What The Research Tells Us To Do

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Economic Forum, and Unicef (and according to the dubious measurement of standardized test scores) Finland has the best schools in the world. They have achieved this status by building their educational system on evidence. The US languishes around the middle of the pack, often falling into the bottom half according to some measures. We have achieved this lack of success by relying upon the busy-body guesswork of policy makers, billionaire dilettantes, and administrators who listen to them.

It shouldn't be surprising that the system based on evidence, on research, on reality, would outperform the one based on the fantasies and feelings of people who are not professional educators. In Finland, they do not try to teach kindergarteners to read because the evidence tells us that formal literacy instruction should not start until at least the age of seven and that children who are compelled into it too early often suffer emotionally and academically in the long run. In the US we are forcing kindergartners, and even preschoolers, to learn to read. There is no, as in zero, research that finds longterm gains from teaching to read in kindergarten. In fact, the research that has been done tends to find early instruction reduces literacy in later years.

The evidence tells us that early childhood education should focus on equity, happiness, well-being and joy in learning. This is what Finland has done by basing their educational model on childhood play, which is, again according to the overwhelming preponderance of research, the gold standard. The US has based its early childhood education on standardized testing, increased "instructional time," bottoms-in-your-seats carrot-and-stick standardization, and an ever-narrowing focus on literacy and math despite the evidence that it causes longterm harm to children, because people in power who know nothing about education think that sounds good to them.

We are through the looking glass here. We are doing harm to our children. We are subjecting them to decades of "education" that is, again according to the evidence, doing them far more harm than good, while children in other countries are being provided the best education available because the adults are adult enough to look at reality and act accordingly.

This is not my feeling. This not my opinion. This is not my philosophy. These are the facts as far as we can currently determine them. It is cruel, even abusive, to base our educational system on other people's feelings and fantasies, even if they are rich and powerful. For the sake of our children, we must demand play-based education because, damn it, that's what the evidence tells us.

(Please click the links in this post. Most of them take you to articles, research, and papers that provide even further links into the evidence.)

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Intelligence Has Nothing To Do With It

A couple days ago, I took an online IQ test on a lark. It appears that my IQ is between 133 and 149, "or it may even be higher!" which means it may be over 160, so you might very well, right now, be reading the words of a bona fide genius.

Art: Karntakuringu Jukurrpa

Naturally, I'm joking. No intelligent person puts any stock in the validity of tests that purport to measure intelligence. I sure don't, especially a self-administered online test that only took a few minutes, but there was a part of me that was nevertheless disappointed to learn that I'm pretty much average. We all know about the cultural biases that go into these tests, so of course, being a middle-aged, middle-class, white male, one might expect a person like me to score between 133 and 149. And that's the most reliable thing about most standardized tests: they tend to be very good at predicting the demographics of the test takers, but little else.

"Intelligence" is a cultural construct, something that is dictated by the dominant culture. If history is written by the victors, then intelligence is defined by the victors, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other ways of being smart, they just might not get you into your college of choice. A Google search will tell you that there is not just one type of intelligence, but rather two . . . or three, or seven, or eight, or nine. The dictionary definition is "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills," not identifying what specific knowledge or skills qualify, which suggests that intelligence is not so much about what one knows or does, but rather the capacity for growth.

One of the things that I valued most about my decades as a parent and teacher in cooperative preschools was that the children's parents attended school with them. Every parent absolutely knows that their child is a genius. They've seen it with their own eyes. They've been astounded. They've been inspired as their babies have applied themselves in their sponge-like way to acquisition of knowledge and skills, the connections they've made, the epiphanies, and the apparent ease with which it all happens. And when they get to observe their child in the classroom they get to see that they are right -- their child is a genius! And so is that one, and so is that one, and so is that one . . . Indeed, genius is not the rarity our IQ tests would have it be, but rather the norm, at least during these preschool years.

