Countering Alienation With Connection: Play Can Save Humanity

Yesterday, I listened to Pink Floyd's masterpiece The Wall. The album came out in 1979. I was a high school senior and on my way to university the following year. For those unfamiliar with it, the album was conceived as a rock opera and is the story of an alienated young man who responds to the slings and arrows of his life by building a metaphorical wall around himself ("All in all it's just another brick in the wall"). 

At the time, I appreciated it as a work of art that showed me a person struggling with mental health, who had suffered at the hands of society, and who was undergoing a kind of ongoing existential crisis. Although I didn't necessarily identify with it, I knew that there were many kids around me who did, who had not had the kind of privilege that I had lucked into. I was a relatively well-adjusted youth with decent grades, plenty of friends and lots to look forward to in life. That doesn't mean I wasn't inspired to "try on" the affectations of youthful alienation and angst, but it was never really me, even as I found myself romanticizing the moodiness.

The record came back into my life when our daughter Josephine was 12. The entire sixth grade was given the assignment to create some sort of artistic response to The Wall. It was a project that took weeks, so once more the album regularly played in our home. By now, I was an educator and the story seemed more tragic than it had when I was younger. I didn't think that I was one of the adults who contributed bricks to the wall. I certainly didn't want to be that adult. I wanted to be a person who tore walls down, both for my child as well as the children I taught.

Perhaps the best known song from the album is the anthemic "Another Brick in the Wall," with its unforgettable lines:

We don't need no education

We don't need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teacher! leave them kids alone

Hey, teacher! Leave them kids alone.

At one point, a chorus of children take over singing it. Yesterday, as those young voices shouted, "Hey, teacher! Leave us kids alone," I choked up.

I've been involved with education for a long time now. I've always strived to do it the right way by placing children at the center, by not commanding or controlling or shaming them. I've tried, to the best of my ability at any given moment, to allow children to be free to do and be what they want to do and be. I've made plenty of mistakes. I've even made some children cry. But, all in all, I've tried my best not to be a brick in anyone's wall.

That said, there are still too many children for whom school does not work, who do not have the advantages that I had. Over the years, I've come to understand that for many kids, school is and was a kind of hell. We don't do anyone a favor when we ignore this fact. And we are especially irresponsible when we try to blame the kids themselves, or their parents, who are, in most cases, products of this very same school system that manufactures at least as much alienation as it does education.

Part of what made me cry yesterday was when those children shouted, "Teachers!" I imagined them pointing their little fingers, their faces stony with anger. I'm aware that there are some awful human beings in our profession, as in any profession, but all in all most of the teachers I've known are likewise not to blame for the alienation. Indeed, teachers are the heroes of our schools because we are the ones who inject humanity into what would otherwise be a hollow behavioristic system of carrots and sticks. From where I sit, any successes our school system can point to are the direct results of teachers who find it in their hearts to mitigate the harm.

Teacher-activist and author Jesse Hagopian once told me that school taught him that he wasn't smart. He had been labeled by standardized tests as being "below" some arbitrary standard and it wasn't until "years later" that he came to understand his own intelligence. Likewise, Kisha Reid, one of the world's leading experts on play-based learning (and emerging painter), told me, "Play taught me I was smart . . . It wasn't until I went to school that I started to doubt myself."

We tell ourselves that education is our society's great equalizer, that education will allow us to rise above and grow beyond, but for far too many of us, that is a myth. The world is full of people like Jesse and Kisha who have risen above the harmful tendencies of our system of mandatory schooling, with its relentless focus on deficits, but for every Jesse or Kisha, there are countless others who experience "education" as a wall to overcome or escape or, tragically, behind which to remain forever entrapped.

I cried yesterday, because I've been trying for decades, like Jesse and Kisha, to do my part to be the change I want to see in the world, but the central facts behind those lyrics remain. It wasn't that long ago that my friend and colleague John Yiannoudis blared that song into the streets of Athens, Greece to attract a crowd of hundreds to listen to me and others as we discussed our dreams for what education could be. More than 45 years later, those lyrics, those angry children, remain relevant.

