fun. 

I will never be able to replicate my own past, but I do what I can to create that feeling of love and independence for the children in my care.

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

All the Way Down

The famous scientist has given a lecture on the nature of the universe. Afterwords, an elderly woman comes up to him and says, "Young man, you seem well intended, but you've got it all wrong. The earth is a flat plate."

Humoring her, the scientist asks, "But then, madam, upon what does this flat plate rest?"

She replies, "On the back of a turtle."

Smiling condescendingly, he responds, "If that's so, then on what does the turtle stand?"

She shakes her head as if explaining something that ought to be obvious, "Young man, it's turtles all the way down."

This story has been around in a variety of versions for a long time. Philosophers, physicists, and theologians use the story as a way to highlight what they call "the problem infinite regression," which is to say that any foundational explanation for anything requires further explanation. In other words, it is futile to try to seek the ultimate foundation for the universe. There will always remain the unknown. I know that this idea is unsettling for some, but I find it exciting and even comforting to know that we will never lack for something to wonder about.

It wasn't really until the 17th century that we began to believe that human consciousness was a product of the brain. Others had, of course, speculated about it, but René Descartes was the one who popularized the idea, one that underpinned much of the so-called European Enlightenment. It's an aspect of colonialism, of racial superiority, and modern schooling. It's one of the turtle's backs on which rests our standardized classrooms: indoors, seats in chairs, bodies still, eyes and ears focused on a teacher delivering direct instruction. After all, if our minds are contained exclusively within our brains, the rest must be superfluous, or at least secondary, to learning, so we must subdue the body in order to reach the mind.

By the middle of the 20th century, however, scientists had begun to doubt this notion. Pioneering neurosurgeon and mapper of the human brain Wilder Penfield wrote: "(A)fter years of striving to explain the mind on the basis of brain-action alone, I have come to the conclusion that it is simpler (and far easier to be logical) if one adopts the hypothesis that our being does not consist of two fundamental elements . . . (T)here is no good evidence, in spite of new methods, such as the employment of stimulating electrodes, the study of conscious patients and the analysis of epileptic attacks, that the brain alone can carry out the work that the mind does."

In a rational world, this kind of insight would have completely transformed the way we do education. If the brain alone cannot carry out the work of the mind, then that leaves us to consider that it is a function of the rest of our body as well. If we were rational, our schools would have become places in which movement was the norm, in which all the senses are engaged, in which we embrace the notion that learning is a full-body, immersive experience. You know, like life itself.

Many of today's leading researchers are now coming to consider that the operations of our minds extend beyond our bodies into the world around us, including other people, and even inanimate objects. Indeed, some leading thinkers like neuroscientist Guilio Tononi are exploring the idea that everything in the universe, every atom, every subatomic particle, contains some degree of consciousness and that so-called higher consciences, like ours, are built upon the backs of ever more simple consciousnesses . . . all the way down.

It's tempting to say that our schools, at one time, did reflect the latest science about how humans learn and now need to catch up, but the truth is that our schools have never been based on scientific evidence. They are based instead on the practices of industry and the military, human projects that rely upon discipline, order, and predictability, not science. There was a time, of course, when our leading thinkers were convinced that our minds, our brains, functioned like machinery, like clockworks or assembly lines, but modern schooling emerged far after these notions were abandoned by scientists. No, modern schooling is based not on the science of how minds work and learn, but rather on how people are controlled and goods are most efficiently processed. This isn't to say that individual teachers don't strive to make learning happen, but it's within a system that isn't designed around how the human mind actually works and learns.

The wonder and frustration of the scientific method is that there is always another turtle, all the way down. So what we "know" today about human learning will be just another turtle in an infinite regression of turtles. This is why I choose play. Play is how Mother Nature has designed us to educate ourselves. It accounts for every unknown because it is driven by the unknown. It requires no theories or systems other than curiosity and the freedom to pursue it.

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Being a Cause

Growing up all of us kids knew that we weren't supposed to play with our food. So when I rolled up my white bread into a little doughy ball, I kept it to myself. I don't know why I rolled bread into little balls, but I recall feeling gratified by being the sole cause of a process that transformed one thing into another: from bread to a perfect round ball. I strived for perfectly round and when I achieved it I was done.

German psychologist Karl Groos, in his 1896 book Play and Man asserts that humans find pleasure in simply being a cause. "How many of us," he writes want to scribble or whittle or do something with our hands all the time, to break a twig and chew it while we walk, to strike the snow off the walls as we pass, to kick a pebble before us, to step on all the acorns on the pavement, to drum on the windowpane, to hit the wineglasses together, to roll up little balls of bread . . ."

Being a cause is fun. Whenever I've taken young children to a beach, they invariably begin throwing pebbles into the water, delighting in the splashes they've caused. Children shout in high ceilinged rooms, they dig holes, they knock over towers of blocks . . . 

We often see these behaviors as trail-and-error science, and perhaps it is at first. The first time we form bread into a little ball, we may be driven by curiosity (or boredom, curiosity's less glamorous cousin). But when we repeat it over and over, we aren't proving our experiment. We already know that when we throw that pebble into the lake, it will splash and create ripples that spread outward in all directions. We throw those pebbles, we form those bread balls, because it brings us pleasure to be a cause. 

