Escaping The Deluge

Yesterday, we spent our morning hours observing children from the Krokur school located in the small fishing village of Grindavik playing on the local "lava," the volcanic rock and spongy moss landscape that is characteristic of much of Iceland. From a distance is looks like a rugged, relatively flat terrain, but once you're in it, you find that it's choc-a-bloc with deep cracks and crevices, falls and rises, jagged edges and thick pads of spongy moss, making it a challenge to traverse for both children and adults alike.

It's an alien and harshly beautiful place, the backdrop for the "magic" of Iceland, a place of trolls, elves, and fairies who exist as "hidden people," typically only making themselves visible in the corner of your eye, disappearing the moment you turn to look directly at them. In this place, tragically, a young troll named Colli was turned to stone when she didn't heed her parent's warnings and ventured from her dark cave during daylight hours. As I stood admiring Colli, wondering, the children, after a brief moment to greet her, unceremoniously piled their belongings against her flanks, and scampered off into the lava, discussing their plans and projects.

We talk a lot about our information age, how modern humans are bombarded from all directions and at all times, how all this information is making us anxious and stressed, but as I stood there taking in my surroundings, I realized that there was just as much information here on the lava as there is in the city. Everywhere I looked, I spied something new: small black berries growing from the moss, fungus, dampness, darkness and light, sharpness and softness, hot and cold. There was sun and wind and cold and clouds. Everywhere I looked, there was something new to discover, to contemplate, to taste, feel, smell or hear. Indeed, there is every bit as much information in nature as there is in the city, but this information didn't stress me out at all. On the contrary, I found it calming.

As I watched the children and their teachers chatter with one another out there, away from day-to-day life, I appreciated that there were no ringing phones or dinging texts or blathering screens or bold solicitations. What was missing wasn't information, but rather the usual deluge of communication, or at least attempts at communication. It occurred to me that it's not information that is causing our anxiety, but instead it is this excess of unwanted and unsolicited communication that drives us slowly insane.

For the better part of two million years, the human brain evolved to make us successful hunter-gatherers on the plains of Africa, brains that thrive on information, brains designed to notice and interpret and wonder and deduce. We need information. We thrive on information and lots of it. The past couple thousand years since we stopped being hunter-gatherers can't possibly have changed that in any significant way. Our brains have likewise evolved for communication, but not of the bombardment variety. No, we've evolved to communicate as members of tribes, sharing face-to-face interactions about the here and now, communicating with one another by way of working together toward common, concrete ends the way the children were doing there on the lava.

This, I think, is largely why we find nature so soothing: it's where we find meaningful information without the bombardment. Here we can open ourselves to it, take it in, interpret it, and play with it without also having to fend off all that buzzing, dinging, and ringing that is the hallmark of unwanted and unnecessary communication. Nature is where we can finally return to the people we've evolved to be. This is why being in it makes us so happy.

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Our Own Language

We tagged along with some Icelandic preschoolers on a walking excursion to a lightly wooded area not far from their school. When we arrived many of them raced for a pair of sculptures that I later learned were hollow wooden ponies. They played there for a time, then all but one went on to other things.

I don't speak Icelandic, of course. Likewise, most of the children don't speak English. It's the sort of barrier that too often keeps adults apart, but is only a minor inconvenience when it comes to children.

I approached the girl who was astride her pony, kicking the sides to make a drum-like sound. I stood nearby watching her. We made eye contact. We smiled at one another. Then she pointed at the second pony, an invitation to ride alongside her.

She made a rhythm by kicking her feet against her pony's flanks, another invitation, so I imitated her. After a minute or so, she suddenly changed her pattern, alternating feet: left, right, left. This, I took as a friendly challenge, so I copied her pattern. She smiled my way and nodded. I winked at her. She tried to wink back.

Now she began with her hands, patting the top of her pony. I followed her lead. The sound was different than the one we were making with our feet. We moved our hands to the sides of our respective pony heads where we found yet another sound.

Then she stopped altogether and I followed suit. After a moment of silence, she kicked her right foot three times creating a deep, hollow sound. I did it as well. Then the other foot, but this time higher up on the pony's neck: yet a different sound. Again I echoed her. We talked this way for several minutes with our hands, with our feet, with our smiles and our winks, connecting across the barriers of language and culture. Indeed, it felt as if we were spontaneously creating our own language and culture.

Finally, the noise we made attracted the others back to the ponies where they clambered on, wordlessly, joining for a moment the new world we had made together.