But I remain unalienated, as does Jesse, as does Kisha, both of whom have countered alienation with connection. Jesse has built an inspiring career from "struggle" against the injustices of school and society, sprinkling his stories with the words "joyous" and "beautiful." Kisha has created a "circle of love" in which robust, authentic play teaches generations of children and their parents that not only are they smart, but that they can do and achieve anything their hearts desire. "Play," she says, "can save humanity."

The last thing our world needs is more schooling, more curriculum, more testing, and more homework. What we need are more educators like Jesse and Kisha, who stand up boldly and who, as Kisha puts it, "Step into our positions as professionals." It means educators who know what is right for children, who love children, and who are committed to tearing down the walls.

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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!

She Was Meant for Life

Many young children arrive on our doorsteps ready to attend to us, to what we point out to them, to sing our songs, to play our games, and to follow our lead. In standard preschool classrooms, these are our teacher's pets.

But then there are those other kids. These are the ones with their own agendas.

Miranda had no interest in toys. Dolls, blocks, and puzzles were in her way. Other children were interesting unless they wanted to "pretend." She had little patience for pretending. She preferred real things. 

As a two-year-old, she hunted out light switches, then pulled furniture over so she could climb up to reach them, flashing the lights off and on until someone helped her find something else to do.

Our vacuum cleaner was aces. 

She was so fascinated with our pencil sharpener that I wound up purchasing a whole collection of different types of sharpeners for her to explore. 

She liked tools of all sorts and would make a beeline for the workbench whenever we were outdoors -- she was particularly fond of screwdrivers and pliers. 

Indoors, she would sometimes engage with art-making tools like brushes, brayers, and scissors, but she was most often found in the kitchen where she insisted on helping with snack prep.

She would not sit for circle time. She played with the other children when they played with real things, but otherwise she was content to play on her own.

Our junkyard playground was her favorite place because, well, that's where we kept most of our junk.

The naturalist and author Joseph Wood Krutch was writing about the Sonoran Desert, but I believe his words apply likewise to every "natural" place, including those places like our preschool where humans provide the habitat:

"Perhaps the mind is not merely a blank slate upon which anything may be written. Perhaps it reaches out spontaneously toward what can nourish either intelligence or imagination. Perhaps it is part of nature and, without being taught, shares nature’s intentions."

Miranda could be a handful, but she was not necessarily meant for standard school. She was meant for life.

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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 Poopie Head Faction

I've always trusted preschoolers to make their own rules, or rather agreements, for the classroom. If you're interested in how this happens, here's a link.

I like this ongoing process of making agreements through consensus for many reasons, but not because it necessarily 'works' better than the typical method of adults imposing and enforcing rules. Just as our adult rules and laws are no guarantee that everyone obeys them all the time, our agreements are likewise no guarantee that everyone will abide by them all the time. 

These agreements are, as I see it, a kind of statement of intent: this is how we want to live together.

Agreements as we do it don't include the cudgel of punishment. The consequence of not abiding by an agreement is that someone -- usually an adult, but often another child -- will remind you. "I want to remind you, we all agreed, 'No hitting.'" Or maybe, "I want to remind you that you agreed, 'No hitting.'" Sometimes a child will need to be reminded more than once, and sometimes, maybe once or twice a year, I will say to a child, "You keep forgetting your agreement. I'm going to ask you to play somewhere else until you're ready to come back."

Most children step outside the play for a few minutes, then decide to return. Every now and then, however, a child will walk away and not return to the game that caused them to forget their agreement. These children are, in many ways, my heroes. These are the children who recognize that there is something about the circumstances that cause them to "break the rules" and choose to walk away rather than stay and continue to cause problems.

And sometimes, they are more creative.

