Striving to Be the Adult Children Need

I occasionally feel the urge to tackle. It's a thought that's there and gone with no threat of turning into action. I played football as a boy, on neighborhood lawns with other kids, then later in full pads through middle school. I recall a couple instances from that time that involved me slamming my body into that of another person, but the collisions of my impulsive thoughts are different that the actual moments, if only because the reality of tackling is usually accompanied by a bit of pain. Whereas the tackling of my imagination is more like a sudden merging of energy, a dissolving my self into the self of another. 

I feel a little vulnerable sharing this urge with the world at large because I don't want to be judged as a violent person. But honestly, there is a kind of violence in the impulse, although I genuinely have no desire to cause harm. Indeed, in my internal world of urges, it would only be satisfying if the other person slammed into me with an equal intent and force.

It's about a certain kind of impact, I guess, something I'm not sure I've ever actually experienced, nor do I ever expect to. Yet the thought pops up unpredictably, although usually it coincides with times when my mind wanders, sometimes as I'm dozing off.

I imagine this is part of why I empathize when young children give in to their urges. I have my own urge to act in "forbidden" ways. We say that their prefrontal cortex is still forming, that they lack the executive function necessary to control themselves, that they need us to support them until that part of their brain is fully formed. According to National Institute for Health that not until around 25-years-old. Some researchers say it's closer to 30.

I've never heard of any other adult who has this urge to tackle, although I know that at least some young children share it with me because, you know, some of them act on it, slamming their body into someone else without any apparent anger or ulterior purpose. If anything, their facial expressions show joy. If I make the mistake of asking them why they did it, they say, "I don't know," and I believe them, because I have my own inexplicable urges.

I suppose I could put my urge into the category of "intrusive thoughts," although in the psychological literature, those are most often defined as "unwanted" and "distressing," often resulting in fear, guilt, or anxiety. They are often associated with stress, trauma, or fatigue. None of that fits my experience. On the other hand, the literature also mentions that intrusive thoughts are "frequently violent" and "do not reflect a person's desires," which does match my experience. This leads me to consider that I have a "mild" version of the condition, if that's possible, one that allows me to better empathize with impulsive behaviors in others.

I identify when I see young children struggle with their impulses. As the adult, my first job is to keep all the children safe. So obviously I have to put a stop to behaviors that are unwanted by others or that may cause bodily harm, but it's also my responsibility to strive to understand. And doing that very often means looking inward in search of common psychological or emotional ground. I can't always find it, but usually there is something we share that allows me to find the compassion I need to be the adult they need to support them.

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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!

"A Culturally Induced and Perpetuated Lie"

"Look what I made, Teacher Tom."

She had used a hot glue gun to piece together a sculptural object from junk.

I said, "I'm looking at what you made."

Sometimes they want to tell you what it is. Sometimes they just assume you know what it is. Sometimes it just is what it is. 

"Look what I made" is right up there with "I have an idea" and "Let's pretend . . ." when it comes to the phrases I most like to hear in life, and especially in preschool classrooms. Making things is a central part of what makes us human. There is real magic in collecting parts from the world around you and recombining them. When we do it purposefully it's an act of invention. Recombining them without purpose is an act of discovery. Recombining them over and over again is an act of exploration. 

In his 1971 manifesto published in Landscape Architecture magazine entitled "How Not to Cheat Children: The Theory of Loose Parts," Simon Nicholson wrote, "Creativity is for the gifted few: the rest of us are compelled to live in environments constructed by the gifted few, listen to the gifted few's music, use the gifted few's inventions and art, and read the poems, fantasies and plays by the gifted few."

He then goes on to declare this to be a "culturally induced and perpetuated lie." It's a lie that has only become more pronounced in the intervening half century. 

There was a time, not so long ago, when if you wanted a house, you built it yourself. You didn't hire architects and contractors, the "gifted few," but rather picked up your tools and got to work, relying as much as possible on the materials at hand, including your neighbors.

The composer, John Phillip Sousa worried about the advent of recorded music: “There are more pianos, violins, guitars, mandolins, and banjos among the working classes of America than in all the rest of the world . . . But once machine music arrived, children, understandably, turned on the machine and sat home to “listen to the machine’s performance” rather than engaging in study to learn how to play the piano, violin, or harp themselves . . ." These machine performances are the product of the gifted few.

