We Are All Self-Educated

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school

It's a wonder I can think at all.

And though my lack of education hasn't hurt me none

I can read the writing on the wall.  

                                         ~Paul Simon, Kodachrome

The first thing I do upon awakening in the morning is to go to the bathroom, something I learned how to do alongside my mother. She didn't teach me, exactly, but I have memories of her being there, conversing with me as I sat on the little varnished pine potty seat with a blue and yellow figure of some sort painted on it. It was an intimate moment, the two of us in that little room, me on the seat and mom knelling beside me. I do remember standing up, then looking back down to see the yellow liquid I'd made in the white bowl. 

Next I go to the kitchen where I make a cup of coffee. I distinctly remember learning to make my first cup of coffee. I was a freshman in college, living in the dorms. Several of the guys swore by it as a late night or early morning study aid, so I went to the supermarket, purchased a jar of Folger's instant, then followed the instructions on the side of the jar. Since then, I've learned to make coffee in every way imaginable, sometimes by following the instructions and other times by watching someone else then imitating them.

I take my cup of coffee to the chair by the window where I fire up my computer. Dad bought the family an Apple II Plus computer in 1979, the year they were released. He spent a week or so learning to code a simple game that involved a crude monster that ate floating letters of the alphabet. I liked playing the game, but it wasn't until the mid-80's that I had a computer screen of my own, a device connected to a Wang brand mainframe that needed a room all for itself. Yes, this was about the time that Microsoft's PC was beginning to populate every desk top, but our office manager placed his bet on Wang. There were no instructions or training for using the computer terminals on our desks: we were expected to figure it out and we all did, mainly by goofing around on it, asking each other questions, and sending massive numbers of messages, then leaning around the corner to ask, "Did you get it?" before shaking our heads in disbelief at this modern age in which we lived.

It's at this point in my typical morning that I begin writing a blog post that will appear right here. It's hard to pin down when I learned to write, although it logically came along with learning to read, which happened for me over the course of my first grade year. I know that I didn't think I read at all when I arrived in elementary school, but on my first day in class Miss McCutcheon had placed on our desks a construction paper cut out of the character Ted (a stuffed bear) from the Dick and Jane readers. She had written T-E-D across his belly and I knew without being told that it said "Ted." Mom had read to me at home from picture books and I guess I'd just picked some of it up because as it turned out I could read anything Miss McCutcheon put in front of me over the course of the year. I often think that I didn't learn to read as much as discovered that I could.

As for being a writer, as opposed to being merely literate, that has been a process of unlearning most of what my teachers ever taught me about composition and re-learning by reading and writing nearly every day over the course of decades, a process that is ongoing.

I write about all sorts of things, but what I mostly write about is early childhood. I took a couple relevant university courses back in my early 20's and then a couple more 15 years later. But almost everything I've learned about ECE has been on the job, first as a children's baseball coach, then as a parent in with a child enrolled in a cooperative preschool, and finally as a classroom teacher myself, a journey that I've been documenting here since 2009. I've learned from books, blogs, conferences, mentors, colleagues, and mostly from the children themselves. This too is an ongoing process.

My point is that here I sit, a man who holds a high school diploma and university degree, the definition of an educated man, but most of the learning I actually use in my day-to-day life came from life itself, not any sort of curriculum. I was an engaged student, one who did all the assignments and received mostly good grades, but the only aspects of my nearly two decades of schooling upon which I regularly rely are the proposal writing vocational skills I learned as a college senior and the memories that guide me in what not to do as an educator.

When I would complain about the irrelevancy of my schools' curricula as a student, adults would assure me that it was all necessary foundational learning, but looking back on all those tedious writing exercises, those worksheets, those nights of grinding through mathematical equations, I see little connection to the educated man I am today. I don't think those adults were lying to me, I believe that they believed the myth of foundational learning, just as most adults continue to believe it today. It would be a horrible thing to finally admit that all those years, over all those generations, have been wasted, so we cling to these unproven ideas of how learning happens because to admit otherwise would send shock waves though society.