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Learning To Fight Fire With Fire

I spent the better parts of the months of July and August in Australia. Last week I was in England and I'm now in Iceland at the Play Iceland International conference. In the past few years, I've traveled from Greece to New Zealand, from China to Canada's Prince Edward Island, and everywhere I've gone I've been surrounded by like-minded educators, people who not just understand the importance of childhood play, but who live it, day after day, creating the space, time, and opportunity for children to ask and answer their own questions about the world around them. We know that this is how humans have evolved to learn in the early years and beyond.

It's a joy to be with them, to confirm that the Woodland Park Cooperative School is not a lonely island in a sea of academic testing, standardization, desk-sitting, and developmentally inappropriate expectations of children. When we are together, we don't need to defend a child's right to play, to be outdoors, to direct their own learning, and to choose what they wish to learn and when and how to learn it. We discuss our problems which rarely involve the children, their behavior, their unwillingness, or their abilities, but rather the roadblocks thrown before children by the wider society that exists beyond our bubble. Whereas traditional teachers, those that have found themselves in schools based upon the model of the factory, are forever challenged by the task of somehow compelling children to learn what some panel of self-important adults has determined they ought to learn, by hook or by crook, we are challenged by the task of getting those very adults out of the children's way so the children are free to achieve their own highest potential.

Indeed, everywhere we go, no matter how many inspiring presentations we sit through, no matter how many child-centered schools we visit, we still, inevitably, find ourselves grumbling and ranting about how the world outside our bubble seems to do whatever it can to impede the children we teach, to control them, to push their little noses against the grindstone at earlier and earlier ages. We talk about preschools that are putting uniforms on two-year-olds and forcing them into queues and desks. We talk about regulators who see catastrophe in every stone or stick or uneven surface. We talk about parents who have been made to fear that their five-year-old is falling behind, a cruelty that is being purposely inflicted on families by way of paving the way for schools that are little more than test score coal mines where our children are to labor for the profit of "education" corporations. It's not an accident that the push for ever-more adult directed, top-down, data-driven education is being lead by titans of industry rather than educators; by those who see our children as a means for turning a greasy buck rather than as human beings striving to achieve their highest potential.

When we find ourselves outside our bubble, we've attempted to fight back with reason. We point to the mountain of research, going back for a century or more, that tells us that play is how the human animal has evolved to learn; the science that shows that today's children are increasingly depressed and stressed because of this vicious drive to turn them into objects to be manufactured. I've done it too, here on this blog, in my book, and from the podium, expecting that reasonable people of goodwill, if only provided with the facts, will make the right decision. But despite isolated successes here and there, the overall trend is in the direction of the coal mine.

I've come to realize that we've been doing it wrong. When it comes to influencing public policy, which is ultimately where this battle must be fought, the facts have never mattered as much as emotion, and the corporate guys, with their "Shock Doctrine" messages of failing schools and children who are falling behind, are winning because in a democracy, for better or worse, the emotional argument will almost always trump the reasonable one. And that's where I am this morning as I percolate here in my bubble in Iceland, contemplating what's next: we must find a way, together, to fight fire with fire.

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Freedom Of Thought

A person's freedom of learning is part of his freedom of thought, even more basic than his freedom of speech. If we take from someone his right to decide what he will be curious about, we destroy his freedom of thought. We say, in effect, you must think not about what interests and concerns you, but about what interests and concerns us.  ~John Holt

The other night I was explaining what I do to an old friend who had no idea what I do. It boggled her mind. I explained how when children play they are asking and answering their own questions about the world. She asked, almost in disbelief, "But, then what does a teacher do?"

I wanted to reply, "Get out of the way," but in the interest of not sounding flippant I instead answered, "Mostly, we just provide a relatively safe environment in which children can come together to explore their world through their play with the things and people they find there."

"How is that different than what parents do?"

"There shouldn't be a difference, really. In general, adults need to understand that when children play they are, invariably, preparing themselves for their future." I gave her a couple of examples, which she pondered until I pushed one of her buttons when I said, "For instance, almost all little girls at some time or another dress up as princesses. They are playing with the obviously important concept of feminine beauty."

"What do you mean important? Beauty isn't important!"

I pointed out that she, a retired scientific researcher, was wearing flattering clothing, a particular hairstyle, cosmetics, jewelry. "You may not agree with traditional ideas of beauty, but every woman knows that she can't avoid dealing with societal standards of feminine beauty: you might chose to accept it or reject it or redefine it, but clearly it is important in our world. Children know this even if we try to deny it."

"But shouldn't we be teaching them that it's wrong? Isn't it the teacher's job to teach them that being beautiful doesn't matter?"

