Our Minds Extend Into One Another

It takes humans years before they fully comprehend their separateness from their caretakers. At least that's the widely accepted psychological theory. A newborn doesn't know that they are not their mother and vice versa. This is understandable, of course. After all, it wasn't long ago that they were growing inside of this other person where they were literally one, mind, body, and perhaps even soul. One of their first acts, upon emerging into this bright, noisy world, is to seek the intimate reconnection of nursing and other kinds of physical touch.

Even as we grow into toddlers, we continue to struggle to understand that we are independent people. It's part of why separation anxiety is so common. As we get older, we must learn that we are not our parents: we have our own bodies and minds.

We learn about our separateness. It is not a concept with which we are born. 

There is a growing body of research around the tantalizing idea that maybe human infants are on to something and that what we are teaching them about separateness is all wrong. Certainly, our bodies are separate from the other bodies, but it's beginning to look like this thing we call "the mind," our essential self, extends beyond us and into our environment, including, perhaps especially, the other people.

In an influential 1998 paper, cognitive psychologists and philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers posed the question "Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?", concluding that there is no identifiable line. This concept of the "The Extended Mind," as they labeled it, was at first laughed at, but has over the last quarter century come to be regarded as one of the most important recent insights into how the human mind functions.

It was the work of Russian psychologist and early learning pioneer Lev Vygotsky that initially set Clark's course. Famously, Vygotsky noted that young children learn with the help of what he called "scaffolding" from the outside world, such as the help of an adult or an object. Clark realized that even as adults we rely on the outside world to scaffold our own thinking, including things like writing which is impossible without an interplay between pen and paper or fingers and screen, objects that scaffold our minds.

What Clark and Chalmers realized is what babies are born knowing.

Our minds cannot be confined to our heads. Oh sure, the conscious part might feel like it's self-contained, but much of what we know, think, and recall is actually stored in the outside world. A prosaic example is when I write down my "to do" list. Other people might hold their list in their conscious mind, but functionally there is no difference between us -- we both have our "to do" lists. This is the same phenomenon that is taking place between us and our smartphones, tablets, and computers: our minds extend into them, making them an essential part of our thinking process. A more complex example of how our minds extend into the world, and indeed, other people, is while in conversation. That process of give and take becomes a melding of the minds an interplay that isn't contained within any one person, but rather takes place beyond the confines of our bodies. 

When we moved my wife's mother from her long time home to an assisted living facility because it wasn't safe for her to live alone, it became clear to us that a part of her mind was left behind in that house. Indeed, in hindsight, it's clear that the death of her husband was a trigger for her rapid decline into dementia, which is to say, the process of losing her mind. When we removed her from her environment, we unwittingly removed much of the scaffolding that supported her extended mind.

Some time ago, I wrote about what Eleanor Duckworth called "the collective creation of knowledge," that process by which young children learn together, thinking, discovering, and exploring, as if they have a kind of "hive mind." In the language of Clark and Chalmers, their minds extend into one another, scaffolding one another, erasing the distinction between your mind and my mind, blurring the lines that separate you from me.

Our schools are based upon outmoded models of how human minds think and learn. Specifically, we have bought into the idea of brains as organs that must be muscled up on academics, drilling, testing, and the artificial rigor that characterizes so much of what happens in school. We treat children like self-contained silos into which we must stuff teaching. However, when we understand, as newborns do, that learning is scaffolded by our environment and that our minds work most naturally when they are extended outward in all directions, including into that space that connects us with other people, we see that learning is, necessarily, a collective, collaborative process: not an academic one, but an experiential one.

The more I learn about learning, the more I find myself returning to the Reggio Emilia notion of the environment as a teacher on par with adults and other children. Indeed, in this theory of the extended mind, we see that adults and other children can actually be included in our notions of environment, which means that environment is the only teacher. And as every baby knows, we learn when we extend our minds outward, driven by curiosity and the irrepressible urge to merge our minds with the things and people we find there.

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, 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!

Don Quixote

As if you didn't indulge me every day, today I ask for a little extra indulgence.

Our windmill is a former prop that was was regularly set afire in a performance based upon Don Quixote by the now defunct Cirque de Flambe. We've removed the heavy metal vanes and replaced them with swimming noodles.

The fire in the performance, I assume, represented the intensity of Alonso Quijano's imagination as he sallies forth into the world, believing himself to be the chivalric hero Don Quixote de la Mancha. I prefer to think that he is neither "a madman nor a fool," as the great critic Harold Bloom writes, "but someone who plays at being a knight-errant." Bloom, in his book The Western Canon cites Dutch historian Johan Huizinga who in his masterpiece Homo Ludens asserts that play is the source of all human culture.

