But First We Must Admit We've Been Fooled

I stepped out into a windy morning. The sky overhead was swept clean of clouds, although they lurked around the fringes. But what caught my eye were the ravens. Dozens of them swirling in the wind that came, uncharacteristically, out of the south, wings spread, rarely flapping, but rather subtly changing shape to catch this or that gust. When the wind momentarily died, the ravens turned into it, moving into it like master sailors tacking against the wind. When the wind roared again, the ravens turned and abandoned themselves to it, tipping, flipping, and diving, embodied as acrobatic kites.

Behind them was the dome of blue. And then I noticed that it was peppered with ravens, soaring higher than I'd ever seen any bird before, hundreds of them, playing, there is no other rational explanation it.

Perhaps they were building brains, building muscles, making themselves more fit for survival, but like when humans play, really play, there is no reason other than joy. 

I want the children in my life to learn at full capacity, to soar to great heights, which is why I do whatever I can to set them free to play.

Mark Twain is thought to have said, "It's easier to fool people than to convince them they've been fooled." I think that's the position we are in with schooling. Despite ever-mounting evidence that the way we do schooling -- confined indoors, still and quiet, tested and graded, lectured and bored -- is perhaps the worst possible educational system anyone could devise. As I wrote last week, it's literally based on systems originally created to "break" animals to make them more docile and obedient. 

Things like joy, awe, curiosity, and wonder have no place in a system like this.

If our goal really is for our young to learn at full capacity, very few of our schools, beyond play-based preschools, base what happens within them on the evidence of how humans learn. We've been fooled so long and so thoroughly that we simply can't admit it.

There are those who will read this and strenuously object. They will assert that their children experience joy every day, that they are learning at full capacity. I have no doubt that these educators are doing the best they can, but it's clear they've been fooled. If the kids were experiencing so much joy, then why do 75 percent of them say they have "negative feelings" about school (according to the lead researcher, "they are not energized or enthusiastic," key aspects of joy). If they are learning at full capacity, then why do so many children fail to earn top marks, fall through the cracks, and require remediation?

These ravens didn't need anyone's permission to play in the wind. When joy is at hand, it is their's to embrace. That is how life is meant to learn.

The plight of modern human children is that they need permission for everything they do, even play. In our schools, sequels of joy are stifled, leaps of joy are discouraged. Indeed, almost all expressions of joy, if not immediately curtailed through obedience, are grounds for punishment. 

Going outside to be in the wind, under the dome of blue, is limited to, at best, a few meager minutes of the day. The American Bar Association, the Association for the Prevention of Torture, and other organizations say that humane incarceration requires giving prisoners a minimum of one hour a day outdoors. Most of our schools don't even allow even half that time to elementary school children. Some surveys show that the typical American child spends less than 10 minutes a day engaged in unstructured play outdoors, despite the fact that all the research finds that humans think more clearly while outdoors. Learning, not to mention mental health, demands time outdoors, yet our schools flat out ignore it.

It's a difficult thing to admit, that we've been doing it so wrong for so long. Tragic even, considering all the generations who have been subjected to it. It takes courage and humility to admit we've been fooled, courage and humility that most of us don't seem to have, even as we know in our hearts that it's true.

Can't we even, in the interest of education, give our children permission to play? It's joy that matters, not their damn test scores.

"(T)he imagination," writes George Orwell, "like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity."

The evidence tells us that we must set children free, like these ravens, to find joy in the wind, and it's only from this that learning at full capacity will take wing. 

But first we must admit we've been fooled.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 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!

Parental Rights

Awhile back, I read the disgusting story of a police officer and his wife who were arrested for handcuffing and jailing his own three-year-old overnight, for two nights in a row, for the "crime" of soiling himself. Their defense is that it was their parental right.

Thankfully, Florida state law recognizes this as an actual crime. I suspect the parents, unless there was evidence of other abusive or neglectful behavior, got off with a warning, perhaps a required parenting course, and maybe some sort of probationary period during which the appropriate state agency could keep tabs on them for a time. That's probably what was best for the whole family. Not only was that poor boy traumatized by his parents' actions, he likely feels responsible for getting his parents in trouble, the whole episode will remain with all of them for the rest of their lives, and, thinking rationally, it's probably best to allow them to deal with the natural consequences and move forward.

