Teacher Tom

Learning to Make Decisions

2026-04-27T06:35:00.000-07:00

His mother asked him, "Don't you want to go to school?"

He nodded that he did, still smiling. Indeed, he appeared relaxed, almost like he was just taking his time, breathing, pausing before launching into his morning.

"Then let's go," his mother urged, taking a step toward the door, but he still didn't move. She gave me an apologetic look, then turned back to her son, "Are you coming?"

He nodded that he was coming, still smiling, and still not moving toward the door.

"Well, I'm going inside," she said, "It's cold out here. You can come in when you're ready." She shrugged at me as she descended the stairs. The boy looked after her until she was out of his line of sight, then he began scanning the brick face of the building, taking it in as if he had never noticed it before. He looked straight up at the sky.

There was no reason to rush. In fact, they were early, among the first to arrive. His mother lowered her voice, "I don't know what it is. He loves coming to school. It's all he talks about."

I answered, "It looks to me like maybe he's savoring the moment."

"Maybe that's it," she replied, "but if it is, he's the master of savoring moments. He does this all the time. He did the same thing at the grocery store yesterday. When I ask him what he's waiting for, he tells me he's waiting to know what to do."

I asked her, "Is he waiting for you to tell him what to do or something?"

"Obviously not," she laughed, "You heard me. It's like he's waiting for an inner voice."

By now others were arriving, stepping around him to get through the door. Still he stood, smiling, breathing, waiting for his inner voice.

After several minutes, his mother did what some parenting books suggest: she gave him a choice. "You can walk in by yourself or I can carry you."

In a flash, his sanguineness left him. His body visibly stiffened, his eyes rounded. Then he burst into tears.

Perhaps he had, all along, been submerging his real feelings behind smiling and stillness, but two-year-olds typically don't try to hide their feelings. More likely, it had been his mother's gentle insistence that he make a decision that had suddenly stressed him out.

I think, as adults, with all of our practice making decisions, we tend to forget how very stressful it can be to make decisions, even seemingly small ones. After all, only a few months ago he was a baby. We don't expect babies to make decisions. It's something we must learn how to do.

And making decisions is stressful. The onus to choose among one or more courses of action is something we must practice. We talk about the impulsivity of young children. If we ask them why they did this or that, they usually can't tell us because there was no point at which they made a decision -- they just reacted according to instinct in the same way they instinctively react to a breast by suckling. But the uniqueness of humanity is that we have developed a kind of consciousness that is capable of ignoring our inner voice and choosing how to behave.

It must be incredibly confusing to be a very young child, stuck between the natural imperative of instincts and the learned social imperative to make decisions.

In many ways, decision-making can be considered the essence of our lives.

Of course, we all know the stress of making big decisions, like choosing a university, buying a home, or getting married. Making these decisions are often so stressful that it impacts our eating and sleeping.

On the other hand, most of us have figured out ways to reduce the stress of day-to-day decision-making. One strategy we all use at one time or another is to make a decision once, then stick to it as a way to avoid the stress of on-the-spot decision-making. We call these habits. It is stressful, however, when something happens to thwart us. We choose a brand at the supermarket and stick to it, but are thrown for a small loop when our favorite is out of stock. We make schedules, then get stressed out when something comes up. We're suddenly made anxious when our normal route to work is blocked by construction. Even our little decisions, and the gyrations we go through around them, shape our lives, often profoundly.

Young children have not learned the trick of habits and so are forever faced with decisions that we consider inconsequential. No wonder they cry.

There is only one way to learn to make decisions and that is through practice. This is why play is so important for young children. It is the mechanism by which children can grapple with the dilemma of decision-making. Through play, we learn, in a relatively safe way, about the consequences of our decisions, we learn how to consider others in our decision-making, we figure out those habits that make our lives less stressful, and also what to do when our expectations are thwarted.

There is pain, fear, and loss: these are the stressors we share with all living things. But the stress of decision-making is ours alone. And it is our blessing and our curse.

******

Even the most thriving play-based environments can grow stale at times. I've created this collection of my favorite free (or nearly free) resources for educators, parents, and others who work with young children. It's my gift to you! Click here to download your own copy and never run out of ideas again!

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!

No One Has Ever Pulled Themselves Up By Their Own Bootstraps

2026-04-24T06:30:00.000-07:00

Some 30 years ago my wife and I considered ourselves the kind of people who would have a wine cellar. We were motivated in no small part by the fact that we'd just purchased a home with your classic cool, dark basement, ignoring the fact that I don't drink wine and she sticks almost exclusively to a few brands of chardonnay. Since there were already shelves built into the space, I ran out and purchased a classic Ikea do-it-yourself "system," which we filled, over years, with bottles of wine people gave us as gifts and that we would likely never drink.

Fortunately, I work in a profession in which nothing need ever go to waste, so when we moved out of that house, the wine rack parts found their way to the preschool where they served as a building set.

The system is simple: hexagonal prisms that are about a foot long with each end drilled with four holes into which wooden pegs fit. They can be inserted by hand, but we like to use rubber mallets at the work bench.

It's an imperfect system, especially when using the mallets. If you hit too hard, your entire structure might collapse like a house of cards. The same goes for if you don't brace the whole thing against the work bench, which makes it a perfect thing for tinkering around, especially with an adult there to lend a hand. This can be a frustrating system to work with, I know, I've cobbled them together before and repaired them frequently over the years. Few preschool-aged children are able to manage it without an adult hand here or there. In fact, I've come to realize that it's the kind of challenge that is almost rigged for young children to fail unless they have a helping hand.

I'm reminded of a piece by the author Alfie Kohn about the popular myth that children today are too coddled and that they "benefit from plenty of bracing experiences with frustration and failure."

Research certainly doesn't support the idea that failure or disappointment is constructive in itself. A "BGUTI" (better get used to it) rationale -- the assumption that children are best prepared for unpleasant experiences that may come later by being exposed to a lot of unpleasantness while they're young -- makes no sense from a psychological perspective. We may want kids to rebound from failure, but that doesn't mean it's usually going to happen -- or that the experience of failure makes that desired outcome more likely . . . In fact, studies find that when kids fail, they tend to construct an image of themselves as incompetent and even helpless, which leads to more failure. (They also come to prefer easier tasks and lose interest in whatever they're doing.)

When children come to our workbench, indeed when they freely chose to approach any activity in our school, the emphasis is on "tinkering," not success or failure, not reward (good grade) or punishment (bad grade), not product but process. When a child is challenged by the process of fitting two pieces together, the adult's role isn't to keep their "eye on the prize," but rather to "notice" or narrate the process in which the child is engaging. The goal of struggle is not to overcome, but to gather data.

As pioneering psychologist Jerome Bruner put it, "We want students to "experience success and failure not as a reward and punishment but as information."