Play is a voluntary activity, unlike madness and foolishness. Play, according to Huizinga, has four principal characteristics: freedom, disinterestedness, excludedness or limitednss, and order. You can test all of these qualities upon the Don's knight-errantry, but not always upon Sancho's faithful service as squire, for Sancho is slower to yield himself to play. The Don lifts himself into ideal place and time and is faithful to his own freedom, to its disinterestedness and seclusion, and to its limits . . .

There is no greater universal image than the Don's impossible dream quest, that thing that brings us all every day out into the world to unreasonably stand before windmills and fight them as if they be giants that "move more arms than the giant Briareus." If each of us is not standing from our beds each day, our minds afire with our dragons and Dulcineas, then we are the more sane Sancho Panza, the one who says, "the arms you fancy, are their sails, which, being whirled about by the wind, make the mill go." Throughout our lives all of us are sometimes the Don and sometimes Sancho, both of whom see the world with a clarity that makes the other seem mad or foolish. (Although I will point out that in the end, when the Don is at last defeated, he returns to "sanity," giving up his play, and dies, an indication, I think that Cervantes put the special star of life by his "insane" Don.)

And play is what this all about, the first novel, and perhaps the greatest thing ever written. It's about play's sanity, it's insanity, and it's bulls-eye central-ness to what kind of thing we are in the universe. That's why we still read Don Quixote and why when we see a storybook windmill, those of us who haven't forgotten how to play, always take a tilt at it.

I did not want our windfall of large pieces of canvas to become one of those prizes that I wind up curating while it sits on the shelves for months, if not years, awaiting the "perfect" moment, so I'd promised myself they'd get used as soon as possible. The children arrived to find their windmill a canvas wrapped giant in the center of their classroom.

We sallied forth on our adventure, paint brushes in hand, together dreaming our impossible dream.

We marched right up to this giant and made our marks, shoulder to shoulder, still seeing a windmill I suppose.

Perhaps we were a troupe of Sanchos as we set out, still seeing vanes instead of arms.

Playing, yes, but practically with our brushes and our quiet little cups of paint. There's a goodness and rightness about that; an innocence, certainly. It's the kind of place from which the best adventures start.

Some of us, in the freedom of our play, chose to swing around to the back stage side of things, where we found something magical to do, that being the moment when we first suspected that there was more here than a mere windmill.

And perhaps is was then that we began to understand that we were dealing with a giant.

It had grown right here before us. We needed to reach higher so we began to call for ladders to allow us to scale its ramparts.

It continued to grow as we painted and its many arms to spin like the giant Biareus. This would not be enough. 

That's when we decided to manufacture lances for ourselves, long sticks onto the ends of which we duct taped brushes to allow us to do proper battle with those long arms, all the way up in the clouds where they waved about so fiercely.

Of course, these particular children may not have been battling at all.

In fact, I'm inclined to believe they were not, but rather playing an entirely different story, but one, I'm sure nonetheless was a quest worthy of knights.

They just were playing; you know, building a little human culture.

Tell me this is not the stuff of legend.

We reached into the clouds indeed, our knight-errantry taking us to heights beyond ourselves, and many simply beside ourselves, like the peculiar incident that involved someone planting a green dot on someone's cheek unawares.

But the invention of this new slice of human culture was far from complete as we then proceeded to the launching of paint besotted projectiles, such as sponges, and something (I don't exactly know what; they predate me) in the toes of nylons that we generally use for splat painting (dipping them in paint, then dropping them onto paper from a height).

Look how boldly we stand here before the giant.

We are the Don.

Adding an extra challenge was the group of peasants who sought to ride their donkey's in the neighboring pastures, so we were careful to avoid collateral damage.

After each toss, we approached the giant to survey what we had managed.

And oh, we had some technique.

Amazingly, this one hit it's target!

Lest you get the idea that we were playing a kind of war game here, I should point out that I'm the only one of us (meaning me and the kids) who has read Don Quixote, so this fantasy combat imagery was only in my head, as it was in the Don's. Up to this point, all the tools we'd used -- ladders, long paint brushes, paint soaked projectiles -- were all discussed as attempts to paint to the "very top" of the canvas. I mention this because this last thing we did is quite martial and I don't want you to think we'd been the whole time building ourselves up into a combat-ish frenzy.

That's right, we took our dangerous spear throwing to a whole new level, taping paint brushes to the ends of our bamboo stakes, dipping them in paint . . .

. . . taking aim . . .

. . . and letting them fly!

It was an idea one of the kids had suggested and we just had to give it a try, you know, because we're the Don, and Sancho, for the time being, is no where to be found.

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Creepy Crawlers!