Of course, it's tempting, in anger, to want those parents punished more severely. How could anyone treat a young child like that? On the other hand, I'm confident there are others who feel that they were within their rights as parents and are outraged that the state would presume to step in to a "family matter." Indeed, these parents obviously felt that way. After all, as the father is quoted as saying, "it worked."

"Parent rights" stands at the center of much of the current controversy swirling around our public schools. The argument being used to ban books and speech is that parents have the right to protect their children's innocence about certain topics, especially with regard to gender, sexuality, and race. There are even some who don't want their child taught anything that smacks of social-emotional learning, sternly scolding that schools should stick to all-academics-all-the-time. And there are some who believe they have the right to jail their three-year-old.

My child is an adult now, but when she was young I also felt that, ultimately, my rights, as her parent, were paramount. I wasn't anti-vaccination, for instance, but I did ask our pediatrician lots of questions which resulted in delaying some and staggering others. I once had words with one of her teachers (firm but without involving his superiors) over what I saw as an inappropriate use of collective punishment. And in that same spirit I tried to respect the rights of other parents. When we invited another girl along on a family vacation, her father gave me long list of dos and don'ts as a condition of letting her join us, a list that contained many things I found ridiculous, but to which I nevertheless adhered. Although had one of those conditions been, say, to spank (or jail) her, I would have let him know that I wasn't going to do those things and let him be the one who told his daughter why she couldn't join us.

There is always a line. Jailing a three-year-old clearly crosses that line. When the line is crossed, the rest of us get to override the parents. The challenge is knowing where the line is drawn and we're not always going to agree on where that is, but let there be no doubt: there is a line beyond which parents lose their rights, even if they cross it in the privacy of their own home. We, as a society, through our institutions, get to decide when a parent has engaged in abuse or neglect. When that happens, the parents lose their rights.

The "parent rights" argument, as currently be used against our public schools, however, is an entirely different thing, although it's not new. Parents who exert their rights to "protect" their children from discussions of gender, sexuality, and race, are in a head-on collision with the rights of parents who see it as essential that their children be educated about those very things. On one side, parents say they are concerned that their white children, for instance, will be made to feel shame and guilt over discussions of our nation's history of slavery. They say that discussions of gender or sexuality will plant ideas in their children's heads, confuse them, and are an attack on their "innocence." On the other, parents are concerned that if these topics are excluded from classroom discussions, their child will grow up thinking there is something wrong with them unless they are white, straight, and identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. Our public schools are currently in the process of figuring out how to navigate this, just as the public at large is doing the same thing.

I was recently talking with my mother about her decision to put me on the bus when the courts ordered the desegregation of public schools in 1970. Most of my neighborhood friends, all white, were pulled from public schools and sent to segregated private schools, many of them citing their rights as parents. I recall a neighbor worrying that if her white child went to school with black children, he might grow up to marry one. Mom told me that she wanted her children to attend pubic schools because "you would be spending the rest of your life in public." She wanted us to learn how to live, work, and play in the real world. She was, and still is, a woman of morals and values, and she definitely wanted us to share them, she told us so, but she also knew that once we walked out the front door, we were in public where we would be not just be exposed to a diversity of people and ideas, but have to learn to share public life with them. When I heard things while in public, either from teachers, books, or other children, that unsettled my worldview, I would discuss them with my parents. They would tell me their views. I can't tell you how often Mom would start a sentence with, "Some people believe . . ." or "Some people don't think . . ." I'll never forget telling her about the Theory of Evolution, a scientific framework that continues to be vilified by many people. She said, "Well, I guess if that's the way God created the world, then who are we to say it's wrong?"

I'm old enough to remember when prayer was banned in school. Our teachers, from one day to the next, were no longer allowed to lead Christian prayers. This was, in part, a parent rights issue. Parents of non-Christian children didn't want their kids forced to pray Christian prayers. When this happened, my Christian mother told us that we could just say our own private prayers, shrugging, "Prayer isn't for showing off anyway. It's for talking with God."