Most children get to a point when working with this impromptu building set where they need help to do what they want, an extra hand to hold something; a few words of strategic counsel. This isn't, of course, an invitation for the adult to take over, nor a sign of having been coddled, but rather a natural human response to a situation that is too many or too much for them. When a child asks for help with this building set, it's a request to provide support for their exploration. Often the request for help is very clear and specific, "Will you hold this for me?" an acknowledgment that they know exactly what they need to get to where they wants to go. Other times it's less clear, perhaps a groan of frustration or an "I can't do it!" In this case, we engage in a discussion about the nature of the challenge, my "help" coming in the form of helping the child simply formulate their request for help. Often that alone allows a child to see his way through to a solution. Sometimes I find I need to make suggestions (e.g., "If someone held that part, you might be able to do it.") or simply make statements of fact (e.g., "If you hit right here, the peg will go in the hole.")

I have no formula to guide adults on when and how to provide help. It always comes down to the child, the situation, and your relationship with them. Sometimes, as my friend and parent educator Janet Lansbury suggests, it's totally appropriate to say, "I won't help you, but I won't let you get hurt," but learning how to ask for help, learning to know when to ask for help, is as vital to "success" (however you define it) as anything else one needs to learn.

Part of what Kohn is writing about in his piece is what I call "The Myth of Boot Straps." It's a common theme that runs throughout public debate these days, one that implies that everyone can just pull themselves up by their own boot straps if only they apply themselves, stick to it, work harder. It's part of the mythology of the "self made man"; that it's a sign of weakness or coddling to ask for help.

What people have forgotten in this neo-Calvinist ideology is that "to pull one's self up by one's bootstraps" is a metaphor for an impossible task. It's an absurdity. Everyone needs help. If you're stuck in the mud, no amount of pulling at your own bootstraps is going to get you out. Learning when and how to ask for help is a vital life skill, because mythology aside, no one does it on his own.

******

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!

Brute Fact

2026-04-23T07:34:00.000-07:00

On a regular cycle, the moon in various phases is visible in the morning. Each day, when I observe it upon waking, it is in a different place, then traces an arc across the sky until it disappears behind the horizon in the west.

It has been doing this for billions of years. Fungi, the first multicellular lifeforms began tracking lunar cycles, even synchronizing with them. Later, when plants began to populate the globe, they too took notice. And then, last of all, came we animals. When I take note of the morning moon for several days running, I feel myself connected to those earliest humans who wondered about the same moon, as it did the same things it does today. I imagine that I might have been one of those early humans who began keep some sort of record of its progress over days and years, perhaps using some sort of system of tally marks etched into limestone or something.

Living in today's world, I don't have that urge. I know the moon moves, in a dance with the Earth, according to a predictable cycle, one that can be predicted centuries in advance, but the calculations have already been done. If I really need or want to know how the moon will appear next Wednesday, it will only take a few seconds on the internet to have an answer.

There is no more need to wonder about the moon: that wonder has been replaced by "brute fact."

I came across that phrase the other day -- "brute fact" -- when reading about the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. I like it. It gets at something that has long disturbed me about the way most schools approach education. I often refer to it here on the blog as an obsession with right and wrong answers. In Douglas Adams book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a massive computer is built for the explicit purpose of determining "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything." After seven million years it spits out the "brute fact" that the answer is 42.

While 42 may indeed be the correct answer, it is not only meaningless without a full understanding of both its relationship to everything else, but even as a so-called "fact" it is shaped by the perspective of the observers . . . In this case the computer.

When we make the mistake of thinking that brute fact alone makes for an adequate education, we remove wonder, which is the source of the human motivation to learn anything at all. It really shouldn't surprise us that so many children are unmotivated by school, and it's why our school masters must then introduce the hollow external motivators of grades and test scores: replacing the sweet carrot with a harsh stick.

When we wonder, we play, which is the highest form of research. It's through play that we are free to examine the brute fact from every perspective available to us, and to at least hope to discover how it connects to ourselves and the rest of the world. This is where meaning comes from, not brute fact alone.

When I see the morning moon, the joy it brings me goes far beyond the brute fact of its predictability. It connects me, through wonder, through time, to everything that has ever existed on this planet, which itself is a vast system of connection. The brute fact may be 42, but this morning as I consider the moon, I'm brought closer to the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

Let's not rush our youngest children on to the brute fact. It will always be there as predictably as the phases of the moon. Let's let them play, at least for a few years, because that's the only way any of us have ever discovered meaning. And meaning is what we need most.

******

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!

To Live With Our Heads on a Pivot

2026-04-22T07:20:00.000-07:00

I recently returned from Calgary where I took part in the Alberta Family Child Care Association's annual conference. I came back inspired by the conference, but with a pressing question for my fellow humans: what did people do at airports before smartphones?

It seemed that everyone, from young children to elderly adults, were jabbing and swiping, and engaging with the same crap they could have been engaging with without getting out of bed.

Here we all were, travelers together in the midst of doing something that should by all rights be exciting. We were traveling, by air, to new places, new climates, new cultures and countries. Or perhaps returning home from the same. In a sane world, in a world that had not lost its ability to wonder, our heads would be on pivots, watching people, admiring the modern architecture, taking in the public art, listening to the unique sounds and reacting to the unique scents of transit, watching with awe as 70 ton machines soar into space carrying people to all points of the globe.

Once you've cleared airport security, you emerge to find yourself in a place that is no place at all. A place governed by schedules, but where morning, noon, and night have no meaning; a place of 6 am cocktails and 10 pm coffee. When you raise your head from your screen you find yourself at a truly exotic crossroads, where people from all over the world have converged, to bide their time, while passing through.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently made changes to their long-standing recommendation that children be screen-free during their first two years of life. They still urge minimal screen time during the first 18 months, with the exception of video chatting with family members. After that, up to five years old, the recommendation is for no more than one hour per day of "high-quality" content. Co-viewing (i.e., caregivers participating with the child) is strongly encouraged, especially up to two years old. And all of this with the caveat that screen time not replace play, sleep, movement, or social interaction.

And that's exactly what I saw happening: dull, commonplace, repetitive screen time was replacing all those things that make travel and life dynamic, spicy, and exciting. And it wasn't just the kids. We blame and pity the children, but this is a something that impacts all of us and not just when we travel. The phones come out at dinner, at the theater, while walking down the street. Every time we look at our screens it is replacing something else. And that something else is wonder.

In my lifetime, "the screen" has gone from being a black and white TV set that offered relatively little of interest to young children outside of Saturday morning cartoons to a 24/7 ubiquitous presence. Even checking my clock involves a screen. This is the world in which our children are living. That said, it's important to note that the world's oldest and largest association of pediatricians continues to caution against screens for young children.

But we would be well served to consider it a caution to all of us.