Most of the important learning I've done has been decidedly extra-curricular, which, I would assert, is true of all of us. We are all self-educated despite those years of schooling. We learn in the company of other humans, both children and adults. We learn from having the time, space, and autonomy to question, explore, and experiment. We learn when we find ourselves in stimulating environments, especially those we are free to manipulate. We learn when the adults in our life love us and have our best interests at heart. When these conditions are met, the curriculum emerges, unique for every one of us, and that curriculum is life itself.

******

 

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

"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

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!

Malpractice In The Name Of More "Instructional Time"

At the beginning of the 2015 school year Seattle's Public School teachers were on strike. They had a list of demands, most of which were ultimately met, including the requirement that all elementary school children receive a minimum of 30 minutes a day on the playground. As pathetic as that victory might sound to those of us who live and work in the world of play-based education, some schools were limiting their charges to 15 minutes of recess over a school day. This is not an uncommon phenomenon in America and indeed many other parts of the world.

As heartlessly cruel as this sounds, it's the result of administrators and teachers who have bought into the entirely unsupported myth that more "instructional time" will result in "better results," and that every moment of free play, especially outdoors, is a waste of time. Meanwhile, 17 million children worldwide have been prescribed addictive stimulants (like Ritalin), antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs for "educational" and behavioral problems, over half of them in the US. Already one in ten American students are on these drugs and the fastest growing segment are children five and under.

This from the UK: 

Tests to assess . . . children's physical development at the start of the first school year found that almost a third to be "of concern" for lack of motor skills and reflexes. Almost 90 per cent of children demonstrated some degree of movement difficulty for their age . . . The tests suggest up to 30 per cent of children are starting school with symptoms typically associated with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and ADHD -- conditions which can be improved with correct levels of physical activity, experts say.

What's to blame? Lack of physical play is a big part of it, but there's more. According researcher Dr. Rebecca Duncombe:

"Young children have access to iPads and are much more likely to be sat in car seats or chairs . . . But the problem can also be attributed to competitive parenting -- parents who want they children to walk as soon as possible risk letting them miss out on key mobility developments which help a child to find their strength and balance."

And why do we have competitive parenting: because our schools, indeed our entire educational environment, is built around the idea of competition; around the cruel caution that "You don't want your child to fall behind." Bill Gates and his ilk have succeeded in "unleashing powerful market forces" on our children and this is the result. Because we have to get them ready for the "competitive job market of tomorrow," we've herded them indoors, where they spend their days locked in being force-fed "knowledge" like it's some sort of factory farm. It's so bad that we have to drug them. It's so bad that 90 percent of our four-year-olds aren't even getting the opportunity to learn how to move their bodies properly. The only other human institutions of which I'm aware that regularly drug and confine people are prisons and mental wards.

Instead of understanding the truth about young children -- that they need to move their bodies, a lot, and preferably outdoors -- we have created a very, very narrow range of "normal" into which we are forcing our children. This is outrageous. It's malpractice. And it's on all of us for letting it happen.

I usually try to end these posts on a positive or hopeful note, but the best I can do right now is to say that at least Seattle's Public School kids are getting their 30 minutes a day outdoors . . . Unless, of course, they are being punished, because taking away recess is one of the more common "consequences" for children who can't sit still and focus. And if they fail too often, we drug them.

Parents: the more time your children spend outdoors, playing, the smarter they will be. Create it at home and demand if from our schools. Teachers: the more time your students spend outdoors, playing, the smarter they will be. Create it at school and demand more of it from your administrators. This is the science. This is what we know about children. What's happening now is nothing short of institutionalized child abuse and we're all a part of permitting it to happen.

******

 

"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!

"I'm Not Sated"

I was 28-years-old when Irish singer Sinead O'Connor released an album entitled I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. That sentiment, only wanting what you already have, was a new idea for me, one that, in a small way, blew my mind. I'd already been married for four years, to the same wife I still have today. We had just purchased our first house, a tiny place with a sweep of lawn, a cherry tree, and a tidy pale blue paint job accented by a pink front door. For months, I walked around the place in a kind of blissful stupor, reminding myself, without quite believing it, "This is our kitchen," "This is our living room." I would lie down in the backyard grass, my hands behind my head, and say, "This is our patch of sky." Our parents were still alive and living nearby. Between us we could easily afford our lifestyle. We only had one car, but the house was right by a bus stop. When I heard that album title, I looked around and could honesty say, "I do not want what I haven't got."