My point is that when you send your child to public school, you don't lose your rights. No parents do. But at the same time, it's in the nature of "the public" to be diverse. Ideally, it's a place where individuals come together as a community that doesn't just make room for everyone, but is created by everyone. Within our own homes, within the confines of our chosen communities, we have the right to exclude people and ideas, but the very definition of "the public" in a democratic society means that our ability to exclude others is very limited. And as for lost "innocence," isn't that just another way of saying lost "ignorance?" 

I understand that in a diverse world, we all draw our lines in different places. In private, we have an almost unrestricted right to decide where those lines go, but the moment we step into the public, we are just one point of view in a world of points of view and it always means a loss of innocence. I'm often critical of public schools on this blog, and I remain so, but it was my experience in public schools combined with my relationship with my parents that taught me how to be myself in this diverse world, while at the same time allowing others to be themselves. My academic education may have been inferior, but my public education was unsurpassed.

Believe me, I understand parent rights. I value them. I strive to honor them. But unless you're prepared to be the jailor of your own child, they will lose their ignorance. It's called education.

*****

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 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!

Connected, Reflected, Experiencing Lightness and Sweetness, Knowing

In the 1970's, scientists "discovered" that marine animals produce D-amino acids. I put the word "discovered" in quotes because they were hardly the first to know this: catfish have known, and exploited this fact as a way to sense their world, for hundreds of millions of years.

Galileo famously "invented" the telescope in 1609, but he was unwittingly creating a poor copy of the visual structure of jumping spiders who evolved it millions of years before.

Leading neuroscientist Antonio Damasio states, unequivocally, that bacteria and plants are "intelligent." The fact that they behave in intelligent ways -- turning toward the light, for instance -- is his evidence. Yet many of us discount this intelligence because, while the behavior shows all the hallmarks of intelligence, we do not believe that plants know they are intelligent, and for us modern humans, that makes all the difference. We make the same assumption about catfish, jumping spiders, palm trees, and even our own human babies.

This represents one of the most harmful prejudices of Western culture: we define "knowing" as a purely cognitive function. Perhaps we don't do it consciously, especially with our own babies, but we tend to dismiss most of the world's intelligence as inferior to ours simply because we don't believe that plants, animals, and newborns know that they know. Indeed, even when a plant, animal, or baby behaves in a clearly intelligent way, we dismiss it as mere "instinct," reserving intelligence for ourselves alone.

Other cultures, including many of North America's Indigenous cultures, have traditions of understanding intelligence in a broader sense, ascribing it to all of nature. 

Our Western tradition of asserting "dominion" over nature has separated us from it and this disconnection from nature has set us on a cancerous path.

"There is now compelling evidence that our elders were right, " writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in her masterpiece book Braiding Sweetgrass, "the trees are talking to one another. They communicate via pheromones, hormone like compound that are wafted on the breeze, laden with meaning." Our cultural prejudice causes the Western mind scoff -- "C'mon, trees don't know they are communicating" -- but the trees have been talking in this way for millions of years, while the meager and limited vocalizations we call language only emerged a few hundred thousand years ago, a blink of an eye in the larger scheme of things.

When our babies turn toward us to suckle, when they cry out for connection, when they seek out the eyes of others, they are behaving intelligently. They are born talking to us, clearly, precisely, letting us know exactly what they need, yet we've become so disconnected that we are often confounded and confused by what they're saying.

Western science, that effort to overcome mere instinct, is, as Kimmerer writes, "rigorous in separating the observer from the observed, and the observed from the observer." It is an active, overt attempt to disconnect ourselves, to seek some sort of objective, third person perspective that holds true for all things for all times. But as the catfish know, as the jumping spiders know, as the plants and babies know, nothing exists outside of its relationship with the rest of the world. Or at least that is, in a nutshell, the theory being pursued by physicists like Carlo Rovelli.

"(W)e have access only to perspectives," writes Rovelli, "Reality is perhaps nothing other than perspectives. There is no absolute. We are limited, impermanent, and precisely for this reason, to live, to be, as we do, is so light and sweet." In Rovelli's view of the universe, we find that the only place where measurements and observations yield definitive results is in our own subjective experience. We live in a web of relations and when we seek to consider anything outside of those relationships, when we engage in the arrogance of knowing that we know, we disconnect, leaving us farther and farther from the truth . . . Or at least farther from this moment's truth. The question, Rovelli says, is not "What is the state of affairs?" but rather, "How will an object manifest itself next?" What we observe and experience is not a reflection of a world that exited before us, nor will it exist afterward. The observation or experience you are having right now is all there is.

