"Love And Anger Are Such A Puzzle!"

"It's the people we love the most who can make us feel the gladdest . . . and the maddest! 

Love and anger are such a puzzle! It's hard for us, as adults, to understand and manage our angry feelings toward parents, spouses, and children, or to keep their anger toward us in perspective. 

It's a different kind of anger from the kind we may feel toward strangers because it is so deeply intertwined with caring and attachment.

If the day ever came when we were able to accept ourselves and our children exactly as we and they are, then, I believe, we would have come very close to an ultimate understanding of what "good parenting" means. 

It's part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance -- and often far short. But one of the most important gifts a parent can give a child is the gift of accepting that child's uniqueness." ~Mister Rogers

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"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

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The Most Important Academic Skill Of All

The small, landlocked South Asian Kingdom of Bhutan uses an index called "Gross National Happiness" to guide all of its economic and development plans. They take it very seriously and the success or failure of every governmental policy is measured according to this index. One must even submit a GNH impact statement for review before undertaking any new endeavor, public or private, that may impact on the general well-being of the nation.

I just mention that by way of pointing out that there are ways other than money, perhaps even better ways, to assess the real value of an economic activity, just as there are ways other than test scores and grades, perhaps better ways, to assess the real value of education.

For instance, I've never come across a standardized test that measures the ability and willingness to take turns, but everyone knows that it's one of a happy life's most essential skills.

And you're sure not going to get very far if you don't work well with others, but you don't see that on any of the corporate academic assessment matrixes.

Or how about curiosity? I'll take curiosity over knowing the capital of Bhutan any day. (It's Thimphu. I was curious and looked it up.)

And anyone who has studied what it takes to get what you want out of life knows that boldness . . .

. . . and the willingness to take risks . . .

. . . and the ability to fall down . . .

. . . and get back up is far more important than the ability to diagram a sentence or deduce that the answer is "none of the above." What meager things we've come to expect from our schools.

A well-educated person is skeptical and often full of doubt.

She looks at things closely and doesn't necessarily take my word for it.

An educated person tries new things . . .

. . . and plays dramatically with his friends, practicing the complex interpersonal skills that will ultimately get him through life.

When I'm assessing students, I want them to be able to stand on their own two feet.

And to invent new things (at least things that are new to them) . . .

. . . and to feel proud of their accomplishments.

I'm looking for kids who help others . . .

. . . and can work well on their own . . .

. . . concentrating . . .

. . . and persevering . . .

. . . and just being silly.

I want to see that they are full of awe and wonder.

And ultimately, like the King of Bhutan, I'm always looking out for our Gross National Happiness.

Because in this world if we are to be truly happy, we are to be happy together. No one can call himself educated unless he understands this. And therein lies the most important academic skill of all -- the capacity for unmitigated . . .

. . . unbridled joy.

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"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, 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!

The Only Way Anyone Has Ever Come Alive

The "safest" plan is to grow up to become something like a computer programmer or accountant, preferably with a degree from a prestigious university. The only path to get there is to spend your high school years collecting extracurriculars, kudos, and, of course, excellent grades. Prior to that, naturally, you will have prepared yourself by applying yourself through middle school, but the real foundation is the elementary school years where you learn how to determine what your teachers want from you, then delivering, be it behavior or test scores. And everyone knows that this requires adapting to "seat work" and learning to read before kindergarten. This means that we have little choice but to get their noses to the grindstone as early as possible. It breaks our hearts sometimes, but one day, when they are safely ensconced in their solid, reputable careers, they will thank us.

This is what people mean when they say they want to "reverse engineer" education. If we can only determine the desired outcomes up front and work back from there, then we can fill our world with computer programmers and accountants. This may or may not be what any of the children want. How could they possibly know what they want? They're preschoolers, right? They're elementary school children; they're only adolescents; they're just teenagers. But, the reasoning goes, it would be irresponsible for us adults to allow them to waste their time on things we know they are going to abandon anyway, like art or dance or digging holes in the sand. Let's get them ensconced in their careers, then, from there, from a perch of safety, they can, perhaps as early as their late 30's, begin to dabble in art or dance or digging holes in the sand.

"Reverse engineering" is a concept that comes from engineering, of course, but more directly from the most dismal science, economics. It assumes that the adults will control the children, as one might a mechanism or calculation, and if done properly, with just the right inputs, the child will emerge as a computer programmer or accountant, which is the desired result.

Americans, including American children, have never been unhappier, a trend that pre-dates the pandemic by decades. The analysis in this link tries to lay the blame at the feet of digital media, but it seems much more likely that increased digital media use is a symptom more than a cause. Humans turn to distractions when our lives do not fulfill us, when it all seems gray, when we've played it too safe, when the future looks too much like the present. 

The world doesn't need more people who play it safe; it needs more people who've come alive. As important adults in the lives of children, it is a tragic cruelty when we view anyone, but children in particular, as what economists label "human resources." When we take charge of who they are for the first two decades of their lives, manipulating and steering them toward predetermined outcomes, when we rob them of the breadth and depth of life in order to properly manufacture them, we might make them "safe," but at what cost?

Our responsibility to young children is to help them discover what makes them come alive. The most important thing I've learned in the decades since I left school is that the real project is becoming who we are. Coming alive is a lifelong process, akin to being born again and again, but if we've not learned how to do it when we are young, it becomes, like learning a new language, increasingly difficult. This is what play is for: it is the only way anyone has ever come alive. And this is the only valid goal of education.

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"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, 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!

This Is How A Junkyard Playground Works

She hadn't come looking for me, but when I passed where she played with a friend, she said, "Teacher Tom, look at our play area." They then gave me a tour of junk they had purposefully arranged, explaining to me how everything worked. There was a slide and a merry-go-round and several other things that adult play area designers haven't yet, and probably never will, invent.

After admiring their project for a bit, a project that was still in process, I made my way up the hill to where the "bad guy" trap had taken up residence. This was a well-established project undertaken mostly by a partnership of two boys that was months in the making. 

I kept expecting them to lose interest, but they persisted. It was regularly disassembled, partially and totally, by other children several times, but they rebuilt it again and again, bigger and better than before. Every single item had a purpose and they happily explained it to anyone who showed an interest. I won't pretend to tell you everything they included in their bad guy trap, but there was radar.

Not far from the bad buy trap some girls were playing "birds." It's a game that one of them had been playing at least the prior year, but lately her passion for playing birds had inspired her playmates. Normally, their game involved chirping, flapping, and jumping off of things to simulate flying, but today they had built something from the junk at hand.

They had arranged orange traffic cones atop a small hill, surrounding what's left of an old shipping crate. "It's our nest, Teacher Tom." There was a kind of gangway, so I asked, "Is this how you get in?"

"No, this is the kid's nest. The trampoline is where the adults sleep. The wood is how we get to each other's rooms. Tweet tweet tweet tweet." They then went on to explain the purpose of everything in their nest.

Then down at the work bench I found a pair of brothers using PVC pipe to build a "machine" that performed such miraculous feats that they couldn't even explain it.

Our junkyard playground was in full swing, with every corner being used for purposeful collaboration, deep meaningful play that no adult could have imagined, although some might find echoes in their childhood memories.

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"Teacher Tom, our caped hero of all things righteous in the early childhood world, inspires us to be heroic in our own work with young children, and reminds us that it is the children who are the heroes of the story as they embark on adventures of discovery, wonder, democracy, and play." ~Rusty Keeler

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, 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!