Of course, it didn't last. It's human to need and want, unless you're going to dedicate your life to striving for a state of desirelessness -- which is paradoxically a quest driven by a desire for an unattainable state of perfect contentment. And perfect contentment just isn't in the cards.

As American actress Ashley Judd more accurately put it, "I can't think of anything I want and need that I don't already have, but at the same time, I'm not sated." This is why billionaires chase after another billion. It's why collectors keep adding to their collections. It's why hoarders keep hoarding. Being sated is, at best, a temporary condition.

Without needing and wanting, we wouldn't eat. We wouldn't care for our young. We wouldn't make new friends. Needing and wanting keeps us alive and thriving. At the same time, and the reason that O'Connor's sentiment has such appeal, is that too much needing and wanting is equally deadly.

We have come to call the times in which we live The Information Age, but it could more accurately be called The Age of Attention because when information is plentiful, attention becomes the scarce commodity. And one of the surest ways to secure attention is to target our tendency toward insatiability. We are drawn to information that offers us some sort of reward, be it knowledge, hope, security, or titillation. Video games draw players in with the promise of new levels, higher scores, and digital treasure that can only be spent within the game itself. Many of us spend hours a day scrolling, scrolling, scrolling our social media feeds, reading headlines that promise to satisfy some need or want, while discovering some we didn't previously know we had. And then, when we finally can't resist, we click one of those headlines. We're almost always disappointed. And even if we aren't, the satisfaction it brings us only lasts for seconds before we're back to wanting more.

As adults who work with young children, we know that they often need us to support them in not eating too much candy, if only because if they eat too much, they won't have an appetite for the healthier foods they must have in order to thrive and grow. 

The Age of Attention runs on molecules called dopamine. You're probably aware of them. You might have even used the expression "dopamine-fix" to describe behavior, your own or that of others, that seems addictive or destructive. Obsessive gamers, alcoholics, over-eaters . . . They are, we say, chasing a "dopamine high." The entire social media industry is based upon getting us hooked on the dopamine our own brains produce.

We often think of dopamine like a drug itself, but in reality, the way this molecule works is that our brains produce it in anticipation of sating our needs or wants. It is a forecaster of satisfaction. It spikes in those fractions of seconds just before we've clicked on that enticing link, then plunges the moment the page opens, which explains the disappointment. Dopamine is the molecule most closely associated with motivation. Without it, we simply wouldn't work as hard to secure basic food, clothing, and shelter. It is also the molecule at work when we plan for the future, whether it's mapping out our careers or simply fretting over tomorrow morning's meeting.

It's always tempting to talk about finding balance, but I've found that to be the kind of advice that is true but not particularly useful. I mean, easier said than done, right? Motivation is awesome when it's about, say, painting a masterpiece, but it sucks when it's about eating just one more piece of candy. The challenge is how to manage it so that we have room for the healthy food, and I think, at bottom, it's about learning to consciously manage our most precious resource: attention.

Having spent much of my adult life amongst children playing together, I've observed highly motivated humans in an environment that rarely included candy or screens, but was plentiful when it came to human beings, plants, rocks, sticks, sand, and water. Their minds pumped out dopamine from the time they arrived until their parents carried them out, often crying and complaining for "just one more minute!" For a long time, I thought that I was watching people who knew how to live in the moment, but I now know they were in a constant state of anticipation, forever curious, constantly asking, "What will happen if I do this?" or "What if I try that?"

I have nothing against candy or screens. I spend time every day on social media. But the more I've come to see my attention as precious, the more often I've chosen to go outside, to sit, to walk, or to simply be there to pay my attention to what the birds are doing or how the grass is growing. The more I do this, the more satisfied I find myself. At this moment, I'm anticipating getting this piece posted so I can pay attention to the ravens who are nesting in a tree outside my back door. 

The challenge isn't dopamine or candy or wanting what we haven't got. The challenge is remembering that our attention is the most valuable thing we have and to practice being conscious about how we use it.