So what happens? The social construct of intelligence happens. This invention of the dominant culture happens. It sorts the children according to socio-economic status, letting just enough high achieving minorities through to prove the rule of this thing called intelligence. It's as if the concept of intelligence exists primarily as form of social control, as a way for one group to assert its superiority over another in the guise of "objectivity." Or maybe it calls into question, not the concept of intelligence itself as much as the attempt to measure intelligence, because it's only through measurement, through judgement and ranking, that we can sorting winners from losers.

This is the dark heart of academic testing, grading, and assessment. No matter how well-intended, the game is always rigged, at least so long as we presume to measure this non-existent thing called "intelligence." As cooperative preschool parents learn, there are as many types of intelligence as their are children. Education is emphatically not about intelligence, but rather about growth. As educators, we should not be here as referees enforcing the rules that determine who wins and loses, but rather as fellow travelers, supporting each child as they use their unique abilities to become their best selves. Intelligence has nothing to do with it.

 I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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Imagine Who We Would Become

The central purpose of every human community that has ever existed is to care for children. As I wrote last week, the only question is "How?" Generally speaking, modern society has answered that question in a way that gives children a raw deal. While it's certainly true that we're good at keeping them alive by historic standards, the rate of diagnosable childhood mental illnesses is increasing at an alarming rate, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that as many of 20 percent of American children have been diagnosed with ADHD, behavior problems, anxiety, depression or some other mental disorder.

This should concern us. It should make us step back and seriously examine how we are answering the foundational question of our society. Certainly, if we wanted to, we could do a better job of caring for children. Many individuals, including many of the readers of this blog, have done just that. I know that among the people reading this post there are thousands of homeschoolers and unschoolers, practitioners of attachment parenting and play-based education, people who have elevated caring for children to its proper place in their lives. I know also that there are thousands of others who, for economic reasons, are not yet able to make such dramatic changes their lives, but who are doing everything they can to assure their children the kind of childhood they need and deserve. Sadly, that still leaves tens of millions of children existing almost as a societal afterthought.

We've mostly answered "How?" with schools and day cares, with children spending most of their lives in these institutions, largely indoors, places they have not chosen, doing what they are told, when they are told, being kept physically safe and sufficiently nourished, while being starved in every other way. To develop normally, children must spend a minimum of three hours a day outdoors in unstructured play, with many experts insisting that four to six hours should be the norm. Most American children are not even coming close to the minimum, let alone the ideal. This change alone, three to six hours a day outdoors in unstructured play, would be transformative, yet I would hazard that most of us can't even imagine how to make that happen in our own lives, let alone at the institutions that we've charged with the most essential task of caring for children.

We are desperately in need of a transformation and this, I'm convinced, is where it must begin. Unstructured play outdoors has been the foundation of human childhood for most of human history, going back into our hunter-gatherer beginnings, a time when caring for children was manifestly understood to be the reason for everything else. We have lost our way and it's not just children who are suffering. We could change everything if we could only agree to the simple truth that every one of us, not just children, requires four to six hours a day playing outdoors. Imagine who we would become if we made that wish come true. We would, quite simply, become human once again.

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"The Supposition That Every Child Is A Kind Of Idiot"

Much of what passes for education, not just in the US, but around the world, starts with the premise that children aren't all that bright, that they are essentially lazy, and that they can't be trusted to know what's best for themselves. Of course, few of us would admit to thinking such thoughts about preschoolers, but there are plenty of adults who will authoritatively assert these criticisms about older children, like teenagers.

Having worked with young children for most of my adult life, I can assure you that every one of them is a genius (a conclusion that is supported by NASA), they are far less inclined toward laziness (if it even exits) than most adults I know, and concerning matters beyond safety, schedules, and courtesy, who am I to tell a child that I know better? The teenagers I've known don't tick any of those stereotyped boxes either, but even if I stipulate that the haters are correct, that many, if not most, teens are ignorant, lazy, and self-destructive, then my question is: How did they get that way? I mean, honestly, how did they un-learn their genius, their motivation, and their ability to make good decisions for themselves?

Is it just in their nature? Are children doomed by biology to become surly, indifferent, and slothful? I doubt that. It makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective. No, to the degree that it's true, it's something we do to them, and from where I sit all signs point to it being a self-fulfilling prophesy.