The truth is that our screens, as convenient, useful and entertaining as they are, can have a net negative impact on everyone's physical and mental health. You can hardly scroll a social media feed (on a screen, of course) without coming across dire warnings about what our screens are doing to us. Some of it is hyperbolic fear-mongering, but a lot of it is real. I think we all know that our screens are harming us, if only because they replace life itself, but few of us are able or willing to give them up. Indeed, I doubt many of us would be able to limit ourselves to that one hour per day, especially if it involves having to "co-view" with someone else . . . But, you know, when I do the mental experiment, I can see that it would completely transform the experience.

According to the World Health Organization nearly 80 percent of teenagers around the world do not get enough physical exercise. A new longitudinal study finds that the seeds of this phenomenon are sown during the preschool years. According to this study, active play, limited screen time, and sufficient sleep in the early years predict a more active lifestyle a decade later. We know that our bodies and minds are intertwined, that an inactive body dulls the mind. This study doesn't tell us anything we probably don't already know, but it does provide more concrete support for the AAP's screen time recommendations

Young children need us to adhere to the AAP's guidelines, but the truth is that it will never happen until we adults do something similar, which is to say, take conscious control of our screen habits. I hope I don't come off as preachy, I grab for my phone far too often, but for the past couple years, I've made a point of leaving my phone behind more and more often. As I traveled to and from Calgary, I had my boarding passes on my screen device and I used it for necessary communications, but made myself keep my head on a pivot, observing my surroundings, the people, the technology, the wonder of a crossroads.

It was easier when I was young. The TV was alluring, especially when we finally got our "in living color" set, but when Mom wanted us out of her hair, she could just say, "You're driving me crazy, go outside." And we did, where we found things to wonder about. Increasingly, parents don't have that option. I get it when they say, "I just needed a moment to myself," as an explanation for their child's screen time. Despite a culture that often tells us the opposite, being a parent ought not be a full time job. Our children do not need full time, round-the-clock supervision and entertainment. Indeed, they need more freedom and fewer screens if they are to grow into independent, resourceful, competent, and confident adults.

Our parents had "go outside." A fenced backyard is nice to have, but the truth is that a walled garden, no matter how wonderful, isn't quite the same thing . . . Unless they are free to climb, to dig, to harvest, and to hunt. And, honestly, few of us are willing to sacrifice our landscaping to the kind of play children really need. Besides, and this is a more than just a philosophical point, fences are like walls and screens in that they create a world without visible horizons, that promise of something more, something beyond, something unknown. Screens offer us a hint of that, only to disappoint with yet another damned influencer video, but it's the desire for horizons that keep us swiping and jabbing.

As an early childhood educator, my purpose has always been to do everything in my power to make our school into that alternative to screens, to indoors, to constant supervision. It might sound contradictory. After all, our conception of schools is to confine and control, but in everything I do, I want children to know that they have explicit permission when in my care to climb, dig, harvest, and hunt; permission to explore the stories, objects, and ideas about which they have questions. I want them to know, that I'm not there to tell or teach, but rather to be of adequate service to their safety, to answer their questions honestly, and to provide them with the things they need. And a big part of making that happen is to ensure, to the degree possible, that it is a place without screens.

I admire the AAP and their commitment to early childhood. Their recently reaffirmed and updated clinical report on The Power of Play is the most comprehensive collection of research and data on why young children must play that I've ever come across. We ignore their screen time recommendations at our own (and our children's) risk.

We know that our knee-jerk screen habits are harming us in a variety of ways, but for me, the most tragic part is that screens have replaced our wonder with a pathetic existence of swiping and jabbing. We have evolved to live with our heads on pivots, our bodies in motion, not inertly bent to a screen. We have evolved to play, sleep, move, and socialize. And that is exactly what our screens are taking from us.

******

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!

Learning While the Adults Loiter With Intent

2026-04-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

I don't know where the pogo sticks came from, but there were two on the playground. I imagine that we benefited from someone's garage or cellar purge. When I first spied them, I tried one out, something I've done a handful of times in my life. I didn't succeed in achieving a single bounce, although there have been times in my life when I've managed as many as a half dozen. I wondered if the children would know what they are, but one of the cardinal rules of young children in groups is that if one child knows something, they all know it. So all it took was for one child to say, "It's a pogo stick," then explain how they had seen one work and the knowledge went viral.

The One Laptop Per Child organization demonstrated this phenomenon back in 2012 when they left boxes of tablet computers in remote Ethopian villages. Within four minutes, illiterate children had figured out, together, how to power them up. Within days, they were customizing their desktops. Within weeks, they were using the installed apps and singing along to videos. Within five months, they were hacking the Android software. All without instructions or teachers. This is how learning through play works and why few things impede learning more than the "keep your eyes on your own work" mentality: it makes children dependent upon the adults rather than one another which is the most natural and motivating way to learn new things.

Pogo sticks may or may not be more complex things to learn than those tablets, or maybe there are just more distractions on our playground in Seattle than in an Ethiopian village, but after weeks, the kids, despite understanding the concept, still had not succeeded in even a single bounce. That is until one day when a couple girls decided they were going to figure it out. They knew they couldn't get started bouncing on their own, so they tried working together, with one holding the pogo stick upright for the other, but the weight was too much. They tried leaning the pogo stick against the wall of the playhouse to keep it upright as they climbed on, but this too failed. They tried rallying more children to help hold it upright, but then it was too crowded for anyone to climb on. They considered the mental experiment of digging a hole into which the pogo stick could be "planted," but recognized that it would be impossible to bounce properly in a hole.

"Maybe you could use this," suggested a boy, offering a length of rope. After considering it, the girls decided it was worth a try. I couldn't imagine how they would manage it, but that's not my job, so I moved along to loiter with intent elsewhere. When I later returned to the pogo stick experiments, they had tied one end of the rope to the top of the playhouse and another around the trunk of a lilac at the top of our concrete slide, with the pogo stick dangling, upright, in the middle. As one girl steadied the rope, another climbed onto the pogo stick and, Yes! She bounced four or five times before toppling over.

By the end of the day, several of the children had discovered pogo stick success, using this training device invented by children. It's incredible hubris for adults to assume that children need us to teach them things. What they need most from us is freedom, time, and other children with whom to collaborate while the adults loiter with intent.

******

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

The Blind Spot

2026-04-20T07:18:00.000-07:00

"(M)athematical physical laws don’t describe reality; they describe idealized objects in models." Nancy Cartwright

I've just finished reading a book called The Blind Spot, in which it's three authors (Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson) explore what they call the "blind spot" of Western science. They start with what they call "The Parable of Temperature."

To paraphrase, scientists invented the thermometer (in the absence of any established theory of temperature) in order to measure this thing called temperature. Of course, long before any thought to measure temperature, everyone already understood the concept of hot and cold. The problem is that hot and cold have meanings that change depending on the individual and the circumstances, but temperature, as measured by a thermometer, is supposedly an exact thing.