******

 

"I recommend these books to everyone concerned with children and the future of humanity." ~Peter Gray, Ph.D. If you want to see what Dr. Gray is talking about you can find Teacher Tom's First Book and Teacher Tom's Second Book right 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!

Turning The Other Cheek

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles."

In psychology, this principle is called a non-complementary response. Typically, if someone slaps another person, they expect to be slapped back . . . or kicked, or cursed out, or at least to be reported to the authorities -- this would be a complementary response. As humans, our tendency is to mirror one another, for better or worse, but Jesus was suggesting something far more radical.

For the last several decades, Norwegian prisons have embraced the principle of the non-complementary response. In stark contrast to most prisons in the world that operate on the basis of an eye-for-an-eye, or in many cases two-eyes-for-an-eye, these prisons turn the other cheek. Prisoners, even those convicted of violent crimes, are given nicely furnished rooms instead of cells, complete with flat screen TVs and private bathrooms. There are few locks and no bars. The guards are unarmed and nearly fifty percent women. Inmates are free to move about the facilities, to enjoy various recreations and other pursuits at their leisure. They have cook-outs and parties. There is one maximum security prison, a place that houses the worst of the worst, that is set in a bucolic forest on an island and has its own music recording studio that releases albums under its own label. There is a church, a grocery store, and a library. If this doesn't sound like prison, that's the point.

This non-complentary prison is set up to be as much like normal life as possible. This means that the prisoners also grow and cook much of their own food, they have jobs to do to keep their community running. Some of them even commute to nearby jobs. 

Norway boasts the lowest recidivism rate in the world. Most of these ex-convicts leave prison much better able to function in normal society than when they went in.

If the goal is to rehabilitate humans, rather than punish them, then it appears that Jesus was right: turning the other cheek works. The principles of non-complimentary responses and normality work.

When looked at from this perspective, the goal of educators is much the same as the goal of these Norwegian prisons: to give people, whatever their age, the skills, knowledge, habits, and experiences that will allow them to function productively in society. As the Norwegians see it, since most prisoners will not spend their lives in prison. They will be released at some point and isn't it better to release a good neighbor rather than a resentment-filled ticking time bomb? 

Schools aren't exactly prisons, but standard schools certainly share much in common with standard prisons. Both involve confined humans whose movements, even within the facility, are restricted; they are told where to be and what to do; they are punished for disobedience; their fellow humans are to be regarded as rivals; they spend precious little time outdoors; there is little privacy; the work they do is meaningless, unpaid, and dictated by the "guards." In other words, there is little that happens in either institution that would be considered "normal" outside of that institution. Children might not be leaving school as ticking time bombs (although some are), but they are hardly being prepared for a real world in which personal responsibility, self-motivation, teamwork and companionability are the keys to success. 

As a preschool teacher who has always worked in play-based programs, I've strived to apply the principles of non-complimentary responses and normality to everything we do, even if I've not always used those terms. This means we don't rely on punishments, but rather upon the non-complimentary response of teaching, of offering alternatives, of guiding children toward listening, then finding a way to restore and repair any damage they have done. This may not exactly reflect the "real world" as it stands today, but it certainly reflects the world in which I want to one day live. This means that we don't make up work for the children to do. We avoid commanding or controlling them. We leave them free to make their own decisions in the context of community, for better or worse, which is the way the world outside our walls work. It's how we learn to live with the other people. When children find themselves in situations where they are trusted, in which their mistakes are opportunities to learn rather than causes for punishment, and where they are free to ask and answer their own questions about the world as members of of a community, they are having experiences through which they will learn the skills, knowledge, and habits that will allow them to function productively in society.

The goal of school, like the goal of Norwegian prisons, should be to "release" humans into the world who are responsible, self-motivated, and work well with others. These are the secrets to success, however you define it. Or in other words, what Jesus said.

******

 

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

"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

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!

Exactly What They Need

Humans aren't very good at hiding our emotions. Our faces, hands, feet, and bodies tell the tale of what we are feeling even when we are trying to hide the truth from others. In his book Humankind, Rutger Bregman, writes about us as being "leaky" when it comes to our feelings. It is, apparently, an adaptive trait, one that belies our species' extraordinary ability work well with one another.