Almost every year, at some point, the children agree to some version of the agreement, "No name calling," which we generally understand to mean that we don't want to be insulted. One time, several months into the school year, a boy I'll call Mike decided he didn't like that agreement. Specifically, he wanted to call other children Poopie Head. I told him, "If you want to change the agreement, we can talk about it at circle time. If everyone agrees, then we can change it."

I was still a fairly new teacher, but I knew that it was very unlikely that any, let alone all, of the children would agree to this. I like to let children learn things for themselves. And sure enough, the next time we gathered, he raised his hand and proposed, "I want to change the rule, 'No name calling'. I think we should be able to call people Poopie Head because some people are Poopie Heads, and I think it would be funny to call them Poopie Head. But I can't call them Poopie Head because we have a rule that I can't call people Poopie Head."

You get the idea. He was using this moment to say the words as often as possible and he was getting laughs, but when I asked the group, "Does anyone want to be called Poopie Head?" the response was a unanimous "no." Mike tried again the next day and the next with the same results.

Then one day, he spent the morning lobbying his buddies and by the time we sat down for circle time, he had formed a pro-Poopie Head faction. This time he got a handful of "ayes," but still far from consensus. After that he let it die down.

A couple months passed. 

One day, he handed me a piece of construction paper on which he had made marks that looked like letters. He was almost five-years-old, an age when some children begin to explore letter writing, so I said, "Wow, Mike! You wrote letters!"

He replied, "Read it."

I was expecting nonsense, but approached it phonetically, sounding out, "Erin . . . picks . . . her . . . boogers."

Mike roared.

I said, "Mike, you broke the rule," to which he replied, "I didn't break the rule. I wrote it . . . You said it!"

I had to hand it to him. He had found a way to insult his classmates while abiding by his agreement, but also, importantly, without hurting anyone's feelings. So we agreed that he could write whatever he wanted, but he was only going to show it to me.

At the end of the day, his mother arrived to pick him up, and, of course, I told her what her brilliant son had done. 

She shook her head, "That damn kid. He's been going into his room after dinner every night to teach himself how to read and write. Now I know why!"

Neither the children nor I see our list of agreements as final. Indeed, additions and improvements are made throughout the year. We often discuss challenges without coming to consensus. These are often our most important conversations because, after all, if we all agree, perhaps we don't need a rule at all. When we can't agree, we learn about the world from the perspective of others, allowing us to at least consider their point of view in everything we do.

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The Natural State of a Hoarder is Misery

Preschool is a time for children to experiment with community and their place in it. One of the things they experiment with is hoarding. What happens when I manage to control all, or most, of a valuable resource?

Of course, they probably don't frame the question so clearly. More often than not, a child who likes, say, Hot Wheels, will keep adding to their collection until they have all of them. A boy once took a fancy to our giant plastic insects, put them in a pile and sat on them. It happens because it seems like more or all might be better, but it doesn't usually play out that way.

In many classrooms, the adult steps in, first cajoling, and then commanding the child to "share." This, in my view, is not sharing, but rather compliance to authority, which is not something I'm interested in teaching. Experienced children may give in, sullenly, but those who have not yet resigned themselves to being bossed around will fight back. They refuse, they resist, and they shout, "That's not fair!" contrary to the adult's intent, which is, after all, fairness. The lessons learned in this scenario aren't about hoarding, but rather about the ability of the powerful to use force to get their way.

I want children to learn from their experiments. One of the words that I teach the children in my care to understand is "hoard" (another is "exclude") because I want to be able to point it out when it's happening. I don't do it to shame anyone. In fact, I try to state it as a simple fact. 

Someone will complain, "Mary has all the dolls!"

And I'll respond matter-of-factly, "Yeah, she's hoarding them."

If someone complains, "That's not fair!" I'll respond with something like, "You can use them when Mary's done hoarding them." I'll even smile at Mary to assure her that I will not interfere with her experiment. And I genuinely don't because I recognize that she is about to start learning the great lesson about hoarding: the natural state of a hoarder is misery.