This is what scientists felt they needed in order to make progress toward a better understanding about the way the world works. The problem is that a thermometer isn’t the kind of precise tool we've been conditioned to believe it is. Thermometers measure temperature on a scale that is based on the boiling and freezing points of water, and those things vary depending on where the measurements are taken. For example, on a mountain top, water boils at a lower temperature than at sea level. Indeed, it also boils at a different temperature at every elevation in between.

To work around this challenge, scientists then created controlled environments in which to perform their experiments, laboratories or workshops that offered consistent, replicable conditions which allowed them to develop an abstract theory called classical thermodynamics. They then used this theory – like "pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps" – to define temperature even more abstractly. Now, temperature could be defined in a way that excluded concepts like hot and cold altogether and even allowed for things that are physically impossible, like the idea of “absolute zero" and the mathematical possibility that something could spontaneously reheat itself.

And lost in all of this is the concrete, real, human experience of temperature that each of us feel with our own bodies. This "scientific process" leads scientists to tell us that there is an objective reality that is somehow separate from us. To use another example, we're told that things we have never directly experienced like atoms and light waves are real, while things we experience all the time, like the color red or hot and cold are "just in your head."

It's as if scientists believe that our heads are not part of the world.

We do this all the time in education, especially when it comes to math and science, and that's probably because we are all victims of this Western penchant for abstracting basic concepts in order to study them, then making the mistake of reifying (or thing-ifying) our formulas and controlled environments. Every child engages in mathematics for fun, which is what they are doing when they sort, sequence, and make patterns: that is what math is, concretely. But instead, probably because most of us have learned that our own actual experience with math is inadequate, we rush to force young children to replace this joyful, human activity of sorting, sequencing, and patterning, with the abstractions of numbers and equations. When we do this, we remove it a step away from real, human experience, experience we need in order to make meaning of the abstractions. In doing so, we teach them that their own experience of mathematics is "just in their head" while the abstractions of number, operators, and equations is "real."

The symbol "2" is not a real thing. It is an abstraction of the concrete circumstance of having, say, collected a number of apples greater than one or less than three. The symbol 1/2 is likewise not real. Reality is cutting an apple in half to share with another person. The same thing can be said of most science that tends to thing-ify real world phenomenon by separating them from our actual experience of the world. When we rush to make children read, we do the same thing, forcing them into the abstractions of letters and sentences and paragraphs, while ignoring the real, concrete things, like stories, characters, and ideas, that are the only source of their meaning.

Too often in education, as in science, we rush to the abstractions, mistaking them for something real, when, in fact, it will always be the embodied knowledge of hot and cold that matters most. The color red, the story of adventure, the sharing of an apple, those are the real, concrete things that must be embodied if the rest of it is going to have any meaning at all. And meaning is what is most missing from our world today.

We do not prepare children for life by feeding them abstractions and telling them to ignore what their senses tell them. We do it by setting them free to take the real world in their hands which is the only way it will ever have meaning in their heads and hearts. And this happens when we give them permission to play.

******

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!

When I Brought Slot Cars to the Preschool

2026-04-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

I was probably 8 years old when I awoke on Christmas morning to discover that Santa had left my brother and me a slot car set.

We hadn't asked for slot cars. I suspect that this was something that Dad really wanted to give to us. I mean, it was the height of the slot car trend in America and this was exactly the kind of toy with which an engineer would want to play. We played with it alongside Dad for a good part of that morning. Since we were then allowed to keep it in the dining room for several days after that, we returned to it repeatedly during the next week.

We learned how to slot our cars onto the tracks. Dad showed us how to properly bend the copper braids (he called them brushes) that created contact with the metal track, making the cars go. There was a red car and a white car. We thought one was a little faster than the other, but our testing was inconclusive. By the end of the week, the track was packed away and put in our bedroom closet where it mostly sat untouched.

As often happens with manufactured toys, even cool ones like a slot car set, the play value wore off quickly. After all, how many times can you drive your car round and round doing nothing but squeezing a little trigger? We had better, more active things to be doing.

A couple years later, our family moved to Athens, Greece for Dad's work. We were only going to be there for two years (as it turned out it was four years), so we didn't take much of our stuff and the slot car track was left behind. Shortly after we arrived, however, Dad came home from work with another slot car set. But this one was far, far better. It was second-hand for one thing and included not only several cars, but a whole case full of car parts, including motors, tires, chassis, car bodies, wires, screws, braids, and everything kids might need to modify and build their own custom cars. There were no instructions, although there were several small screwdrivers and a couple of operational cars that provided us with the "blueprint" for how the parts went together. It wasn't just a slot car set, but rather a race car themed tinkering set.

I played with it far more than I'd played with that original set, not necessarily for racing, but for building and rebuilding functioning slot cars. I would spend hours noodling over how to combine a particular motor with a certain chassis, wheels, and body. I might run it around the track a few times, then it was on to the next. The scripts had been stripped from the toy, rendering it more open-ended, and capable to evoking the emotion that I call, "I wonder . . ."

We passed that set along to other kids when we moved back to the States, but it all came back to me one day several years ago when I came across a slot car set in a big-box toy store. At only $9.99 it seemed like a deal, so I picked one up to bring into the preschool. I knew that the kids were probably too young to build their own cars, but it seemed like exactly the kind of toy that would engage preschoolers for a day or two, maybe a week.

Not only did it have zoom-zoom appeal, but I knew from experience that playing with slot cars demanded just the right level of fiddling around to keep them interesting: you had to position them correctly into the track slots; the braids, of course, needed constant adjusting; if you went too fast, the cars wouldn't make it around the track; there were several electrical connection points that would need managing; the track itself was a challenge to assemble and re-arrange. The idea of racing cars would draw them in, but I figured the fiddling around would keep them coming back.

For the next decade, that slot car track made two, maybe three, annual appearances in our classroom, each lasting a week before it was once more packed away. That's about as long as most manufactured toys can hold a child's interest. Over years of use, the set became increasingly fiddly to the point that it was almost inoperable. That's the destiny of cheap toys. I kept it going as best I could, but eventually the track would no longer reliably complete the electrical circuit needed to get the cars going -- too many bent parts. Finally, instead of packing or throwing it away, I just let it ride.

It was fully dismantled over the course of weeks. Over the course of months, the parts mostly migrated to the junkyard playground. And that's where this manufactured toy became everything but a slot car set. It was set free to be loose parts -- wheels, pieces of track, chassis, motors, bodies, hand controllers, guard rails, wires, screws, memories -- that could now become anything at all. Those the children played with for years.

******

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!

Building Furniture With Preschoolers

2026-04-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, we purchased new tables, chairs, and stools for the playground. It all arrived in boxes, unassembled. We could have afforded to purchase the "velvet glove" service which would have meant the stuff arrived ready to go, but where's the learning in that?

Adults often have to hold things in place as the kids tighten the screws. It's a real collaborative process.

I've found that assemble-yourself furniture, such as the stuff you get from places like Ikea, is a sort of "just right" project for our cooperative preschool. Naturally, we can't just turn it over to the kids, but with an adult or two leading these Allen wrench (hex key) assemblies, kids as young as two are capable of making meaningful contributions to these real life projects.