I hear you scoffing. Work extraordinary well with one another? C'mon man, do we live in the same world? But, bear with me. It appears to be true that we are certainly among the most cooperative of species. As Yuval Noah Harari details in his book Sapiens, our ability to work together is what allows us to be the only apex predator that is not particularly large or fierce. Tigers and sharks, for instance, evolved to be individually fearsome with large muscles, sharp teeth, and the ability to move a great speeds relative to their prey and rivals. Of course, they also work together as they hunt to a degree, but as mid-sized, hairless apes with the kind of modest physical abilities more commonly found in middle-of-the-food-chain species, we came to rely on intelligent cooperation to move ourselves to the top of the food chain. One-on-one we are no match for a bison, for instance, but together we feast. 

It isn't always pretty, of course: until around 1800 three-quarters of all humans lived under some version of slavery. It ain't freedom, but it is a form of working together that simply isn't found in other species, at least not on that scale. And when you look at humans today, we are a globally-connected network of naked apes who have created a society in which some of us design buildings while others paint portraits while others program computers. There is no other species that cooperates to such a degree that most don't have anything to do with the primary concerns of feeding themselves and caring for the young.

Maybe you don't call that cooperation. Fair enough. It certainly isn't what I mean when I talk about cooperation in my day-to-day life, yet it's still undeniable that we are very good at working together even if compulsion and exploitation have historically underpinned a great deal of it.

My point is that in a species that relies so much upon one another, it's inevitable that we would evolve to be fairly transparent, or leaky, to one another. If we were to ever become proficient at hiding our feelings, the whole protect of humanity would likely fall apart.

As a teacher of very young children, I've spent a great deal of my life surrounded by the leakiest of humans. Preschoolers haven't yet learned to "protect themselves" by hiding their emotions. When they are sad, everyone knows it. When they are happy, angry, frustrated, or frightened, anyone can tell. As we begin to develop what is called a "theory of mind," however, we begin to understand that other people, like ourselves, are conscious beings with their own thoughts, feelings, and agendas. As we begin to understand how time works, we start to engage in counterfactual thinking, which is to say that we fabricate alternate-reality stories that may help us anticipate the future or create new things, but can also be used to deceive or hide the truth from one another. We strive to be less leaky, but as body language experts know, we might fool some of the people some of the time, but that's mostly because those other humans are too distracted by their own game of hide-and-seek to notice that we're playing the same game. If we pay attention, however, we can almost always spot and understand the leaks. We aren't as complicated as we think we are.

For instance, my wife and I had a neighborhood cocktail party a few nights ago. Among the guests was a couple who I've only recently met and who tend to be, both together and individually, quite shy in social settings. As host, I set myself the goal of helping them loosen up. They arrived wearing bright colors which I read as a sign that they wanted to, at least, be noticed. Obviously, their actual consciousness wasn't accessible to me, but it was nevertheless quite clear that they were in favor of loosening up. As we chatted about superficial things, I noted that they had both turned their upper bodies toward me, while their feet remained pointed at one another. This was a clear indication that at one level they were hoping to become more comfortable with me, but at a lower level, or deeper level, they were still counting on other another. Both held their drinks across their chests protectively, yet they smiled at me, both wearing grins that I perceived as a bit excessive and which I understood as eagerness to connect, even as their bodies betrayed their caution about me and the whole situation.

This wasn't rocket science I was doing. We all, when we can get out of our own heads long enough to pay attention, are masters at reading body language, especially in situations like strangers chatting at a cocktail party. I found myself adjusting my own body, not to mirror theirs, but to create a mirror for them. When my wife joined our little circle, I consciously turned my whole body toward one partner, physically opening myself up, right down to my toes, dropping my arms to my side, relaxing my smile and making sincere eye-contact. Within minutes, he had matched, or mirrored, my body language. When we are being mirrored like this, psychologists tend to agree that the other party is either fond of us, or is at least in favor of being fond. 

I assure you that my only goal was friendship, although it's not lost on me that this is also the kind of thing that successful salespeople and con artists do. Before long, he was no longer even shooting glances at his partner, but rather engaging me fully. When I then noticed his eyes darting away as we talked, I saw that he was taking a peek at a painting over my shoulder. This told me he was interested in art, so I took the conversation there and soon I was guiding him on a tour of the artwork in our home. We settled into a nice conversational flow, most of which took place with our bodies turned at three-quarter angles to one another, which, was about where I saw our relationship: friendly, eager, but still a tiny bit cautious.