The walls of my grandparents home were decorated with artwork created by the people who lived in the house, folk art, something that is now left to gifted few.

I love to cook, especially when I get to use products that I've brought home from the local farmer's market -- or better yet, food that I've foraged or grown myself -- but increasingly, cooking is being left up to the gifted few in the form of frozen, canned, and otherwise pre-packaged meals, or perhaps delivered, completely assembled, to your doorstep.

The other day, the host of a sports radio program to which I listened as I drove my car simply for the purpose of re-charging the battery, was complaining that "they" had not yet created a robot would do her laundry and clean her house. Of course, we don't need robots for that. There are already laundry and house keeping services that will provide the "gifted few" to do those chores for you.

This boy used a glue gun to make a handle from wine corks, then fixed old CDs to it. It was a sunny day. He discovered that he had invented a "flashlight" that if angled in just the right way, could be directed wherever he wanted. The concept went viral as other children made their own flashlights. It didn't occur to anyone to ask this "gifted" boy to make one for them. They did it themselves, innovating their own versions, creating a community of the "gifted many."

Perhaps I'm stretching the meaning of the descriptor "gifted few," but the point is that all these things we turn over to others means giving up opportunities to invent, discover, and explore for ourselves. Certainly, the hope is that technology will "free" us to be creative, but as anyone who has ever lived in the modern world already knows, it remains damned neigh impossible to free ourselves up. Whatever happened to the promise of a paperless office? And when we do find ourselves "free," so many of us turn to entertainment, watching the shows and movies created by the gifted few, scrolling our feeds comprised of the work of the gifted few, and playing the games created by the gifted few. Perhaps we read the books written by the gifted few or peruse the arts and crafts made by the gifted few, but when do we invent, discover, and explore?

"No thank you, I don't dance." "I can't draw a stick figure" "You don't want to hear me sing" "I leave the repairs to the professionals" This is the result of that culturally induced and perpetuated lie. 

We've evolved as a species to create our environments using the materials at hand, which is what a loose parts environment is all about in preschool. It's an active process by which we engage our full bodies, discovering metaphor and connection, making and finding new things as we try this and try that in a process of trial and error science. We see it as human nature in our young children who have not yet learned the lie of the "gifted few." When children find themselves in places that give them permission to be who they need to be, to move as they wish, to handle and manipulate what they wish, to mold and shape what they find into something new, we see an essential aspect of humanity that the modern world actively suppresses with it's lies about the "gifted few."

"Look what I made." "I have an idea." "Let's pretend . . ." These are the things that make us come alive as humans.

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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!

Playing Our Way to Culture

"Octograbbers" was a Woodland Park fad for a time. To become an Octograbber, you had to have two of our playground shovels, one in each hand, which, of course, limited your ability to use your hands. If you wanted to pick something up, and that was a big part of the fad, you had to use your shovels like a pair of tongs in order to "grab" things. I have no idea where the "octo-" part came from, except to guess that it had something to do with octopuses. 

It started with a couple boys, spread to a wider group, and grew to include an ever-evolving collection of children to the point that there was daily bickering over shovels. It then ebbed and flowed, only dying out completely when the school year ended and the children scattered to their separate lives. 

Play theorists tell us that human culture is, at least in part, a product of play -- music, dance, art, fashion, and fads, but also social norms, customs, beliefs, values, and symbolic systems like language and communication. These are not instincts we are born with, but rather behaviors that we learn, which is why culture traditionally varies so much from place to place. We're likely the only preschool on earth to have played our way to a the specific cultural phenomenon of Octograbbers, but I reckon that every preschool has experienced its own unique cultural trends, for a week, a month, or a year . . . Or longer, as returning children revive certain games or themes year after year.

Culture emerges wherever humans come together, but it's not just humans.

I've written before about the resident orca pods in the Pacific Northwest that have been observed swimming with dead salmon on their heads. They were first noticed in the 1980's. The behavior seemed to then disappear for time before reemerging again recently, like a retro fad. The leading theory is that it's a form of social fad, one that is not shared by other orca pods around the world.

Bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia carry sea sponges on their snouts as protective tools for foraging on the seafloor in order to prevent injuries from the sharp rocks and corals. This behavior is mostly found in females and is passed on by dolphin mothers to their daughters, in what researchers point to as evidence of a cultural tradition being passed along through the generations. Again, other populations of bottlenose dolphins don't engage in this specific behavior, although they likely have their own, unique cultural practices.

Cultural behaviors begin in play. Humans and marine mammals aren't the only ones. Ravens, chimpanzees, and other species have played been observed playing their way to unique manifestations of culture. We spend a lot of energy in the play based world trying to "defend" play by pointing out the "academic" learning that happens, but most of what is learned through play is cultural.

I'm currently re-reading George Eliot's Middlemarch. In some ways it's a typical Victorian novel, set in an inward-looking rural county. There are occasional references to the king and parliament and London and the wider world in general, but mostly what occupies the people is what's happening amongst themselves, their unique Middlemarch culture. This is how humans have lived for most of our existence. This is what we're evolved to attend to: our immediate world of fellow humans. The modern world, however, is increasing destroying these unique, local cultures, homogenizing it, and putting it online. Of course, there are unique, online communities, but they lack the physical proximity that characterizes the cultures of play based preschools and orca pods. This is not to dismiss the experiences of those who thought they were all alone, only to find their community online, but at the end of the day, if that doesn't ultimately lead to physical proximity, the opportunity to actually "play" together in a daily, consistent, give-and-take way, the culture that emerges, I fear, will be impoverished.

Maybe this is just an old man's perspective, but I grew during the emergence of TV and mass media in general. I still remember local newspapers and radio programs that were all about my own unique pod or county or preschool, where everyone knew one another, or at least knew someone who knew someone, but today culture is increasingly global. I think half our stress comes from the fact that we haven't evolved to attend to the whole world: we've evolved to attend to what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, and that includes actual, embodied human beings with who we can create meaningful culture on a local level.

The mother of one of the core Octograbbers told me that her son was at first upset to find that his new kindergarten didn't have full sized shovels, just little spades. She told me that she knew he was going to be okay, however, when he came home a few days later talking about playing "Baby Snow Leopards." At the end of the day, creating culture together is a central aspect of how humans have evolved to connect. It gives us the sense that we belong. And it begins with play.

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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!

I Always Believe the Children

Yesterday, I responded to a jury summons, showing up at the courthouse along with 160 other potential jurors to sit and wait. I've done this before, so I knew to bring reading material.

Most people I know do whatever they can to get out of jury service. I won't say they lie, because that would be a crime, but I know they often stretch the truth in order to avoid spending a day -- or potentially many days -- performing this civic responsibility. Thomas Jefferson felt that showing up for jury duty was more important than voting. I know this because that's what the judge who welcomed us told us just before sending us to another set of chairs where we again waited.

The last time I was called I was excused because the assault and battery case was going to take place during a week I was scheduled to keynote a conference. This time I was genuinely hoping that it would work out for me. Everyone I know, including my wife, who has actually sat for a trial has told me they found it a rewarding experience, which was exactly what the presiding judge told this mass of potential jurors. (There was a lot of salesmanship in the process yesterday; a lot of praising us for showing up, and a lot of inspirational talk about how vital jury trials are to our democracy.)

I immediately knew, however, that I was going to request to be excused when we were told that this criminal trial was expected to take the entire month of March, requiring the jury's all day presence Monday-Thursdays. I just can't afford that kind of commitment. After a long, detailed description of how the county's court process works, including introducing us to the prosecuting and defense attorneys, we were told that the defendant was charged with six counts of molestation of a child under six years old.

My gut clenched.

Every eye the courtroom went to the young man in the defendant's chair. This was going to be a long, brutal month for everyone involved. 

You can't follow the news at all these days without being confronted by gut-wrenching stories about the abuse of girls and young women. It's horrifying, yet I hope it's ultimately a good thing that light is finally being shone on this hidden, rotten part of our culture. It's estimated that fewer than 10 percent of sexual abuse cases are ever even reported. I'm guessing that this percentage is much lower for abuse involving children, if only because, as a society, we tend to dismiss, ignore, excuse, and generally sideline children, especially those under six. Especially because pedophilloic abusers are so often trusted, even beloved, friends or family members. Especially because we still don't value or trust girls and women as we should.