"I suppose I can offer them my opinion, but if I attempt to assert that notions of feminine beauty aren't important, the kids will know I'm wrong: the evidence is all around us. It's unavoidable. Every time we turn around we see a narrow concept of feminine beauty being celebrated. It's clearly important to our society. And at least part of why all those girls need to play princess is to explore what it means from the inside so that they can make their own decisions as they get older."

She hated that answer. "But it's not important at all. Women shouldn't be judged for their beauty. We need to teach that to little girls."

"I sure hope little girls learn that, but it won't happen because I lecture them. I expect they're most likely to learn it the way you did -- by experiencing it, experimenting with it, thinking about it, then making their own decisions. If I tried to somehow ban princess play, I would have a rebellion on my hands."

"Oh, I wouldn't want you to do that. Playing princess is fun. You can't ban princess play . . . That would be like banning their freedom to think."

And that's how we left the conversation because it was a school night and time for us to go home.

I've just 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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Ways To Not Say "Good Job"

"Teacher Tom! Look!"

"Look, Teacher Tom! Look what I can do!"

"I didn't know you could flip your tummy up on the table and balance with your legs up in the air."

"Look what I figured out, Teacher Tom! I can pop the bubbles by tearing my finger through them. Watch."

"You did that. You figured out how to pop it by tearing your finger through it."

"Teacher Tom, I'm popping them by jumping!" 

"I heard it pop! And I heard it again! You're jumping high and coming down hard to make them pop."

"Did you see what I can do? I'm making shapes! Let me show you."

"You're using your finger to hold the plastic circle in place and drawing around it! It looks like you're really concentrating."

"I can do it with other shapes too."

"I have something I want to show you, Teacher Tom. When I pull out these plugs the cars don't race any more and when I plug them back in they work again."

"Hey, you broke the circuit when you unplugged it, and you closed the circuit again when you plugged them in."

"Teacher Tom, Teacher Tom, we made this house."

"Who said that?"

"We did! We're inside here."

"Now I see you. You made a house with a sheet and clothes pins. You must have worked together."

"We did."

"Look what I made."

"You cut out all those shapes with pinking shears and used a glue stick to stick it all together. That was a lot of work. It looks like the two shapes are looking in a mirror."

"A crazy mirror!"

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Pegasus Babies; Pegasus Mommies

"It's time to go to bed now, little pegasus babies."

"Night-night mommy pegasus."

"I'm going to turn off the lights now pegasus babies."

They've been playing this game for a couple weeks now, these four-year-old girls. It's not unlike mommy-baby games children have played in the past, here at Woodland Park and indeed at every preschool everywhere. What makes this game different than the ones I've seen in the past is that instead of setting their game under the loft where we generally keep our pillows and blankets, these girls have moved their game out of the shadows and onto our checker-board rug which is typically dominated by groups of boys building castles and forts and bad guy traps. They have been carving out about half of the largest open area in the classroom for their game, sharing a space that is not normally shared.

"It's time to wake up now, pegasus babies."

"We're hungry, mommy pegasus."

"That's because it's time for your breakfast. I'll get some food for you."

As the pegasus babies wait for their mommy pegasus to return, they build their story, giving themselves pegasus baby names, discussing their relative ages, figuring out new ways to arrange their beds. When their mommy returns to feed them, they pretend to take bites, chewing, swallowing, and remarking on how good it tastes.

"Finish your food now, pegasus babies. It's time for your nap."

"Okay, mommy pegasus."

"I'm going to turn off the lights now. Sleep tight, sweeties."

Their game has attracted a few boys, two of whom want to be babies. They are shown to their beds. Two of the boys, however, are acting tough, hands on hips, saying, "These are our bad guy traps," pointing to their complicated structure. I see an implied threat and prepare myself to intervene, to protect their game, but the girls don't take it that way, diffusing the situation with diplomacy, "Oh, that's good. We don't want any bad guys around here," and "You can be the pegasus daddies." They don't want to be pegasus daddies, but they agree that they are there to protect the babies, which they do by becoming watchers of the game, saying nothing, doing nothing, just standing there in their commanding poses and stern faces.

Meanwhile the babies wake up, the babies go to sleep, the babies eat food, then the babies sleep again. The game doesn't include time for play, but then again it's all play. They are, in fact, playing with the cycles of life, around and around and around. In real life I know they aren't always so cheerful about eating and sleeping, but in this game they are all happy. In this world, there are no conflicts between mommies and their babies, nor with outside forces, there is just the cycle of mommies and babies and eating and sleeping in contentment. It's a game these girls own, right there in the middle of the room, making peace with it, making common cause with it, taking up as much space as they need, turning the lights off an on, simulating the cycle of night and day as they simulate the cycle of mommies and babies. It's all right there if you look for it, the past, present and future of every life ever lived.

I've just 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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