Those of you who are reading this as early childhood educators may recognize yourself, because isn't this exactly what we spend a great deal of our time doing? A very small part of how we interact with children involves instructing or even talking. When we are doing it right, we are listening and communicating with our entire bodies, just as the children are listening and communicating with their entire bodies. Of course, we don't have to do it as consciously as I was doing with my adult cocktail party guest, because, I believe, we are privileged to me interacting with natural humans, people who have not yet learned to hide their leaks. When you watch a master teacher at work, you see them as natural, open humans, mirroring the children's leakiness, not to manipulate them, but to become like them. We strive as educators, whether consciously or not, to make no secret about our thoughts and feelings because we are reflecting the children in our care. And that, I think, is exactly what they need.

******

 

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

"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

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!

"Let Your Feelings Flourish And Get One With Your Life Of Doing"

Chihuly glass

There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. ~Friedrich Nietzsche  

The stereotypical argument used to exclude women from business, science, politics, the military, or indeed just about any category of public life is that they are "too emotional." Emotions, the theory goes, renders them incapable of making rational decisions. Most of us, of course, instinctively recognize this as a baseless patriarchal assertion, one that is disproven every day as we find women succeeding in every area of society.

Chihuly glass

As a preschool teacher, I've learned that emotions have no gender. Every child cries. Every child has tantrums. Every child experiences fear, frustration, envy, joy, disappointment, and melancholy, and gender has nothing to do with how and how often. As children grow older, however, society tends to be more accepting of girls' expressions of the full range of emotions, while boys quickly learn to hide their "negative" feelings behind stoicism and anger, the only public emotion "allowed" to them. A boy who cries or is afraid is often mocked. A boy who smiles too much is often considered flighty or unserious. (We tend to teach our girls, on the other hand to squelch their anger, temper their self-assurance, and to generally "be nice" no matter how they feel.) This doesn't mean, however, that boys and men don't feel all the same emotions as girls and women, only that we are not as free to express them. 

We are all emotional, but that begs the question: is it possible to be too emotional? I suppose the answer is yes, to the degree that our emotions become incapacitating or destructive. We all have those moments when we flip our lids, curl up in a ball of anxiety, or trudge through days as if under a dark cloud. When it becomes chronic we call it mental illness. So yes, I suppose it is possible to be too emotional, but it is equally possible, and perhaps even common, to not be emotional enough. It's only through our emotions, not our intellects, that we fully connect with one another, understand, empathize, and communicate. Without emotion, we are but automatons, doomed to stand outside of humanity either as outcast or villain. We all have our times when we become emotionally exhausted, when we detach for a time. When our emotional detachment becomes chronic we call it sociopathy.

It's tempting to conclude that it's all about finding a balance, but there's no fulcrum here upon which to rest an easy center. Our emotions are too important for the easier-said-than-done mantra of finding balance. They are to be felt fully and honestly, not balanced out with cool rationalism. Indeed, rationality cannot exist without emotion.

For much of the 20th century scientists were convinced that emotions played no role, and were perhaps even an impediment to rational thought, which provided much of the so-called "scientific" underpinning for denying women (and children for that matter) rights and opportunities. But more recent research has found that emotions play a critical role in our ability to make decisions. Rather than clouding our judgement, the neural systems that underlie emotions are essential to high-level cognition, which is to say decision-making. One of the pioneers in this research is an American-Portuguese neuroscientist named Antonio Damasio. Much of his work has been done on patients whose brains have been injured and who, as a result, are missing the connection between their sensory input and emotions. The rapid beating of their heart at the prospect of crossing a narrow bridge, for instance, doesn't provoke fear. Based on traditional views, one would conclude that this fearless person would be more clear-headed and, therefore, be more inclined to making rational decisions. But Damasio has found the opposite to be true: his emotionless patients proved incapable of making reasonable decisions. This is a conclusion that has now been replicated numerous times by other scientists.