The judge had previously cautioned us about the foundational legal principle of "innocent until proven guilty," but as I considered this defendant, his eyes fixed on the table in front of him, I felt a surge of anger and revulsion toward him. I recognized it as a cumulative feeling, one that has been building slowly for decades, then far more rapidly in recent months as many of the world's most powerful men are now credibly suspected of committing this, the most unforgivable of crimes.

I am a man who has spent much of his adult life in the company of young children. People in our profession often wonder why more young men don't choose it. We wonder if it's the low pay or low prestige, but as a man in the profession, I can tell you that this is something you have to think about every day. In my decades as an educator, I never allowed myself to be alone with a child. I know that we're all supposed to do that whatever our gender, but as a man, it's crucial. For some, the very fact that I chose this profession places me under suspicion. 

It's not pleasant, but at the same time, I understand it. The vast majority of abusers are male. I've always known that if I was going to work with young children I could never give anyone any reason for doubt. It's part of the reason I value the cooperative model: I spent my days with children and their parents, 5-12 of whom were in the room with me at any given time as a community. I never took children to the toilet or changed diapers. I kept myself on display at all times, which, of course, creates its own kind of stress. When educators complain about cameras being installed in their places of work, I understand their objections, but also, you know, welcome to my world. We fantasize about returning to the village. A key feature of a small, tightly knit community is that everyone is in your business all the time, which may feel intrusive, but it makes it much harder to get away with evil acts. That's something to consider.

Before accepting my teaching position at Woodland Park Cooperative Preschool, I sat down with my mentor, Tom Drummond, an instructor at North Seattle College. I asked him point blank, "What do I do if someone accuses me of molesting a child." His answer: "You'll have to move to Bimini." There is no coming back from an accusation, even a spurious one. So, I've lived with that on my shoulder for my entire career.

Please don't think I'm complaining. My own difficulties are nothing compared to the crimes committed by abusers. The extra scrutiny is necessary to keeping young children safe. I'm sharing this because this is what was going through my mind as I considered the criminal case before me.

I was excused from jury duty. I don't know if I would have been capable of being an impartial juror, although I suspect that my background would have made me attractive to the defense: a man who works with young children. Maybe I'd have even been acceptable to the prosecution. I mean, a preschool teacher is likely to be incredibly empathetic and compassionate toward the victim(s). Of course, my background may well have disqualified me for both sides.

There's a part of me that feels like I have betrayed the young victim(s) by not trying to be seated on that jury, despite the hardship it would have caused me. My instinct is to believe children and I had the opportunity to be their champion. But, of course, that's not the job of a juror. The job is to be impartial, to determine the facts, and to otherwise presume innocence. 

Being honest with myself this morning, I cannot presume that man's innocence, even as I know that there is a chance that he isn't guilty. I could never in good conscience be his juror because in my heart, I always believe the children.

Trust children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.   ~John Holt

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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!

The Boy Told Me, "There's Going to Be a Lot of Fighting This Year"

On the first day of school he told me, "There's going to be a lot of fighting this year." It was an interesting comment, funny even, coming from this particular boy. I'd known him since he was a two-year-old and he had never shown any inclination toward violence, real or imaginary. On the contrary, tough guy bluster, even of the comical variety, had in the past often seemed to intimidate and confuse him. He was regularly reduced to tears by dramatic play that struck him as threatening, often retreating under our classroom loft for "safety."

Jousting with swings standing in for steeds

His mother explained that he had over the summer become fascinated with knights, including their armor, shields, and other weaponry, items he had taught himself to create using paper, scissors, tape, and staples. And that is how his "fighting" first showed up in the classroom, with him not only arming himself, but also others. He had mastered the fierce pose and when he found another kid inclined toward "fighting," he might threaten something like, "You better watch out, I'm going to fight you." The fighting itself was quite tame by the standards of Woodland Park play fighting, most often involving "swords," but sometimes featuring "jousting." He was clearly thrilled when someone engaged with him, although the moment actual contact was made, even when of the light and incidental variety, he usually called it off, often crying loudly. But once the tears were over, he was back at it, once more trying to lure others into his game of fighting knights.