Evolutionary science tells us that behaviors persist because they improve chances of survival and reproduction. Deriving pleasure from being a cause serves that in some way or another. We can assume that educating ourselves is part of it. But no one forms bread balls because they are seeking to improve their evolutionary fitness. The immediate reason we do it is to have fun.

As adults we tend to channel the urge to be a cause into our work, but I don't think that's inevitable. I reckon that's more a function of the kind of society in which we live. There are still adults who shout to cause echoes or kick pebbles or form bread balls, but most of us have internalized lessons like "don't play with your food." We've bought into the so-called pragmatism that dictates that we be confident of the "effect" before we act as a cause. We don't want to be seen as "wasting time." 

And we all too often turn this self-judgement onto the children in our lives. Too many adults resent that young children do nothing but waste time unless we drive them toward a "purpose." They play with their food, they shout, they run into a flock of pigeons, they scribble on page after page after page. We stop them. We divert and detour them. We try to "scaffold" something that we think will be educational. And when we do, we rob them of the sheer pleasure of being a cause.

We are at our best, I think, when we instead join them, when we learn from them. When we also throw pebbles in the water. When we chew a blade of grass. When we form bread into balls. Just for fun.

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Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Play Has No Plan or Purpose

The children who have discovered the power of saying, "Let's play!" are invariably the most popular playmates in preschool. 

Not that everyone accepts their invitations. After all, play is a self-actualizing activity, one that can really only be undertaken once the foundational levels of their Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs are met. Not every child is feeling safe or together enough to engage in play at any given moment. But those that are, know that the response to "Let's Play" is to enter into negotiations.

In our wider society, the word negotiation carries with it a connotation of butting heads, but really it's just another word for collaboration. The response to "Let's play!" is to agree upon a starting point. 

"Let's dig a hole."

"Let's go to the swings."

"Let's play princess."

From there, the game can go anywhere, one "I have an idea" at a time. In fact, that's the point of play: it's pointless and unpredictable. No one knows where it will lead and what, if anything, will be learned. And that's what motivates children, or any of us, to continue playing, this quest for novelty. The opportunity to discover and interact with something new under the sun. Some play theorists assert that one of the primary reasons that play exists at all is that it is how we prepare ourselves for dealing with the unexpected, which, after all is one of the principle features of life.

As the old Yiddish saying puts it, "Man plans and god laughs."

I was recently meeting with early childhood educators in Connecticut, a place that has persuaded state legislators to codify "play" as the primary pedagogical mechanism for leaning in preschool and kindergarten, with further support play up through elementary school. Indeed, the host organization of the event at which I was speaking, the Connecticut Education Association, has been instrumental in making the legislation happen and several of the women to whom I was speaking were key players in the effort.

But they recognize that getting the legislation passed was only a beginning. Their work, in many ways, still lies ahead of them. They told me, for instance, that some veteran teachers, in their efforts to adopt a more play-centric approach, were requiring the children to "make a plan" for their play which the teacher has to approve before allowing them to proceed. That's not play. Play doesn't have a purpose or plan. 

Those of us who are familiar with play based, or self-directed, learning understand this, but it's an alien concept to educators who have bought into the notion that children need adults to take charge of their learning. Requiring children to "plan" renders it another adult directed activity.

In a famous study, researchers showed groups of children a set of pictures of children engaged in a variety of activities. They then asked them if what they saw was "play" or not. The researchers found that the primary indicator that any given activity was play is the absence of adults. When adults were present, the children tended to label the activity, whatever it was, as "work" or "learning."

The educators of Connecticut have their work cut out for them because play is a notoriously difficult thing to define. I've read countless studies on play and rarely do any two define play in the same way. This is what makes play difficult to research. It's like love in this way. Or art. Or morality. Or even life itself. Perhaps the great truth is that the most important things are impossible to define, even if we know it when we experience it. 

In his book The Kingdom of Play, author David Toomey, draws parallels between culture and play. Neither play nor culture "enable survival or reproduction in any immediate way." Neither starts with a plan. "(T)hey cease playing only when they are injured, exhausted, or simply become interested in something else. So it is with culture. 'No work of art is ever finish,' says the aphorism. 'It is only abandoned.' . . . (T)he more open-ended a cultural practice is, the more play-like it is."

"Let's play" is an invitation to create something together. It has no plan or purpose beyond, perhaps, fun. That novelty is discovered or created, that human's are connected, that learning results, is all a happy accident. As adults, we are responsible for helping them satisfy their physiological, safety, emotional and esteem needs, but but as far as the children are concerned, self-actualization can only happen, play can only happen, when the adults are out of the picture.

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If you want to transform your own space into a full-capacity learning environment that gives children the freedom to self-actualize through play, please join the 2026 cohort for my course, Creating a Natural Habitat for Learning. This is a  deep dive into transforming your classroom, home, or playground into the kind of learning environment in which young children thrive; in which novelty and self-motivation stand at the center of learning. In my decades as an early childhood educator, I've found that nothing improves my teaching and the children's learning experience more than a supportive classroom, both indoors and out. This course is for educators, parents, and directors. Group discounts are available. You don't want to miss this chance to make your "third teacher" (the learning environment) the best it can be. I hope you join me! Registration closes soon. To learn more and register, click here.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!