In other words, we need our emotions in order to make sound judgements and our greater doubt should be saved for those who do not credit their emotions because they are more likely, according to science, to be the irrational ones. But like much of what scientists are "learning" about humans, this is actually ancient knowledge, long understood by artists and mystics alike. As Lao Tzu wrote in the 6th century BC, "Let your feelings flourish and get on with you life of doing." That is, and always will be, the path of wisdom.

******

 

"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!

DIY Baby!

Two days ago, my wife did an amazing thing. 

She was born with thick, curly, red hair. It's one of the reasons that people never forget having met her. At least once a day, and often several times a day, strangers will compliment her hair. Over our nearly four decades together, I've learned, through proximity, more than most about the care and maintenance of curly locks and believe it or not, there is still so much more to learn.

One of the biggest challenges for her are hair cuts. Most stylists simply do not have the expertise to cut her curly hair the way she wants it cut. She is always on the hunt for people who have certain certifications or who have mastered specific methods. These people tend to be located in big cities and charge big money. That's one of the reasons we love that our daughter has been living in New York City these past seven years -- it means that we are fairly regularly near one of these curly hair experts. And even then, she often comes home on the verge of tears. One would think that once you get a good haircut from someone, you could stick with them, but that hasn't turned out to be the case. Just because she gets a good cut from someone hasn't proven to mean that she'll get a good cut from them the next time.

Two days ago, however, she took things into her own hands. She made a virtual appointment with one of the curly hair experts she has been following online, a woman based in San Diego. She purchased the equipment she needed, and then, with the step-by-step guidance of this expert, she gave herself one of the best haircuts she's ever had. DIY baby!

Of course, the internet has, in only a few short years, completely transformed adult education. I recall my father taking weeks of night classes when he wanted to learn to re-upholster a chair or to make a stained glass chandelier. Today, I handle all of my bicycle repair and maintenance by watching YouTube tutorials. When I recently decided I wanted to perfect the poached egg, I started by watching videos from world renowned experts like Martha Stewart and Gordon Ramsey. What my wife did yesterday was the next step in DIY.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." This is an ancient Chinese proverb, often attributed to Lao Tzu. We've all heard it. We've all said it. But the part that is often left unspoken is that all your teaching efforts go for naught if said man has no interest in learning to fish. 

My wife was highly motivated. For days leading up to this appointment, I could sense her excitement. She was nervous, of course, and I was nervous for her. And now that we're on the other side, I catch her smiling into the mirror, not just happy about her haircut, but immensely proud that she did it herself. She's already thinking about small things that she can do differently next time to make it even better. This is what learning ought to look like.

And it is how learning rarely looks in standard schools. On the other hand, this is how it always looks in play-based preschool. DIY baby!

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"I recommend these books to everyone concerned with children and the future of humanity." ~Peter Gray, Ph.D. If you want to see what Dr. Gray is talking about you can find Teacher Tom's First Book and Teacher Tom's Second Book right here. 

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Is Hierarchy Natural?

"When Sammy put the paper on the wall

She put the parlor paper in the hall

Then she papered up the chairs

She papered all the stairs

She even put a border on grandma's shawl

When Sammy put the paper on the wall

She poured a pot of paste upon us all

Now we're all stuck together

Like birds of a feather

Since Sammy put the paper on the wall."

I learned this song from my mentor Chris David who learned it, I assume, from Bev Bos, who wrote and recorded it with Micheal Lehman, and Tom Hunter. I've never listened to the original, so this version of the lyrics may differ from hers, but I feel, in the spirit of folk music that she wouldn't mind that we, over the years, have changed it a bit. After all, as Utah Phillips said (or maybe it was Pete Seeger), "It's called folk music because it belongs to the folks."

I had to credit a lot of people in the preceding paragraph for this silly song and I probably left lots of folks out. But that's the true beauty of folk music. It is meant to be shared. It is meant for every voice, be it three people around a campfire or thousands in a concert hall. It is meant to spread itself rhizomatically, the way wild strawberries do by spreading roots and runners in any direction in a non-hierarchical and decentralized way. 