The boy who sat on all the giant insects was at first nagged by his classmates to let them have some, or even "just one," but he held firm. After a while, the kids gave up, opting to play with something else, and more importantly, someone else. Slowly, you could watch the boy begin to sulk until before long he was a picture of misery. As he sat there, this previously valuable resource became less and less valuable until it was so worthless that he abandoned it.

One time I was sitting around a table with four 4-5-year-olds. One of them, Phillip, had collected most of the play dough and was sitting with his arms around it possessively. He seemed to enjoy rejecting the other children as they begged him for a chunk. As they bickered, I began to gather up the tiny bits of play dough that remained on the table, eventually gathering a small ball of the stuff about an inch in diameter.

I said, "He doesn't have all the play dough. See? I have some too." I then began pinching off portions of it, saying, "I'm going to give a piece to you . . . And you . . . And you." As the rest of us began making tiny balls and cookies and swords with our bits of play dough we were chatting, laughing, and showing off. Meanwhile, Phillip was looking on with a grim expression, probably beginning to feel miserable in his isolation.

I looked around at everyone's faces. The children with the least were clearly enjoying themselves. I said, "Alex is smiling. Sonya is smiling. Salvador is smiling . . . Phillip is not smiling." We all sat there for a second, just looking at each other's expressions. Then Phillip broke into a huge smile before breaking off large chucks of his hoard to share with the rest of us. I said, "And now everybody is smiling!" 

Both Phillip and the boy on the bugs experienced something the central to hoarding which is that though they may have had a monopoly in terms of possessions, the rest of us had something far more valuable: the happiness that can only come from participation, connection, and friendship. 

******

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!

Agreements We Make With One Another

There was no reason for me to be close, so I kept my distance. There was no reason for me to be a part of their game, so I remained invisible.

It probably began days, if not weeks, before I understood it was a game, but it came to my attention in the form of a girl filling a plastic witch's cauldron with things she had scavenged from around the playground.

A friend said some words to her. Maybe he asked, "Can I play with you?" but it was more likely something along the lines of "What are you doing?" which is typically a better playground question if the goal is to be invited in. So then they were filling the cauldron together, discussing each item, coming to agreements over what went into the mix and what was cast aside.

A decision was made to add water to the cauldron. By now it was heavy with the debris they had purposely, even meticulously collected. But it wasn't too heavy so it only took one of them to carry it over to the cast iron hand pump. While the girl held the cauldron, her friend began filling a smaller bucket, which they then poured over their collection. As they worked together, another child joined them. After a discussion that may or may not have included the phrase, "I've got an idea," they agreed they would forego the unnecessary step of the bucket and slide the cauldron itself under the flow of water.

Agreement, however it is arrived at, stands at the center of our preschool, as it does in life itself. Conflict, all conflict, emerges from the inability to agree. These children were not playing a game; they were living.

The children took turns pumping until the cauldron was full, or at least as full as they collectively agreed it needed to be. Now it was too heavy for a single carrier, so they circled around the cauldron and lifted it together. Walking with it was a complicated matter: they had to agree about where they were going, at what speed, and who would have to walk backwards or sideways. Maybe it was still too heavy. They staggered a bit under its weight before another friend joined them, dashing in to slide his arms under the cauldron. It was still too heavy, but when another playmate tried to squeeze her body in amongst them, it became clear that they could lift it, but not effectively carry the heavy thing, even when they all worked together.

They agreed they would need to put it down, which they did, carefully, not spilling more than a drop or two.

As they discussed their next steps, someone said, clearly enough for me to hear it, "I've got an idea! Let's use the wagon!" This was met with approval, with the exception of one girl, the girl who had tried to squeeze in. She objected. "I'm using it." I had previously noted her idly pulling the wagon, alone, watching the cauldron situation from afar. She had abandoned it briefly to help.

"Please!" the other children begged. "We just need it for a second." The girl stood with her back to the group, apparently considering what to do. It wasn't long before she relented, "Okay, but I want it back when you're done." Another agreement.