This knight has been unseated

I hope this description doesn't make him seem like a problem child in any way, because he was not. No one who knew him was worried that he would grow up to be actually violent. This was clearly an intellectual pursuit, one full of questions to which he was seeking answers. Even months into the school year there was still obvious uncertainty as he approached others with his knight game, as he tested the others to see how they would respond. He was delighted by his successes: his face flushed with excitement when it was going as he expected, combatants committed to both ferocity and a kind of chivalry that included not really hurting one another. He was overwhelmed when others surpassed him in intensity or more extreme physicality. He was often disappointed by those who were neither impressed, nor attracted by this knight who was threaten-asking them to fight with him. He had made his knight studies at home as a self-selected "academic" pursuit and was now attempting to apply what he had learned in real life.

One of his classmates did a similar thing with his own animal studies. Earlier in the year, he could be found prowling the playground as a dinosaur, usually as a T-rex, his favorite, roaring and stalking about with his arms draw up to mimic the short forearms associated with the species. Then his interests turned to invertebrates, like his pet snails, but also slugs, worms, and insects. One day, he put shoes on his hands so that he could practice moving like an insect, developing a fuller understanding of how they crawl by studying it with his whole body, in the same way that my knight-loving friend sought to embody a knight in order to more fully understand.

Neither of these boys would be described as particularly physical, at least not in comparison to many of their classmates who spend their days racing around the place. In fact, when they moved on to public kindergartens the following year, they both adapted to desk work better than most. They will never show up as a "problem child" because they possess the sort of self-control and temperaments that will allow them to adapt more easily than will those "active" kids whose teachers will chase them around the classroom, scolding, punishing, and otherwise correcting them for moving their bodies at the wrong time and in the wrong way, perhaps even going so far as to recommend drugs.

It's a pity because it's clear that all children, even not obviously active ones, learn most naturally when allowed to engage their full selves, including their bodies, not in adult-proscribed ways and at adult-proscribed times, but as their own questioning and exploration dictates. Standard schools are notoriously bad at allowing this because so much of what happens in them is about crowd control rather than learning. We can't have knights and insects anywhere but in the form of words, read or listened to, then regurgitated in their approved form, with bodies in their proper places, doing their proper things. It's a pity because all children learn best when allowed to explore with their full-selves, teaching themselves. And they must use their full bodies to do 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!

If You Really Want to Understand Something

Two preschoolers were in an intellectual debate over the size of elephants.

"They're huge!" one insisted. "As big as those trees."

"No they aren't," the other responded, "Dinosaurs are the biggest animals."

"Some dinosaurs are tiny!" He held his fingers together to indicate the size of an ant.

"T-Rexes are giant." He threw his arms into the air to indicate infinite size.

"Elephants are giant." He threw his arms into the air, while lifting up on his toes to indicate a size beyond infinity.

As the adult, I had information that would have helped settled the argument, if only by virtue of the natural authority an adult has in the presence of children. I knew that if they were going to sort things out, they would have to discuss concepts like relative sizes and living v. extinct. They would need to agree upon what was meant by "huge" and "giant." And then, finally, they would need some sort of agreed upon authority or reference to confirm their assertions. As a "teacher" in a standard school, I imagine I might have felt an obligation to make this moment "educational" by walking them through a process with the goal of finding the "right answer."

But being a teacher in a play based preschool, right answers aren't necessarily the goal: thinking is. I'd moved nearby because I knew both of these boys quite well. I knew they were both passionate about the natural world. Their parents had read many of the same books to them and they watched some of the same shows. This abiding interest was what attracted them to one another as playmates. I also knew that both boys sometimes let their passion could get the best of them and it wouldn't be the first time their disagreements resulted in a physical altercation. I was close so that I was in position to step in should violence emerge, but as far as the content of their debate, I remained neutral even if what I heard wasn't entirely accurate.

"(I)f you really want to understand something," wrote Douglas Adams, "the best way is to try to explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind."

"Dinosaurs have cold blood!"

"Elephants are mammals!"

The Ancient Greeks understood this phenomenon very well. Most of what we know about Socrates was through his "dialogs." Indeed, the Socratic Method isn't one of direct instruction, but rather of asking probing, open-ended questions intended to help students sort it out in their minds. I considered interjecting myself in this way, but at the same time, I wasn't entirely sure where this dialog was headed. When I'd arrived on the scene it had been about relative size, but now it felt like they were feeling their way toward something else. Their apparent non-sequiturs were perhaps not non-sequiturs at all, but rather steps along a path to understanding . . . something.