Catfish and jumping spiders, and babies know this without knowing they know it. 

Yesterday, I watched a year old baby, unsteadily walking along the sidewalk in front of my home. The mocking birds have recently returned and they were filling the air with their magnificently varied and cacophonous song. The baby stopped in her tracks, her eyes turned toward a tree that was singing. "You hear the birds," her parents said, before urging her to move along toward the car. But the baby didn't move. She was far too intelligent for that. And, thankfully, so were her parents who left her to stand in the midst of life, connected, reflected, experiencing lightness and sweetness, knowing.

******

    

After three printings, we are getting to the end of our book supply and it's unlikely that we'll print more. We've shipped what's left to Amazon, so here's your last chance to get your copy of Teacher Tom's First Book and Teacher Tom's Second Book. 

"I recommend these books to everyone concerned with children and the future of humanity." ~Peter Gray, Ph.D.

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!

Creating a Beautifully Age-Appropriate Curriculum

When I became a preschool teacher, I knew little about dinosaurs. Today, I'm much more knowledgable, not because I've made a study of paleontology, but because I've been present for hundreds of spontaneous preschool conversations on the topic.

Indeed, anyone who has had scores of young children pass their way, is in the same boat. In any group of preschoolers, there are always a few who can't wait to tell us what they know about dinosaurs. These are three, four, and five-year-olds tossing around words like apatosaurus, Jurassic, and carnivore. They bandy about concepts like extinction and evolution. They understand that these creatures no longer exist, although they wonder, like scientists do, whether or not some of them have simply evolved into animals with whom we modern homo sapiens share the earth, like birds or lizards. These discussions divert into geology, volcanism, and outer space, the source of the asteroids that may or may not have triggered a mass dinosaur die-off.

The children come to the classroom with their own bits of knowledge about dinosaurs, gleaned from shows and books and internet searches they've made alongside parents and caretakers and older siblings, all driven by curiosity. Our school is the place where they share their individual perspectives on dinosaurs, mingling it with the perspectives of peers, constructing a collective perspective that approaches closer to the full truth, but, like with all human inquiry, can never reach it. It's a beautifully age-appropriate curriculum.

It's beautiful because it simply emerges from the children, year after year, usually driven by the passions of a handful of kids, while we all, to one degree or another, get swept up in the educational excitement. And there is always excitement because otherwise the topic would die, as it should, for lack of it. When I sit amongst the children as they debate, theorize, make connections, and struggle with unanswered questions, I feel that I'm experiencing the Socratic ideal in which it's not correct answers, but the examination, the thinking, and the wondering that matters.

Contrast this to the way dinosaurs might be taught in a standard school. It begins with the adults who conceive of a set of "facts" that the teachers must impart. The children must then hold whatever the teacher tells them in their heads long enough to prove it on a test they take under the strict command to keep their eyes on their own paper, because in this scenario the urge to "collaborate" is redefined as the sin of "cheating." Educators, who typically have nothing to do with creating this dinosaur curriculum, are then tasked with artificially injecting curiosity and excitement by somehow "spurring" or "motivating" the children. This, of course, is nothing like the Socratic ideal, but is rather just plain old boring school.

I'm using dinosaurs in this example because, as a subject matter, it's universal, but at any given moment, in a play-based environment, the children are collectively cobbling together a perfectly age-appropriate curriculum on something, anything, about which they are curious. 

One year, a group of four and five-year-olds became engrossed in a game they referred to as "baby snow leopard." They played the game day after day with variations, although it always involved one or two children pretending to be baby snow leopards, while their "owners" (the rest of the children) attempted to keep them in a cage. In this case, it was a literal cage -- a large dog crate that was missing its door. The owners would wrestle the baby leopards into the cage, then block the exit. Eventually, however, the babies would escape and run away. They were chased by their owners who spoke not in the language of jailers, but rather of caretakers or parents.

"Come back, honey."

"It's not safe out here for babies."

"We'll give you a cookie if you go back in your cage right now."