Concentration, cooperation, and fine motor skills are challenged.

It never seems like it's going to work at first. We open the boxes and always find more parts than you think you'll need, and the instructions look daunting, especially since there is often a crowd of kids trying to get their hands on things.

The first step, however, is a classic preschool sorting project, checking the instructions to make sure you have all the parts, arranging everything by type and shape, comparing the thing you're holding your hand with the graphic on paper, counting out the various screws. These are skills and habits we acquire when we're young that we use throughout our lives.

Once this is accomplished, we know the names of the parts, and naming things always makes projects seem a little more do-able. For instance, the kids and parent-teachers started using the term "lozenges" to label one of the basic pieces required to assemble this brand of furniture. I don't know if that came from the instructions or their own innovative use of language, but it stuck. "I need a lozenge!" "I found a spot for a lozenge!"

We then find Step 1 in the instructions. It's really remarkable how often it's the kids who figure it out first. Then on to Step 2 and Step 3 and Step 4. This isn't for every child, but for some it comes naturally, this kind of real world puzzling.

Here we are fitting a "lozenge" into its proper place.

There's usually an ebb and flow at the workbench as kids take and lose interest. There are always a few who want to see at least one project through from beginning to end, however, puffing their chests in pride when the finished piece is on the ground.

The first piece we finished was this step stool, which we'll also use to replace our old, wobbly benches.

And, of course, once we finish building a piece, we have to take turns putting it through its paces.

Assembling furniture like this is different than much of what we do in our preschool in that it is a project with a predetermined beginning, middle, and end, much like working on puzzles. Over the course of our three days working on this project, at least six different parent-teachers took turns, and I suspect that at one time or another, every child lent a hand. One of the most challenging parts for the adults, however, was in not becoming too product-oriented, too focused on "getting it done." I kept reminding everyone: "It's not a race. If we only get one piece done today, that's fine."

One of the concerns, especially with our wood chip bestrewn outdoor play surface is that with all those little hands, and all those little agendas, we would wind up losing some of the small, but all-important screws. And it was a real concern given that, like with most of these kinds of products, we weren't provided any extras. I was impressed with how seriously the children, even the very youngest, took this responsibility, often clenching them in their fists so securely that their palms were sweating when we finally pried them open.

Real world projects like helping with preparing dinner or working on the car, in which children can make a meaningful (rather than a manufactured) contribution are great for building skills and confidence, of course, but most importantly, I think, it fosters that sense of pride and responsibility, that sense of true belonging that lies at the heart of every great community.

******

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Play as an Act of Resistance

2026-04-15T07:05:00.000-07:00

If there is one lesson I have always wanted the children in my life to learn it is to question those in authority, like their teachers and even their parents. This is not the same as saying defying authority, but rather the intellectual and social practice of doubting those in power when they say or do things that don't match what the children already know about the world. Indeed, I want them to know it's not just their right, but their responsibility to do so.

And any authority figure who denies someone's right to question them does not deserve to have authority over others.

One way I try to teach this lesson is to intentionally be wrong . . . a lot. I will hold up a plastic pig figurine and make it say, "Moo." For most children, this comes off as a joke, even if I'm saying it with a straight face. They laugh and saying something like, "No, Teacher Tom, the cow says moo!" Others just look at me like I'm crazy.

I might insist it's raining when the sun is shining. Or that the hand drum I use to signal transitions is actually a banjo. Or that the carrot I'm eating is candy.

I want the children to listen to what I'm saying and if what I'm saying defies the evidence before their own eyes, ears, or reason, I want them to know that it is not just their right but their responsibility, as a member or our community, to call me on it.

This might sound risky to some educators and parents, but the alternative, which is to learn that authorities are to be believed and obeyed, no matter how irrationally they wield their authority, is far, far more dangerous. We know that the habits we develop when we are young tend to carry forward into adulthood. If we teach children to be obedient and unquestioningly compliant, how can we possibly expect them to grow up to be critical thinkers? Do as I say, not as I do and Because I said so are lessons in bullying authority that defy our essential humanity.

I choose to rely on mutual respect instead. And when I respect someone, I must make room for them to question and challenge me.

As political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt wrote in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism: "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist." Or as George Orwell writes in his dystopian novel 1984: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears." If the ideal subject of totalitarianism is someone who relies on others to tell them what is true and what is false, then the ideal citizen in a self-governing society is one who has learned to seek truth in their own lived experience and to challenge those who would tell them otherwise.

Perhaps the best way to prepare children to resist those who would wield power over them in the future is to leave them alone to experience the world before them, to shut up and free them to form their own ideas, theories, and understandings. This is exactly what a play-based curriculum does. As Rebecca Solnit writes in her book Orwell's Roses, "direct observations and firsthand encounters in the material and sensory world (are) acts of resistance or at least reinforcements of the self who can resist. To spend time frequently with these direct experiences is clarifying, a way to step out of the whirlpools of words and the confusion they can whip up."

Play is how we offer children the kinds of direct experiences they need to see through lies and illusions. Sadly, we live in a time when we must fight for the right of children to play, if only in the name of their mental health. Increasingly, our children are growing up in a world in which all truth comes through authority figures, educators and parents, who are telling them what to do and when to do it. Play is the way we break this cycle. It is how all of us can re-learn how to trust our own eyes and ears and resist those who would command us.

******

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!

Training for the Unexpected

2026-04-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

In science journalist David Toomey's book Kingdom of Play, he writes about an animal geneticist and ethologist named David Wood-Gush who established the "Edinburgh Pig Park," a place where domesticated animals were allowed to roam freely. The idea was that they could live as closely to their natural state as possible, yet still be easily studied by scientists. It was known at the time that pigs that played more tended to healthier, so Wood-Gush and his colleague Ruth Newberry decided that understanding more about pig play would lead to more humane treatment of pigs.

Like many mammals, one of the forms of pig play is to run around. This makes sense to scientists because, according to one of the major theories about the function of play in animals is that it allows us to practice skills we might need in the future. Running is obviously a good way to avoid future predators. One thing that surprised the researchers, however, was that periodically, while in the midst of running, piglets would, for no apparent reason, fling themselves upon the ground, scramble back to their feet, then continue running. This seemed like a less adaptive behavior. Indeed, it seemed like a good way to wind up as lunch.

Newberry continued to pursue this question and, along with colleagues in the US, came up with an idea they called "training for the unexpected." In the real world, an animal is running in natural terrain, which means it's littered with tripping and slipping hazards. The pig flop-over, they speculated, was in fact practice for the real possibility of having to recover from a fall while being pursued. "We hypothesize that a major ancestral function of play is to rehearse behavioral sequences in which animals lose full control of their locomotion, position, or sensory/spatial input and need to repair their faculties quickly."