"I'm beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think." ~Anne Sullivan

Our entire school system is based upon the premise that children are reluctant learners, that they must be compelled, coerced, tricked, and driven. Not only must we adults rein them up to the wagon for their own good, but we are then required to entice them toward a pre-determined destination with carrots, while always threatening from behind with a stick. Is it any wonder that after a few years of this, they lose their will? We give them "education" as a kind of meaningless drudge, as an authoritarian exercise that seems almost designed to break their free will, even as we insist we are attempting to instill the opposite. How can it end any other way when you've been robbed of your right to control what, how, and when you are to learn? We squander their genius by making them jump through our hoops.

"Learning is the human activity that least needs manipulation by others. Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful activity." ~Ivan Illich

Children either come to hate school because it has been rendered meaningless or, perhaps worse, they become creatures of the system:

The anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to remember, and drives them away from the material being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don't know." ~ John Holt

Play-based education is self-directed learning. We start from the premise that children are geniuses, that they are naturally self-motivated learners, and that when left to pursue activities that they themselves find meaningful, they will come to discover what truly is best for themselves. This approach to education accords with what we know about the human instinct to learn: to become critical thinkers, to collaborate, and to create. Our traditional school system is not based upon evidence, but rather habit and the false premise that children are idiots.

"You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources? Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource!" ~Utah Phillips

There are those who nevertheless defend our current system, based on arguments that without "rigor" and compulsion children will never learn the value of "hard work." If they are to spend their days at their self-selected activities, how will they ever learn to put their nose to the grindstone? To do what they are told? To jump through society's hoops? These are the arguments of those who will forever attach education to the economy, as if we exist to serve it, rather than the other way around. It's a view of children as valuable natural resources, which means that we have a right to exploit them in the name of a greasy buck. "Hard work" is code for doing things we don't want to do and no free human, no matter how much they practice, gets good at that, except perhaps for people who have been broken, a fate I'd not wish on anyone. If you want to see real hard work, swing by a preschool playground where children are busy pursuing their own freely chosen meaningful activities: no one on earth works harder.

I have never met a child who is not curious and curiosity is the human urge to learn made manifest. Schooling seems to be designed to erase that curiosity and replace it with mere performance.

"This is really what the whole debate over compulsory schooling is about. Do we trust people's capacity to be curious or not?" ~Astra Taylor

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This Is Real Life

I attended a play-base kindergarten, although back then it was just called "kindergarten" because everyone apparently understood enough about education and development to know that play is what five-year-olds should be doing. First grade is when I was introduced to the concept of the desk. My own teacher, Miss McCutcheon, was obviously a progressive educator in that she had organized our desks into a sort of horseshoe shape, but the rest of the classrooms in my elementary school were arranged in the stereotypical forward-facing rows. Even in a horseshoe shape, we were expected, like the rest of the kids in the rest of the school, to sit at our desks, to mostly listen, to raise our hands if we had something to contribute, to answer questions, and to tip our heads to our desks while quietly working on assignments. We had to ask permission to use the toilet. Recess and lunch, the only times we were free of our desks, were the highlights of the day.

With some small variations, this more or less characterized what school was all about for the next 17 years. Yes, there were some innovative teachers who would have us "act things out," or work in groups, or otherwise break with the norm, but the result was always one in which we followed our leader, all of us working on the same things at the same time, and never, never, never looking over at a classmate's desk lest one be accused of cheating, the worst classroom offense.

This is more or less what schooling is still like for most kids. If school was supposed to be my preparation for life, then, generally speaking, it did a pretty poor job of it. Since graduating from college, I have rarely ever found myself sitting at a desk in a roomful of others, listening, raising hands, answering questions, and tipping my head to quietly work the same assignment as everyone else. I've had bosses, of course, but I've not once found myself in a roomful of colleagues working on the same thing at the same time. I've never again had to ask permission to pee. I've never again been expected to sit still even when my legs or back are aching. And as for looking over at someone else's work: how else can I be expected to collaborate if I don't know what they are doing?