But the snow leopards refused to respond as their owners wanted and, after a long chase, would be forcibly returned to captivity.

Holy cow!

As adults, we can clearly see the all-too-close-to-the-bone curriculum that emerged from the children, from their own questions, curiosity, and experience. It's a curriculum that was obviously vital to them, and I think we all know why. This universal "subject" will never be made part of an adult-imposed curriculum, even as every one of us deals with it throughout our lives, personally, socially, psychologically, and politically. 

I would argue that this baby snow leopard game, or our discussions about dinosaurs, or any one of the infinite other subjects of children's' curiosity and excitement is not just the proper, but the only, curricula that matters. When we quit trying to put them in our cages, even if we're doing it for "their own good," we find that everything worth learning emerges from the children themselves, and they are always perfectly capable of cobbling together their own beautifully age-appropriate curriculum.

******

    

After three printings, we are getting to the end of our book supply and it's unlikely that we'll print more. We've shipped what's left to Amazon, so here's your last chance to get your copy of Teacher Tom's First Book and Teacher Tom's Second Book. 

"I recommend these books to everyone concerned with children and the future of humanity." ~Peter Gray, Ph.D.

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 Feeling of Being Alive

As a boy, I would feel excitement about, say, Christmas morning or an upcoming family vacation. My heart would beat a little faster in anticipation. My thoughts would race ahead, attempting to live the moment, and all its possible permutations, before it had arrived. As the day approached, it could be hard to sleep or eat or do much of anything else. Sometimes my whole body would tense up with the excitement, unable to contain it as I squealed, "I can't waaaaaait!" 

Today, a couple times a month, I find myself in front of an audience of early childhood educators. In the days and minutes leading up to these events, I find my heart beating a little faster. My thoughts race ahead to all the possible permutations. I often toss and turn the night before, my appetite tends to shrink, and as the moment approaches, I can't really focus on anything else. Sometimes, often just before taking the stage, the feeling fills my entire body and the only way to release it is to tense all my muscles, then release them all at once with an explosive expulsion of breath.

Somewhere along the line, I've learned to interpret this collection of bodily experiences as nervousness or even anxiety. Psychologists call this phenomenon "cognitive reappraisal," although they are most commonly talking about it going in the opposite direction, as they help their patients recognize and label sensations in order to reinterpret them in an adaptive way. A typical example might be to reappraise nervousness as excitement, although it appears that as I've aged I've gone the opposite direction. 

Over the past several years, however, as I've become increasingly aware of how human minds work, I've tried to be more aware of my "interoceptive sensations," which is to say the feelings that come from my bodily organs and extremities. This, new research tells us, is where our emotions begin, in our bodies, and our brains then construct our emotions. Our bodies are not subject to cognitive bias the way our brains are, which means that our bodies are often more rational than our brains.

When I'm aware of my interoceptive self, I'm better able get in on the ground floor of the emotion being constructed and have found that I can more often than not reappraise my feelings as excitement instead of nervousness. 

"Common sense," writes psychologist and philosopher William James, "says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. (But) this order of sequence is incorrect . . . (W)e feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble." Our organs and extremities are always a few milliseconds (even as long as two full seconds) ahead of our brains: that's the raw material from which our emotions are constructed.

Interoceptive awareness is how we can take control (sometimes) of our emotions. As early childhood educators, we take advantage of this every time we encourage a child to take deep breathes, to pause and notice their bodies. We are doing this when we stop coaching and distracting and instead allow a child to fully feel their strong emotion. So often we're coached to "help" them by labeling their emotion (e.g., "You're feeling sad," or "You're feeling frustrated"), but I wonder, given the latest research, that maybe we're better served to allow them to first tell us what they feel. Our suggestions may turn out to be spot on, but they're more likely to be simplifications or even misappraisals. Worse, our words can even become self-fulfilling prophesies in which we rob them of the opportunity to construct their own emotion from the sensations their body is experiencing. For all we know, they were on their way to constructing excitement and instead we construct anxiety on their behalf.