There is no agreed upon definition of what play is among scientists, but this notion of "training for the unexpected" has become central to our current efforts to understand what play is all about. Evidence of this phenomenon is all around us. Young children are famous for putting themselves into disorienting positions. I've watched countless children doing their own version of the piglet flop. Children spin on swings, roll down hills, and diverge from almost every straight-and-narrow path in order to clamber or climb. Often their "flops" are objectively risky behaviors. And we all know that once is rarely enough, they must do it again and again and again, which is the hallmark of practice or training.

It doesn't make much of a stretch to see that their dramatic play is likewise an aspect of this phenomenon. By pretending to be someone or something they are not, they are preparing themselves to respond to the surprises that life will inevitably offer them. In contrast, so much of what we call schooling is focused on the knowable, the predictable, the standard, and planning for the future, but we all know that much of life as it's lived, perhaps most of it, is about how we respond to the unexpected, the tripping and slipping. As the Yiddish adage has it, "Man plans and God laughs." Play is, in this context, how animals prepare to get the last laugh: we may fall, our plans may go awry, but because we played, we know how to get back up and keep going.

We are currently experiencing an alarming spike in childhood anxiety, with children as young as three being treated for it. This is not true of all anxiety, but much of it manifests as fear of the future, and specifically a fear that we will not be up to the unexpected challenges that lie ahead. It's not a coincidence that the incidence of childhood anxiety is peaking at the same time that children are experiencing a deficit of play. As psychologist and retired professor of research Peter Gray writes, "Over the same decades that children's play has been declining, childhood mental disorders have been increasing . . . the rise in mental disorders among children is largely the result of the decline in children's freedom." In a world in which children are not free to play, in which they are over-protected and over-managed, in which they are forever being groomed exclusively for the expected and shielded from the unexpected, we are robbing them of opportunities to prepare themselves for the unexpected. No wonder they're anxious.

When an individual piglet flops, of course, it doesn't know it's training for the unexpected. It's doing it because it's fun thing to do. It's so fun that they do it again and again. Porcine play, like human play, like the play of animals ranging from bees to octopuses to elephants, has evolved as an almost universal adaptation to world in which man plans and God laughs. We are meant to do fun things, even if they are a bit risky. As the German philosopher and psychologist Karl Groos wrote in his groundbreaking 1896 book The Play of Animals, "The animal does not play because he is young. He has a period of youth because he must play."

******

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!

Death Play

2026-04-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

Last week I wrote about talking with children about death. Actual death. The kind of death talk that comes up when there is a dead body, like a bird carcass, or a when a beloved person is, from one day to the next, no longer part of your life.

But there is another more common kind of death talk around the preschool that falls into the theoretical or maybe even fictional category. The kind they pick up from movies or video games or older siblings. The kind of death talk that involves saying, "I'm going to kill you!" or "You're dead." It's the kind of death talk that might even make them laugh together like at a taboo subject, which, to be honest, it is.

I spent some of my own preschool years living not far from Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. I don't remember a time when I didn't know that part of what soldiers did involved killing and being killed. Naturally, we neighborhood kids played soldier games that involved fighting wars. In these games, death involved falling to the ground, then counting to 10. We even practiced dying, making a show of our death throes like we sometimes saw on TV. It's tempting to blame modern media, but, you know, there's a lot of this kind of thing in Shakespeare as well, and before that, there were those Ancient Greek tragedies, and before that I have no doubt that humans acted out death around the campfire.

This kind of "death talk" is related to actual death, but is so abstracted from the pain, the grief, and the permanence, that it's almost a different thing. It's death play. And it's important, just as it's important that young children have permission to play with anything about which they have questions. Actual death, like I discussed last week is only one aspect of death. If we are ever going to understand anything, we must be free to examine it from every perspective. Play is how we do this and death is a subject around which we will always have questions.

It freaks us out when a four-year-old says, "I'm going to kill you!" At best it strikes us as unsavory. We worry, especially when it frightens other children. I mean, even if these young humans are unclear about what death or killing means, part of our responsibility is to ensure that children don't feel unsafe in our environments, and this sounds like a threat. We know that the child making the threat possesses neither the intent nor ability to carry it out. We know it's an experiment. We know it's play. But we worry that the other children won't know that so we tend to intervene. At a minimum we want to assure the other children that they will not be killed . . . whatever that means to them.

It always depends on the specific circumstances, but if a child says to me, "I'm going to kill you!" (and it happens), I'll respond calmly and truthfully, "I don't want to be killed." If they say it to another child, I will turn to the child being threatened and ask, calmly, "Do you want to be killed?" If they say they don't want to be killed, then I'll say, "She says she doesn't want to be killed," although quite often that child will agree to be killed the way we did in our neighborhood games.

In our modern world with what seems like 24/7 mayhem and murder, I understand if this strikes some readers as crass, unsympathetic, or even dangerous. I understand why some of us feel the urge to draw bright red lines about play that involves violence and death. I get it, but I also know that we have always lived in a world that includes violence and death. We might protect young children from it for a time, but it will inevitably get to them, especially in group settings, even if we think it's "too early" . . . And then they will have to play with it. I think most of us understand that when we kibosh anything that children really need to understand, we just push it underground, and then we lose our ability to be anything other than an authority from which to hide.

Better, I think, is to notice it, then before responding, make sure we are reacting to what is happening in front of us rather than our own prejudices and fears. My own racing heart is not an indication of what is going on with the kids. Obviously, we protect children if they feel genuinely threatened, but more often than not I find that no one is taking it nearly as seriously as I am. Most of the time they know it for what it is: pretend, play, words and ideas that are clearly powerful and significant, the kinds of real things that demand to be explored. And the way we explore is through play.

******

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!

"All Wise People Change Their Minds"

2026-04-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

As a boy, we would occasionally catch my mother in what we saw as inconsistency. Instead of denying it, she would reply, "All wise people change their minds."

It could be frustrating, but it's a response that has served me well throughout my adult life, not because it's a defense against accusations of hypocrisy, but rather because it's true.

The great American poet Walt Whitman phrased it perfectly:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes).

Albert Einstein said, "The measure of intelligence is the ability to change." Stephen Hawking put a different spin on it: "Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change." Neither of these undisputed geniuses ever took an IQ test. Indeed, Hawking famously said that they are for losers.

As educators, intelligence falls into our balliwick. Parents come to us knowing that their children are intelligent. They've seen it with their own eyes. "My Angela can already write her letters." They've heard it with their own ears. "My Marcus makes up such stunning songs." They've been present for the genius of their first word, their first step, their first mind-blowing question. They remember when this baby couldn't talk or walk or write or sing, and now they can. This child is obviously intelligent. They've seen them change, day-by-day, from a newborn into a child and they come to us educators to foster that obvious intelligence.