Adult life turned out to be nothing like school. Most of what I've done in the "real world" is to gather together with other people around a "project," self-selected or otherwise, each of us bringing our unique perspectives, skills, and ideas to the table, and then, together, figuring out how to get it done. Our leaders, if there are leaders, aren't there to control our behavior or march us through an assembly line process with the expectation of results that can be judgmentally compared, but rather to guide and inspire, to help us as a group and as individuals to come together in ways that supports achieving what we've set out to achieve.

If we really want to prepare children for life, wouldn't that be better accomplished by letting them live it? When children are allowed to play together, when the adults are there to guide and inspire, rather than direct and judge, then they are really living the life that exists beyond the artificial confines of school. When they play they are learning the habits and skills required to succeed. It's collaboration, not competition, that stands at the center of our day-to-day lives. It's self-motivation, not compulsion, that makes life worthy of its name. As I watch children play, I see them again and again coming together around projects both large and small. I see them figuring out how to get it done. I see them each contributing according to their own perspectives, skills, and ideas. Leaders emerge when necessary, but if they seek to control rather than inspire, the project is doomed. 

This is real life. The children's own ideas are the project of the minute, day, or week, and from that they prepare for life by actually living it.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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My New Adventure

I have been the preschool teacher at Woodland Park Cooperative School for a long time. Nearly two decades ago I welcomed my first class of 3-5 year olds. A couple years later, I added a class of 2 year olds. Then we created our summer program, followed by a 4-5's program, which evolved into our current 4's program with the advent of our kindergarten. During that time, we've moved to larger facility, created two state-of-the-art playgrounds, built a magnificent greenhouse, educated thousands of parents, and created dozens of teachers who are still working in classrooms today. I'm proud of what I've done to grow and nurture the Woodland Park community, working to make it a place where everyone values children and understands the importance of their play. And I'm beyond grateful for everything this community has done to grow and nurture me.

In many ways, I grew up at Woodland Park and the families who entrusted me with their children have been my family. They've made it possible for me to become the "Teacher Tom" the rest of world knows, the blogger, author, and public speaker. Looking upon it from the perspective of today, it's a story that reads in my mind like a kind of fairytale, one that has had it's ups and downs, never dull, a daily adventure, but most importantly, always buoyed by love. I have been the luckiest man alive.

But as anyone who reads fairytales knows, the protagonist must inevitably leave home. I'm writing today to tell you about my new adventure as Teacher Tom. I am leaving my beloved Woodland Park at the end of the month to help found a new venture called Weekdays. Our vision is to help teachers, daycare providers, and parents to be their own bosses by starting their own play-based neighborhood preschools and daycares. I'm inspired by the idea of helping thousands of educators to take their financial futures into their own hands almost as much as the idea of creating thousands high-quality preschools. We're only in Washington state right now, but we intend to get to other states as quickly as possible. If you're interested, even if you're in another state, go ahead and create an account so that we can keep you apprised of what's happening.

Over half of the the US is currently in what are being called "childcare deserts," places where there are three or more children for every one preschool or daycare spot. This presents incredible challenges for families who are forced to cobble together care and education for their young children, often being forced to drive hours every day, often settling for sub-par options, often having to turn to an unreliable network of friends and family to fill in the gaps, all of which creates tensions and even toxic stress for families. At the same time, those who care for young children are barely earning enough to make ends meet. Here in Washington state the average annual income is around $30,000. Our idea is that there should be a high-quality preschool not just in every neighborhood, but ultimately on every block. Our idea is that children should grow up playing in their own neighborhoods. And our idea is that preschool educators should make a real living wage. Our goal is to do nothing less than transform early childhood education in America.

Our role is to support edu-entrepreneurs through the most daunting business challenges, such as navigating licensing, regulations and other paperwork, providing insurance, handling billing, helping with marketing and enrollment, and generally being their business partners so that they can focus on the most important part: caring for and educating young children. In my role as head of education, I will spend my days working with our teachers and providers to help them to create the kinds of programs that children deserve.

As for this blog, I will continue to write here every day, I will continue to write books, and I will continue to travel the country speaking out on behalf of children and their families just as I always have. It's only my "day job" that will change.