Now the challenge was how to get the wagon to where the cauldron sat on the ground. It sat on the other side of the row of tree stumps that line the upper level of the sand pit. One child attempted to lift it, but when the others didn't join his effort, he gave it up in favor of what the group decided was a better idea, which was to pull it around to the side with the slope. It appeared to be the work of a single child, so the others stood around watching as he wheeled the wagon the long way around. He struggled, however, when it came to the steep part of the slope, so other children, spontaneously, pushed from behind.

Then, the wagon in place, a small miracle happened. The girl who had started it all, easily lifted the heavy cauldron all on her own, placing it into the bed of the wagon. As it turns out, it could have been carried by a single child, but they had collectively agreed that together was better, even if that made things more complicated, perhaps even more difficult. The agreements were the important things.

The project, this project of life itself, continued to play out for some time as the wagon, propelled over difficult terrain made its way in stops and starts around the space, eventually winding up back where the whole thing had started. The cauldron hadn't, after all, mattered. The debris and water it held didn't matter. Whether it was a witch's brew or a soup didn't matter. Indeed, even where they were going with it didn't matter. All that mattered, it seemed, were those agreements and this project.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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!

Because We Live in a Society

My wife and I have lived with dogs for most of our 40 years of marriage.

Our first dog came before our daughter was born. He was our gateway "child." One of the responsibilities of a dog owner in an urban or suburban place is to pick up after it. The concept disgusted me: turning a plastic bag inside out, grabbing it with my hand, and carrying it until I came across a trash can. Honestly, I often skipped it when I didn't think anyone was watching.

That said, it irritated me when I came across unpicked poo. What slobs, I would think. Don't they realize they live in a society? Then one day, my hypocrisy hit me. How can I expect other people to pick up after their dog if I myself sometimes let it lie?

Today, I always pick up after my dog, not because I've come to enjoy it -- it's still an annoying, unpleasant task. And not because I'm worried about any kind of punishment or public shame, but because, well, we live in a society. 

At preschool, one of our health and safety requirements is that every person who comes into the school starts by washing their hands. This goes for both children and adults. Indeed, we enter our school through a room with a sink. At the beginning of the school year, we remind the children, "Don't forget to wash your hands," but typically, by about this point in the school year, reminders are no longer necessary: they enter, stash their stuff, then hop up on the stool to wash their hands. Often, you hear them reminding their parents.

They do it because it's what we do; because they are part of a society. They are not doing it to avoid punishment. They are not doing it because they are concerned about being shamed. It's a responsibility that each of them has assumed. I suppose you could say it's part of the price of entry into our little community. Or perhaps more accurately, hand washing could be understood as one of the small daily rituals that hold us together.

Parents and educators often want their children to be responsible. We assign them tasks or chores and tell them that they are "responsible" for getting them done. We scold them for being "irresponsible" when they fail or neglect them. But I don't think this is how responsibility works. We assume responsibilities, not because others are dictating to us, not because we will otherwise be punished or shamed, but because, quite simply, we live in a society, and this is what we do.

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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!

"To Daily Converse About Virtue"

"Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good," said Socrates, according to his student Plato, "I am better off than he is -- for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know."

This is one of his most famous assertions. Whether it's true or not, can be debated. Self-evidently, he knew more than nothing. My mother used to say, whenever I thought I'd caught her in an inconsistency, "All wise people change their minds." It was a frustrating parry in the same way I imagine Socrates' claim was frustrating to those who sought to debate the famed orator.

And he was quite famous in his lifetime, at least in Athens where he spent most of his life. When he was still a relatively young man, Aristophanes' play The Clouds was first performed, portraying Socrates as a ridiculous intellectual clown teaching young people to undermine traditional beliefs. He was sufficiently famous even then that audiences were expected to recognize him. 