The protagonist of Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower is a 15-year-old named Lauren whose special "genius" is hyperempathy. In the face of a dystopia caused by a combination of greed and climate change, she invents a religion/philosophy she calls Earthseed:

All that you touch
You Change

All that you Change
Changes you

The only last truth
Is Change

God
Is Change.

All that evidence that parents see as intelligence is a function of change and intelligence is about both our ability and adaptability when it comes to this "last truth."

If humans were fixed entities we would have perished long ago. If we didn't contradict ourselves, if we did not contain multitudes, our species would not have demonstrated the intelligence to survive. Intelligence cannot be measured by tests, but rather by close observation of behavior. As neuroscientist and author Antonio Damasio says, "Bacteria and plants are intelligent. We can tell by their behavior."

This is what we do when we observe the children we have set free to play. We take note of their behaviors, we notice, like their parents did, how they change and grow, how they shape their world and how the world shapes them. When they are being harmed, of course, we step in, but when they struggle, which is a far different thing, we stand back because change is in the offing. This is a moment for them to show us their intelligence.

Change is often uncomfortable, it requires failure and struggle, and it demands courage. When we swoop in with our "teaching" or "help," we too often rob children of this opportunity apply their unique intelligence. My heroes are those children who rebuff our interventions, shouting, "I do it!" They know that if they are to change, if they are to grow, if they are to behave intelligently, then it must be on their own terms.

We have some control of their world in the form of our classroom environments. We provide space, materials, and other people. We make them safe, beautiful, and varied. We provide opportunities for change, but it is the children themselves that must do the growing. And we can never forget that there is a whole world beyond our classroom wall over which we have no control.

Intelligence can't be measured, but it can be observed. Intelligence is about changing and adapting. An intelligent person becomes a new person with each passing day. An intelligent person contains multitudes. An intelligent person is a new person each time we meet them.

What we call schooling is far too focused on those tests for losers, those IQ tests that prove little more than the ability to pass tests. A psychologist who administers these tests to preschoolers told me that, at best, they are valid for six months because "young children change so fast." They are too intelligent for a damned test.

Play (or self-directed learning) and observation is the gold standard if intelligence is our goal. Learning is always about change and all wise people change their minds.

******

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!

Be Curious, Not Judgmental

2026-04-09T03:48:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, I came across some very large static cling decals featuring a variety of barnyard animals. While goofing around with them, I discovered they stuck nicely to the exterior of my car: a cow, a pig, a goat, a rooster, and so on. So, I did what any self-respecting preschool teacher would do. I covered my car in them. The kids, as I'd hoped, were delighted. But not everyone was. Indeed, I began to notice that many adults, as they passed in front of me in a crosswalk or pulled up beside me at a light, would furrow their brows, even glare at me, as if trying to figure out what kind of monster would do such a thing to their car. When I smiled at them, they would look away, making it clear they had judged me to be a dubious character.

In fairness, not all adults reacted this way, but it was a common enough response that I began to remark on it to my friends. One of them speculated, "Maybe they think you're some kind of radical animal rights activist." Another pointed out that some people are automatically offended by anything that doesn't fit their preconceived notions. Yet another dismissed the glowering strangers as jealous: "They're afraid to do it to their car so they've decided they hate it on your car." Maybe they simply thought the farm animal clings to be ugly and they were wrinkling their noses in disgust. Whatever the case, it was clear that a sizable number of adults I came across were judging me based upon those innocuous animal decals.

My jeans often look like the picture at the top of this post, worn at the knees because I spend so much of my time kneeling.

Children will ask me, "Why do you have holes in your pants, Teacher Tom?" I'll tell them that they've become this way because I spend so much time crawling on the floor, getting on their level, playing with them. I'll say that they are my "church pants" because they are so hole-y, a joke that usually goes over their heads while making their parents moan. The youngest children might not ask the question at all, but I know they're curious because I feel their little fingers exploring them, caressing my kneecaps or fiddling with the dangling threads. Some of the kids have their own "Teacher Tom pants" that they wear to school, which they model for me by way of connection. "We're twins, Teacher Tom!"

Adults are far more likely to ask the same question in the spirit of judgment rather than curiosity. "Why do you have to wear those pants?" they'll ask, but what they mean is something like "Those aren't appropriate for a grown man." Again, in fairness, most adults don't say anything at all, but I've been told that my worn jeans are "disrespectful" or "sending the wrong message." I know that some take a look at my pants and consider me a slob or a hippie or a red neck. My torn jeans have caused at least some adults to make judgments about my values, my character, and my way of life, much in the way that I expect those adults were forming judgments about me because of my farm animal decals.

I've been thinking a lot lately about this fundamental difference between curiosity and judgment. When we are children, curiosity tends to be our default response to the world, but as we age, for many of us, our curiosity is replaced by judgment. It's a pity because judgment closes off while curiosity opens up. Judgment divides while curiosity connects. Judgement paints the world as broken, while curiosity paints it as endlessly fascinating. Judgment leaves us with an ever-narrowing world, one that is increasingly confined to things we already think we "know," while curiosity creates an ever-expanding world, one in which we must constantly rearrange and reconsider everything we thought we knew.

We've all known people who never seem to grow up, even as their hair grays and their skin wrinkles. These, I think, must be the ones who have discovered the secret to eternal youth: remain curious. The urge to judge, on the other hand, ages us more rapidly and thoroughly than even the passage of time. Lately, I've been trying to catch myself as I tell myself judgmental stories about the people around me and instead ask a genuine "Why?" It's not always easy because the habit of judgment is well-ingrained, but when I do it I find myself in a world of wonder, one in which happiness is at least possible.

Be curious, not judgmental. It's a lesson that every child is born to teach, but only when adults are curious enough to listen.

******

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!

Talking About Death

2026-04-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

Many of us are uncomfortable talking about death, especially to preschoolers. Of course, the subject comes up quite frequently, because, well, death walks among us.

Some of us obsess over death, our own or that of others. Even those who are convinced that they will spend eternity amongst the angels tend to avoid thinking about death more than can be helped. It comes for all of us. When children ask us questions, most of us, most of the time, reply as best we can, then hurry on from the grim subject, often following it up with a joke or ice cream or something else to turn attention back to the sweetness of life.

I was brought up with the Lutheran version of heaven and hell, although we didn't talk much about either. This was just the answer to the question. You want to avoid the bad place and that's where it ended. It always came up when someone died. The living assure one another that they are in a "better place," and that's where it ended.

I was probably about eight when I overheard an adult joke that shifted things for me. The recently departed found themselves in a place in the clouds where there was no fear or pain. All their needs and desires were met before they were even needs or desires. The air was full of wondrous fragrance and beautiful music. At first they were delighted, but as time passed and nothing changed, they began to grow restless. One of them mentioned this to the deity in charge, "I thought heaven would be more interesting." The deity replied, "Who said this is heaven?"

Try as I might, going forward I couldn't conceive of a heaven that would not eventually become tedious. Eternal life sounded like a particularly devious vision of hell.