I'm excited about my new adventure even as I'm melancholy about leaving Woodland Park, although I expect to continue to be a frequent visitor and will always be a staunch supporter. This morning I am Max, the boy in the wolf costume who has discovered that the walls of his room have become the world all around. I'm looking forward to the wild rumpus ahead!

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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!

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That Is How Brains Grow

“We now know enough about the brain to realize that it’s mystery will always remain. Like a work of art, we exceed our materials.” ~Johan Lehrer

When our daughter was a preschooler, authority figures informed parents that the human brain was fully formed by around five-years-old. After that, there would be no new brain cells, which was why, they told us, the early years were so important. These were the scientific facts. Just a few days ago, a parent of a preschooler told me that the director of her child’s school told the assembled parents that the human brain was “90 percent developed” by five, information which she conveyed to me in a kind of jittery breathiness that betrayed both awe and panic. I recall feeling similarly about these scientific facts. 

The problem with these facts is that they were not facts 20 years ago and they are not facts today. They are the product of a debunked theory about human brain development. Sadly, these non-facts were, and still are, being used to support the toxic academic pressures being applied to our youngest citizens.

It seems that the earlier “facts” were based largely upon studies done on monkey brains in a laboratory. When skeptical scientists more recently tested the theory on monkeys living in their natural habitat they found that not only do their brains continue to produce new brain cells throughout their lives, but they produce a lot of them. It was being held in captivity that caused their brains to stop producing new cells. This has now been confirmed in birds, rats, and other animals, including humans: when animals are free, their brains grow, when they are not free they don’t.

Play is the “natural habitat” of young humans. Traditional schools are, at their core, a form of captivity. Longer school days, more academic instruction, developmentally inappropriate expectations, less time outdoors, standardization, and high stakes testing are causing children’s brains to stop growing. The cure, according to science, is to set our children free, to let them play: that is how brains grow.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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!

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The Future Is Theirs Anyway

Even the most bright-sided optimist has to admit that we human beings are far from figuring it all out. Yes certainly, if you look at it from just right perspective in just the right light, one can make the argument that we've managed make our collective lives in some ways better. At the same time, we often have to squint and rationalize to persuade ourselves it's so. We still fight bloody wars. People are still starving and sick. Bigotry and racism plague us. And we continue to fiddle as scientists urgently warn us that the earth is headed toward environmental disaster. Sure, you can say, "I'm not doing those things, but it's hard to argue that we aren't.

We educate our children. Many of us are choosing to do so in ways that differ from the way we were educated, but collectively we still rely on compulsory schooling, which has changed in many superficial ways, but fundamentally operates the ways schools have since there have been schools. We say that we educate children to prepare them for life, so that they can take their place in the project of making a better future for themselves and those around them. We arrogantly insist that we adults, people who have clearly not figured it all out, have the right, even the obligation, to tell the children what and how they should learn toward this end. We hope to prepare them to do better than the collective us, yet we send them daily to places where they are expected to do as they are told, learn what they are assigned, and jump through the hoops that are placed before them. The theory is that that this will somehow cause our children to be prepared for a future that none of us have figured out.

And as we self-righteously prepare our children for life, they are busy living it.

This is a great tragedy of not just modern childhood, but of humanity. We've doubled-down on schooling just as we need new ways of thinking, of doing, of seeing the world. We do not need more people thinking like the generations before them. We do not need more of the same. Those of us who work with young children spend our days around the greatest minds ever known. Those of us who refuse to tell them what and how to learn, who choose rather to create places where they can actually live their lives, rather than merely preparing for some theoretical future, tend to stand in awe. We cannot be among these fully formed human beings without becoming at least somewhat hopeful for the future, even as we know that most of them are destined for years of being "prepared," a process explicitly designed to shape them as replicas of what has come before rather than help them achieve their highest potential, which is as a free-thinking, free-doing, free-living human.

As the great John Dewey wrote over a decade ago, "Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself." We will, of course, never figure it all out, but doing the same thing over and over is certainly not the path forward. We need to stop this insane project of preparing our children and instead let them live. The future is theirs anyway.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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!

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