René Descartes famously declared, "I think therefore I am," but maybe it's time to reevaluate that. For her book The Extended Mind, science journalist Annie Murphy Paul interviews neuroanatomist and interception expert A.D. Craig: 

(I)t would be more accurate to say, "I feel, therefore I am." Craig maintains that interoceptive awareness is the basis of the "material me," the source of our most fundamental knowledge of ourselves. Because our hearts beat, because our lungs expand, because our muscles stretch and our organs rumble -- and because all these sensations, unique to us, have carried on without interruption since the day of our birth -- we know what it is to be one continuous self, to be ourselves and no other. Interoception, says Craig, is nothing less than "the feeling of being alive."

And that is the greatest gift we can give a child -- or anyone -- the feeling of being alive.

******

    

After three printings, we are getting to the end of our book supply and it's unlikely that we'll print more. We've shipped what's left to Amazon, so here's your last chance to get your copy of Teacher Tom's First Book and Teacher Tom's Second Book. 

"I recommend these books to everyone concerned with children and the future of humanity." ~Peter Gray, Ph.D.

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!

Habit and Routine

Since the Enlightenment, the general consensus has been that our brains essentially react to signals received via our senses and what follows is an orderly chain-reaction of emotion, reason, analysis, and decision-making, which is sent back to our bodies as commands about how to move in response whatever we're sensing. In recent decades, however, neuroscientists have discovered that this isn't at all how it works. Our brains, it seems, are not reaction machines, but rather prediction machines. They aren't waiting for stimuli in order to respond, but are rather actively anticipating, even creating, what is happening based on experience. Indeed, some 90 percent of what we "perceive" is actually our brain's prediction about what it expects to be happening, with only 10 percent of our so-called perceptions being facts about the world as it actually is.

As a result, we live in a world of habits and routines derived from our experience that in turn further confirm our predictions in a kind of self-filling cycle.

Habits and routines are important to all of us, but especially to young children because they don't have the accumulated experience we adults have from which to make predictions. Classroom routines are part of creating an environment for young children in which at least some of the stressful guesswork is removed from the prediction process. 

Of course, this lack of accumulated experience also, at least in part, explains why young children are notoriously facile divergent thinkers (the process of creating multiple unique ideas or solutions to problems, commonly referred to as "creative thinking"). They haven't developed the habits and routines of thought that tend to lock us adults into a more limited range of ideas and solutions.

Routines are a collection of useful habits, ideally self-selected. Of course, the initial classroom routine may be imposed by adults, but in a healthy classroom, the children themselves immediately begin to shape it to suit themselves both individually and collectively. We may have provided the initial framework, but over weeks and months what the children do within that framework is all their own. And as anyone who has ever tried to flip-flop their classroom routine, or otherwise wrest control of it from the children, quickly discovers how important it is to them: some might go along, but many more will, in one way or another, fight back. 

That's because habits and routines are important.

The great psychologist and philosopher William James wrote, "Education, in short, cannot be better described than by calling it the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior." This, of course, jibes with what we know about the predictive nature of human brains: our very survival is dependent on this type of "education."

That said, we all know that habits and routines can become problematic. Many of our mental health challenges, like anxiety and depression, can at least in part be thought of as "bad habits," habits and routines of mind that careen beyond our control. And the pursuit of mental health is one of attempting to replace those bad habits with better ones.

But on a more prosaic level, our habits and routines can deaden our experience of life because they leave little room for surprise. I think of it as a kind of calcification in which the world becomes duller because my brain's predictions have become, well, predictable. Old habits can make it increasingly difficult to think outside the box, because, after all, by the time we're "experienced" 90 percent of what our brains perceive are actually just habit or routine responses to the messages of our senses. I regularly find myself inspired by the sheer creativity of young children who, when left to think for themselves, solve problems in ways my old, calcified brain simply would not conceive on its own.

When our habits and routines are too rigid and inflexible, they cause us to pay less attention to the actual world around us as we get lost in our habitual predictions. We miss the changes, subtlety, and beauty. We may have purchased our home for the view, but habit and routine tend to blind us until a visitor enthuses over it. 

We cannot live without habits and routines, but at the same time, if we aren't aware, they make the experience of life less intense and therefore less real. I've been thinking a lot lately about the 90 percent of my experience that is, essentially, habit and routine. That percentage definitely drops when I spend time with young children, when I travel, when I engage with art, when I read a novel, and especially when I remember to be curious instead of judgmental. 

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 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!