In her book Orwell's Roses, author Rebecca Solnit (who introduced me to the word rhizomatic) points out that "(t)he branching of trees and roots is often used as a model of lineage: of the evolution of species or languages, as a family tree, as any chronological, branching transmission," but we now know that there is nothing hierarchical about the way trees spread themselves. For instance, we now know that they operate much more like strawberries and folk music. There is a 4000 tree aspen forest in Utah, for instance, that shares a common root system, making it the single largest living organism on Earth. It is about 80,000 years old, meaning it has been living and growing since about the time Homo sapiens began our Great Migration, the second spreading of our species outside of Africa.

I reckon that someone has written the history of hierarchy. I know there are some that insist that it is a natural, evolutionarily adaptive way for humans to organize themselves. The first formal hierarchies emerged some 7500 years ago in Mesopotamia as a way of organizing us into groups of a few thousand individuals. But I think it's legitimate to doubt the naturalness and inevitability of hierarchies. People will point to other primates (like gorillas and chimpanzees) and mammals (like deer and wolves) as examples of natural hierarchy. They will point to alpha males who "dominate," but I've seen plenty of evidence that we may have fallen into the trap of interpreting these animal societies through the bigoted lens of human hierarchy. The way other animals organize themselves seems to be far more amorphous and flexible than the term "hierarchy" implies. Certainly, "human civilization" as we know it seems to always embrace some kind of top-down authority, but just as we now know that the individual aspens in Utah are really a single organism, I think it's legitimate, with an open mind, to consider that we, and other mammals, may be more like wild strawberries than we habitually think.

One of the great challenge and opportunities of society right now is the internet which, famously, is not organized as a hierarchy. Governments and corporations are, of course, attempting to impose hierarchy on it, but the truth is that there is a real rhizomatic quality to the world wide web that may very well overwhelm their efforts. Its ability to spread, like a virus (non-hierarchical bio-machines), threatens hierarchies right across the globe. I'm old enough that I can still remember a world without the web, but the children we are teaching are growing up with it. And I think it's safe to say that we are still in the early days of its spread. I can imagine that if we survive another 80,000 years, the internet will have evolved into a kind of root system that connects us all, spreading the way folk music does, connecting us into societies that more resemble honey bees or a folk music sing-a-long than a Fortune 500 company.

(David Graeber and David Wengrow, an anthropologist and archeologist respectively have taken a fresh look at the historical and archeological record, and written an entire book on this question called The Dawn of Everything, which I highly recommend.)

As a preschool teacher, the adult in a room full of children, I could easily compel a kind of hierarchical system with me at the top, the "smart" or "good" kids just below me as lieutenants, then the rest below us all. And some classrooms are very much organized in this way. I've spent my career trying to avoid that, however. Yes, by virtue of being the adult in the room, I'm responsible for things like safety (both physical and emotional) and in that role I may at times appear as a classic top-of-the-pyramid guy, but it is also my responsibility, as I see it, to give away any power I have by way of empowering the children in my care. The children choose what they are going to do with our time together (sometimes called play), they make agreements (sometimes call rules) about how they want to live together, and their own civilizing structure is one built upon the needs of the moment rather than the dictates of obedience and loyalty upon which hierarchies rely.

Having spent the better part of two decades in this role observing the children, I've seen that power is an ever-changing thing. When one child becomes too bossy, for instance, the others either collectively rise against them or, more commonly, move away. I've seen that knowledge spreads like a rhizome with children teaching children, through example, experience, and direct instruction, connecting them the way the internet is connecting the world, ultimately forging them into a single entity. On the surface, they may look like a forest of individual trees, but underneath there is a shared root system that makes them one. From my admittedly limited experience, it appears that hierarchy, at least in young humans is a learned rather than innate behavior.

When Sammy put the paper on the wall in Bev Bos' version, the pronoun used is "he," whereas we have always sung it as "she," because when our community learned the song there was a girl in our class named Samantha who went by Sammy. But it remains the same folk song, the one that connects us to all the other folks who sing it from the beginning until the end of the world.

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"Ready for a book that makes you want to underline and highlight? One that makes you draw arrows and write 'THIS!!!!!' in the margin? Then you are in for a treat." ~Lisa Murphy, M.Ed., author and Early Childhood Specialist, Ooey Gooey, Inc.

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