John Sain was a couple years older than me, which would have made him seven or eight. We always called him by his full name to distinguish him from his next door neighbor who was also named John. John Sain's father, Mr. Sain, had the caché of being retired military and having once killed a rattle snake in his garage with a garden hoe then called us kids in from the street where we were playing so that we could see first hand what these local dangers looked like. He even allowed me the honor of carrying the sack with the carcass around to the back of the house where we buried it. Mr. Sain once sucked blood from a finger I'd cut on a bit of glass while we worked together on a church-organized roadside litter clean-up crew. After spitting the blood onto the pavement, he told me it was to help avoid infection, which sounded both scientific and manly. Having such a father and being older, John Sain stood a little above the rest of us. He went to school during the day and so could only play with us in the evening and on weekends. When he was out there with us, it made our regular games special.

One day, I showed him some small plastic "army men" that I particularly treasured, which prompted him to invite me to his bedroom where he pulled out what he told me was an "army man making set." There was a small heating element, molds portraying the hollows of soldiers in various action poses, and pellets of lead. The idea was to choose a mold, put one lead pellet in it, melt it over the heating device, then, once the metal had fully liquified, you plunged it in a cold water bath to harden it. 

I expect Mr. Sain wouldn't have allowed John Sain to show such a "big kid" toy to a five-year-old, which is why we were being extra quiet and probably explained why he kept me at a distance as he worked. I admired how cautiously he handled the tools, how he used an oven mitt to handle the hot things, and the drama of the explosion of steam that leapt from the cold water bath. When he removed the newly shaped lead soldier from the mold, he handed to me saying, "You can't keep it" explaining that he would later melt it down again to make a new soldier.

This was the only time I got to see this toy, but I was sure I wanted one, badly. I begged my parents, who reminded me of Christmas and my birthday. I must have been consistent in my request for this toy because at the next gift-receiving opportunity I unwrapped my own casting set. I was only temporarily disappointed when the one my parents gave me melted plastic instead of lead and that the molds were of insects instead of soldiers. I suspect that the "Thingmaker featuring Creepy Crawlers" was considered a somewhat safer version of John Sain's set up, but it still involved heat, melting, molds, and steam blasts, although, to my disappointment, the instructions said to never try to re-melt cast figures. Still, I was absolutely thrilled. I can still experience the fumes of the melted plastic if I try, the heat on my hands, the electrical buzz of the heating element, the topography of the molds under my fingers, and the blasts of steam on my cheeks.

This was a toy I played with unsupervised, alone and sometimes with visiting friends. I emulated John Sain's authoritative caution, keeping others at a distance. Filling the molds took a steady hand. The whole process involved concentration, slow movements, and fine motor skills. The risk of doing things wrong was manifest. I didn't need an adult hovering over me to chirp "be careful" in order to be careful. I imagine my father must have helped me with the first batch, but from then I was on my own, a five-year-old with a toy that could not be sold today to children of any age, learning the kinds of lessons that simply can't be taught through theory. This is one of my earliest memories of play. To this day, I recall it as a kind of giddy balancing act. Always at the back of my mind was the reality that had been enforced by John Sain that one slip and I would be injured, perhaps badly. Indeed, without the danger, I expect it would have been a toy of a single day, something to which I'd never again return after that first afternoon, but as it was, I girded myself regularly. Each time I removed the box with its tidily organized interior from its shelf, I summoned a bit of courage as my heart beat with excitement that can only come direct experience. 

Lead is a hazardous substance, especially for young children, and while the box assured us that the plastic was non-toxic, I still wonder about the fumes it released while being heated. I'm not writing about this to "sell" anyone on the idea of purchasing such a toy for their own kids, but only to share what is one of my earliest memories, which is to say, an experience that made a significant impact on me. The two-time Nobel prize winning chemist Linus Pauling tells of a similar experience with an older boy who had a small home chemistry lab, saying that he was "simply entranced" by the experiments he was able to perform. I don't have a story anywhere near as dramatic, but to this day, I love few things more than cooking over gas flames on my stove top and undertaking art projects that require a steady hand and full concentration. I have no idea what impact my childhood experience had, whether it simply revealed something that was already there or inspired me to something that might have never been otherwise discovered, but I do often think of John Sain, Mr. Sain, and the Thingmaker as I work around heat or when I'm engaged in anything that requires a slow and steady hand.

What I do know, however, is that I have a fine memory of childhood, a real experience that is as much a part of me as the finger from which Mr. Sain sucked blood. There is truth and falsehood mixed up in it, science and myth. It lives not just in my mind, but also in my body and soul, having been fixed there by the manifest danger and the full concentration it demanded.

If you think melting and casting might be something you want to try with your own preschoolers, here is a version I came up with for the kids at Woodland Park to try. It still involves real risk, concentration, and a steady hand, but without some of the unnecessary hazards.

******

Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, 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!