"Dinosaurs are reptiles!"

"Yeah, dinosaurs are reptiles."

The heat suddenly went out of their dialog.

"Some dinosaurs are huge."

"Like T-Rexes."

"And some dinosaurs are small."

"Yeah, and elephants are huge . . . But not the babies. They're small."

"Babies are small. Grown-ups are big." He then turned to me, "Teacher Tom, did you know you're big?"

I nodded, "I'm pretty big."

"Yeah, but not as big as an elephant . . . Not even a baby!

The boys laughed at the absurdity of me, a grown up, being smaller than a baby. The dialog was far from over as the boys continued to share their knowledge with one another, but I have no idea where their collaborative thinking, their cobbling together of understanding, ultimately took them because with the heat dissipated, I was no longer necessary.

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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!

The Hive Mind Switch

Several years ago, while walking in downtown Seattle, I turned a corner to find a group of people looking up. I looked up too. We seemed to be looking at the rows of balconies of the Warwick Hotel. I couldn't figure out why we were looking up, so I looked again at the people with me on the sidewalk. That's when I noticed that they weren't just looking up. They were looking up, then back to the street, where an ambulance with flashing lights blocked the roadway as paramedics were preparing to lift a stretcher with a covered body into its open doors. 

We were all alternating between looking up, then at the body, but we also just as frequently looked at one another. If we didn't make eye-contact, we followed the gaze of our fellow onlooker. If we did make eye contact, we widened our eyes at one another. We pointed. We shared observations, thoughts, feelings. Together, we were assembling the story of someone who and fallen or jumped and, at the same time, we were creating a kind of impromptu community of compassion around a stranger's calamity. In that moment, none of our differences mattered as much as this exclusive club of which we had all just become members. 

Normally, we can only guess what the strangers around us are thinking or feeling, but in that moment we were thinking and feeling as one. There were no barriers between us. I suppose you could argue that this was just me, but I was there. I know that this random collection of strangers -- business executives, street people, and preschool teachers -- were there together, thinking and feeling as one.

I've had similar experiences in my life. I've been on sports teams that were capable of acting as one. I've been at concerts or political rallies in which the crowd was thinking and feeling as one.

Most often, this phenomenon comes to our attention when a "mob" goes on a rampage. We tsk and tut over human nature in these cases. We accuse "them" of being sheep, of turning off their brains, of giving in to their worst instincts, and we aren't entirely wrong. 

But just because the uplifting version of this phenomenon doesn't typically make the news, that doesn't mean it isn't real and isn't important. It happens in churches, in workplaces, in stadiums, and on street corners, every day, all the time.

The greatness of our species, the reason we have survived, even thrived, is that we have evolved to think, feel, and act collectively.

As Annie Murphy Paul writes in her book The Extended Mind, "By one year of age, a baby will reliably look in the direction of an adult’s gaze, even absent the turning of the adult’s head. Such gaze-following is made easier by the fact that people have visible whites of the eye. Humans are the only primates so outfitted, an exceptional status that has led scientists to propose the “cooperative eye hypothesis” — the theory that our eyes evolved to support cooperative social interactions . . . “Our eyes see, but they are also meant to be seen,” notes science writer Ker Than . . . We feel compelled to continuously monitor what our peers are paying attention to, and to direct our own attention to those same objects. (When the face of everyone on the street is turned skyward, we look up too.) In this way, our mental models of the world remain in sync with those of the people around us."

Paul goes on to point out,  "Membership in a group can be a potent source of motivation — if we feel a genuine sense of belonging to a group, and if our personal identity feels firmly tied to the group and its success. When these conditions are met, group membership acts as a form of intrinsic motivation: that is, our behavior becomes driven by factors internal to the task, such as the satisfaction we get from contributing to a collective effort, rather than by external rewards such as money or public recognition. And as psychologists have amply documented, intrinsic motivation is more powerful, more enduring, and more easily maintained than the extrinsic sort; it leads us to experience the work as more enjoyable, and to perform it more capably."

The place where I'm most aware of this phenomenon is during preschool "circle time." The rest of our days are about children freely choosing what they will do and with whom, but once a day, we gather together around whatever the children want to talk about. Some days, of course, it's just every child for themself, but on others the children come together on a topic or idea or challenge. 