Play, Not Work, Sets Us Free

"Adolescence" was invented in the mid-1800's by the warlike Prussian nation. They had just suffered a humiliating military defeat at the hands of Napoleon and felt their downfall was due, at least in part, to their soldiers not being obedient enough. Some had even run away at the prospect of dying for their nation.

Part of their plan to create a more loyal and malleable population was the invention of schools. As Tyson Yunkaporta writes in his book Sand Talk, the idea was to slow the "transition from childhood to adulthood, so that it would take years rather than, for example, the months it takes in Indigenous rites of passage." The goal was to "create a permanent state of childlike compliance in adults," so they designed schools around the same methods used to break horses and other domestic animals: separating the young from their parents, confining them in enclosed spaces, limiting access to their natural habitat, and using rewards and punishments to force compliance with meaningless tasks. This Prussian method of compliance-based schooling was a boon for both for the military as well as the economy, which is why it became the foundation for most of what passes for education in the industrialized world today.

Shockingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the Prussian slogan for their educational system was Arbiet macht frei (Work sets you free), which was infamously employed a century later at the gates of Nazi concentration camps.

We tell children they can grow up to be anything they want to be. We say it even though we know it's a lie. Most of us do not get to be whatever we want to be. We say it, however, because others have said it to us. We say it because we don't want to crush their little spirits with the truth that work is in their future. We say it because it the is one of the mantras we use to inspire them to keep their noses to the grindstone. Oh sure, we allow them to play at being artists, dancers, princesses, and athletes, but only while they are very young. Soon enough, and in some cases even during their preschool years, we begin to pressure them, both subtly and not-so-subtly to at least prepare a "fall back plan," like accounting or computer science. 

I imagine there are some readers here who are thinking, "But, Teacher Tom, you can be anything you want to be. You only have to work hard enough and never give up." How is that different than Arbiet macht frei?

It wasn't that long ago that US Secretary of Education Migual Cardona sent a message from an official social media account: "Every student should have access to an education that aligns with industry demands and evolves to meet the demands of tomorrow's global workforce." People try to tell me that today's schools are nothing like the old Prussian model, but even our top education policymaker seems to disagree. We are here, it seems, to serve the economy, not the other way around. Arbiet macht frei?

Yunkaporta points out that the word "work" does not even exist in many Indigenous languages. Indeed, the "work" his people did do prior to colonization was confined to a couple hours a day and was comprised of things many of us now do as a break from work like gardening, cooking, hunting, hiking, camping, tinkering, and fishing. They spent the rest of their time building relationships, making art, dancing, playing games (almost always cooperative), telling stories, and making music. Indeed, they spent their time doing the very things that our youngest children do when left alone to be whatever they want to be -- not when they grow up, but right now. Play, not work, sets us free.

In many ways, "You can be anything you want" is just the contemporary version of Arbiet macht frei. In many ways, our complaints about children being distracted, not staying on task, and only wanting to play video games all day, are the very complaints the colonizers had about Indigenous people they encountered around the globe. And just as we did with those populations, we are doing to our children, generation after generation. No wonder societal change is nearly impossible. No wonder the rich keep getting richer. No wonder inequality of one kind just morphs into inequality of another. We are taught that a life of work will somehow set us free, when all it really does is sustain the economy.

You might ask: But what can we do about it? After all, this is the way it is. Certainly, we can't tell our children to just stop working. Believe me, I get that. I've spent well over two decades trying to get people to see that there is a better, more democratic, more equitable, and more human way to do school; that play, not work, is the secret to a population of critical thinkers instead of obedient drones. And I'm not the only one. Yet it doesn't seem we've moved the needle very much, except perhaps in some small corners where play is nurtured and protected like an endangered species. 

And that's what we can do. The Prussian model seeks to create a population for whom work, no matter how mind-numbing or back-breaking, is the only hope. That's why they try to inspire us with the promise of a freedom that will never come. When we keep play alive in our own lives, in the lives of our children, even if it is just in the nooks and crannies, we are creating real hope for freedom. If you are reading this, you are probably one of those people keeping play alive. In this world, play is the one thing that can give us genuine hope. It is the only path to freedom. And that is why play is the greatest threat to the status quo.

It's play, not work, that will set us free.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 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.

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