It's hard not to compare him to, say, The Beatles, who were initially laughed at, then criticized as corruptors of youth. Or maybe he was more like a modern influencer, who many of us old people view as lightweights, at least until one of them pops through our bubble and we find ourselves outraged at the things they are saying. I'm not saying that any of them are Socrates, but then again, the Beatles were a bunch of silly mop tops before they became icons.

The Beatles, of course, didn't have the internet, but they did have radio and television, which allowed them to "converse" directly with their young audience. Today, most of us know about Socrates through Plato's writing, but Socrates himself wasn't a fan of the phonetic alphabet and its ability to lock things down. As he complained, if you want to question the written word, it cannot reply. Things that are written are fixed, whereas direct discourse between people allows for the kind of public square give-and-take he was, and still is, famous for.

Another of Socrates' most well-known assertions is that "the life which is unexamined is not worth living." But what he actually said (again, according to Plato who was writing it down) was, to me, far more interesting. The fuller quote from his Apology, in which he was defending his life against accusations goes, ". . . the greatest good of man is to daily converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that life which is unexamined is not worth living."

"The greatest good of man is to daily converse about virtue."

The Greek word that gets translated as "virtue" is aretē, which carries a broader meaning of excellence and fulfilling one's potential. He's not advocating for endless conversations about being morally upright, but rather asking what it means to live well, to be a good human. In other words, what he is advocating is something far beyond mere introspection. He is calling for conversations, daily, in which we engage our fellow human beings about what it means to be fully human.

I doubt anyone would have cared about Socrates had he been content to sit in his ivory tower examining his life and writing books about virtue. What outraged the establishment to the point that they condemned him to death was his insistence on conversing about it in the public square.

He was condemned by a jury of what was, by tradition, comprised of 501 fellow citizens (all free men). Apparently, his death sentence was decided by a slim majority, illustrating one of Socrates' objections to the kind of direct democracy practiced in Athens at the time: the tyranny of the majority. Without protections like "freedom of speech" and "freedom of assembly" his ideal of "daily converse" was a dangerous thing.

It doesn't seem that Socrates thought of "free speech" in the way we do today, as a legal protection for everyone. He was more focused on the moral obligation to speak one's truth and ask challenging questions, even if it did lead to ridicule and even death.

Although Socrates is recognized as one of the foundational figures of our Western traditions of thought and philosophy, his notions of democracy were different from how we understand it today. Indeed, he wasn't a fan, even though, in the end, he accepted his democratically decided fate. 

Our current experiments in democracy are attempts to fix the flaws of ancient democracy. The written US Constitution along with The Bill of Rights and the mechanisms of amendment were an attempt to balance majority rule with individual rights. It was intended as a living document, one that could be changed, just not in a willy-nilly-wims-of-the-moment fashion. It was, one might say, intended to be an ongoing, daily, conversation among we the people; a dialog about excellence, fulfilling potential, living a good life, and, yes, virtue. The fact that it has evolved beyond the framer's original ideas about gender, race, and other matters is evidence of this.

The fact that so many of us avoid politics is evidence that we are failing. I've long believed that "voting" is the bare minimum of democratic participation. The real work and promise of democracy is the conversations we have with our fellow humans. That includes through the media, social and otherwise, but perhaps even more central are those conversations we have with the actual humans in our lives -- our neighbors, those with whom we do business, in our churches, our workplaces, and above all, in our schools.

Preschoolers engage in daily converse about virtue. It happens every day, all day long as they express their opinions and show their emotions. It happens in each negotiation, in each agreement, in each decision about with whom and what we play. In my role as an adult who works with young children, my responsibilities are clearly defined as keeping the children safe and doing what I can to ensure their physical and psychological needs are met. And as a member of the community (one who perhaps knows "nothing") my role is not to direct, but to interact as much as possible as an equal. The rest, then, is up to all of us, and that is to engage in daily converse about excellence, living well, being righteous, and to discover, together, what means to be fully human.

This is a life worth living.

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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 ways 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!