I had one group, for instance, that got into giving one another "compliments." We had, collectively, defined compliments as anything you can say to another person to "make them feel good." At least once a week, someone would say, "Let's do compliments!" and then the group would spend twenty minutes or so taking turns giving and receiving good feelings. In practice, what this meant was children saying "I love you" to one another, then hugging. At some point we began keeping track of how many "compliments" we had given. We did this by using a set of plastic chain-links, adding a link for each compliment. This was called "the compliment chain," which we hung from the ceiling, adding to it over the course of weeks and months.

One day, the kids decided to no longer take turns, but rather leapt to their feet as one in a frenzy of hugging amidst a flurry of "I love you." Every child participated, not just for this day, but every day for weeks on end. 

"A host of laboratory experiments," writes Paul, "as well as countless instances of real-world rituals, show that it's possible to activate the group mind -- to flip the hive switch, as it were -- by "hacking" behavioral synchrony and physiological arousal. The key lies in creating a certain kind of group experience: real-time encounters in which people act and feel together in close physical proximity. Yet our schools and companies are increasingly doing just the opposite. Aided by technology, we are creating individual, asynchronous, atomized experiences for students and employees -- from personalized "playlists" of academic lessons to go-at-your-own-pace online training models. Then we wonder why our groups don't cohere, why group work is frustrating and disappointing, and why thinking with groups doesn't extend our intelligence."

It begins with "shared attention," which is what happens when we focus on the same objects or information at the same time as others, in the way that my "club" of onlookers did outside the Warwick Hotel. And that's what happens at our circle time as well. I don't come in with a plan, but rather open the floor with "What should we talk about?" A child might tell us, for instance, that their grandma is visiting, and we're off as we bond over grandparents or relatives in general or sleepovers or wherever it leads. A child might say that someone hit them earlier in the day, that they didn't like it, and we bond over that. A child might want to teach us a song or ask a question or do a silly dance. Sometimes, as I said, it leads nowhere, this is not an exact science, but often, and increasingly as a group gets to know each other, as the habit of flicking the hive mind switch develops, it happens more and more.

Of course, the "shared attention" occurs at other times as well. There was the time we all, and I mean all, watched for 15 minutes as a raccoon cautiously climbed out on a skinny branch in quest of a bird's nest, which, we all guessed, had eggs, or even baby birds in it. We all stopped to reflect together on a photograph of civil rights protesters being dispersed with fire hoses. We all race to the parking lot when the local fire station brings their engine by for us to inspect. The French philosopher, Michel Foucault saw this phenomenon in terms of power, a form he called "normalization," in which, he asserted, our souls are imprisoned by the expectations and standards of the group, but looked at from the perspective of an "extended mind" as Paul does, we can see it clearly as a form of intrinsic motivation: when we think together, we become larger and smarter than ourselves.

This human superpower emerges when we share attention, when we are all securely part of the club, when we all turn our heads to look up together. And yes, it's often abused. Charlatans and other evildoers, dictators and cult leaders, have managed to flip the hive switch toward nefarious ends. But the media only reports on the riots. The historians falsely conclude that our ancestors were savages because only their forts and weapons have survived. Our educational system fears children in groups making their own decisions because we forget that The Lord of the Flies is a work of fiction. But research demonstrates that most of the time our behavioral synchrony primes the pump for cognitive synchrony in which a group, thinking together, does so at a higher level than any one human can ever hope to achieve on their own.

Together we're a genius. Our eyes see, but they are also meant to be seen. 

I often find myself wondering how so many people, so often, can be misled by charismatic leaders. Maybe it's because we've not had the chance to practice, in school or at work, the habit of flipping the hive switch. We've been taught that competition is a virtue and that we must rely on our own minds, and only our own minds ("No looking at your neighbor's paper!"), rather than tapping into the network of minds that is the real power of human thought. We worry that the charlatans will usurp our common sense, but that can only happen to people who have not enjoyed a lifetime of coming alive together.

In many ways, this is all we do in our play-based preschools. When we set the children free we find them turning their heads together, attending together, thinking together. It doesn't always go well, of course, sometimes the hive mind buzzes into a mess, but I'm beginning to think that this might be the only way to inoculate ourselves against would be dictators. 

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