I once had a girlfriend who would shut me up whenever I talked about death. We had intimate, honest conversations about everything else, but death was off the table. One time, however, I provoked her to the point that she confessed her fear that death meant that you somehow floated above it all, seeing and hearing life continuing without you, but that you were otherwise entirely disconnected from it. She feared that death would be eternal loneliness. Intellectually, she understood that this was unlikely, but death talk stirred up her fear.

The thing is, it wasn't just her. Few people I knew growing up wanted to talk about death, except through art.

The Bible offered little beyond what I already knew, but art, and literature in particular, provided ways of thinking about death that allowed me to actually consider about what it might mean. In Thomas Mann's novel Joseph and His Brothers, I was introduced to the idea that while we embodied humans may cling to life, the individual atoms in our bodies ache for their release back into their universe. And that is the joy, the heaven, of death, that we return to a perfect oneness with all that is, the opposite of my girlfriend's fear. The only thing that dies is our individual mind, which is the cause of all our misery to begin with. It's the joy of perfect peace and unity.

It was in this same novel that I came to understand that eternal life, as far as we can know, comes from the stories people tell about us after we're gone. How you live directly determines your afterlife. You can be Joseph or Herod depending on your deeds. Your afterlife is for those you leave behind. You, however, are free.

From Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Demons (or The Possessed) I learned that my own fear of death was not a fear of death at all, but rather a fear of pain.

“Imagine . . . a stone as big as a great house; it hangs and you are under it; if it falls on you, on your head, will it hurt you?”

“A stone as big as a house? Of course it would be fearful.”

“I speak not of fear. Will it hurt?”

“A stone as big as a mountain, weighing millions of tons? Of course it wouldn’t hurt.”

“But really stand there and while it hangs you will fear very much that it will hurt. The most learned man, the greatest doctor, all, all will be very much frightened. Everyone will know that it won’t hurt, and everyone will be afraid that it will hurt.”

When my father-in-law died, we were all grateful for the medicine that alleviated, or at least minimized, his pain. He continues to live with us in the stories we tell about him, which are not about his death, but his life. And he is free.

You may or may not take comfort in the same things that give me comfort. That's because we each must ultimately face our own death alone, even if we are surrounded by loved ones. And even if they are free, we are not, and therein lies the real pain of death: the grief of those left behind.

If you work with young children for any amount of time, you will find yourself discussing death. Hardly a day in preschool passes without someone, often joyfully, shouting, "You're dead!" It's a joke, a concept that is not fully formed, a bloodless, painless thing from action movies or fairy tales. Children may explore it from angles that disturb us. I've written here about a group of girls who took turns cooking one another for dinner. There is talk of killing and drowning and being consumed by lava (which I wrote about just yesterday).

When we scold them, when we lower our brows and try to make them see the grimness, we tend to push it underground. Maybe we've learned that death is a taboo topic, but they haven't and they need to explore it. I feel that it's better that it happen on my radar. I don't have answers, only theology and philosophy, but I can listen and help them when they feel afraid. Otherwise, their guesses are as good as mine.

Young children who have any experience at all with nature have already experienced death first hand. Dead insects. Dead worms. We once came across a dead bird while at a local playground. There might be jokes about insects and worms, but this was a moment of reverence. My first instinct had been to usher them away, to protect them from the sight, but they wouldn't have it. They gathered round like we do around a grave, hushed, each alone with their thoughts. Later, when we talked together I answered their questions with "What do you think?" Heaven was the most common prediction.

When my brother-in-law was dying from cancer, I took our two-year-old daughter Josephine with me to visit him in the hospital almost daily over the course of those last few weeks of his life. They delighted in one another.

When he died, she asked me where he went. I told her, as my parents had told me, about heaven. Actually, the way I phrased it was, "Some people believe that we die and go to heaven," which was my way of telling her the truth. A few days later, she informed me that Chris was in heaven, drinking coffee, playing his guitar, shooting baskets, and "getting heaven ready for us."

I have no certainty about death, let alone an afterlife, but I sought to comfort her because that's what we do with death, we comfort the living. Looking back, I can see that she wasn't asking for comfort, she was asking for information. She was curious and my answer seemed to satisfy her. He died so young, it made no sense, we all suffered the loss, but I found myself wanting to protect Josephine from the sadness.

A couple years later she confessed to me that she no longer believed in heaven. "I think we all get to come back as our favorite animal. I'm going to be a bunny." I'd not discussed reincarnation with her. She may have come to the idea on her own, but it's more likely it came from another child. I told her that this is also what many people believe.

In her book All About Love, bell hooks writes, "I am continually surprised when friends, and strangers, act as though any talk of death is a sign of pessimism or morbidity. Death is among us. To see it always and only as a negative subject is to lose sight of its power to enhance every moment."

I'm not surprised.

I still fear pain, but, most of the time, as a 64-year-old, I don't fear my own death, although I do sometimes fear the death of the people I love. How will I go on without them? I also wouldn't mind getting to watch Josephine's live continue to unfold, even if it's from that place of my old girlfriend's nightmares.

From my perspective today, I see that the only way to oppose fear is to love people right now. To let them know I love them. To let them love me. Death walks among us, not as a stalker, but as an enhancement to every moment. Death is the ultimate guarantee that life will never become tedious perfection. Death urges us to love right now, to connect right now with that joy of oneness, of peace, of unity. And it whispers to us to strive to live in a way that the stories the world tells about us when we are gone are ones we want told.

******

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Play, Reflect, Play, Reflect

2026-04-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

I knew that we were going to be spreading a new layer of wood chips over the surface of our junkyard playground, but it surprised me when I arrived at school. My first emotion was one of disappointment, because while it does freshen the place up, giving it a pleasing scent of cedar, I knew that it had also buried a lot of our smaller bits and baubles, things that might not re-surface for months, if ever. On second blush, however, I remembered that the kids had been kicking up quite a cloud of unpleasant dust, something with which this new layer of chips would definitely help.

As the children arrived they likewise had mixed feelings about the changes to their space. One boy hopped on a swing and started bawling, "The swings are too low now! They're for little kids and I'm a big kid!" And he was right, the thick layer of chips under the swings left precious little room for his legs to hang. After his initial reaction, however, he got to work digging out a new hole deep enough to accommodate a full pumping of the legs.

Meanwhile, another group joyfully grabbed shovels and immediately began a digging project, searching for the bare earth below.

But, over all, the new surface was simply remarked upon, then forgotten as the kids settled into the rhythm of their play.

After awhile, I began to hear the diggers discussing the prospect of a hole that penetrated to the center of the earth, perhaps even going all the way through to the other side. The older boy on the swing overheard them and said in a voice of authority, "You better not dig too deep because then you might get to the lava and it will erupt on us."

The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that this was exactly what they were going to do, dig to the molten core to release the lava. They dug out a circle of bare dirt, informing one and all to be careful because if they fell in they would be "burned up."

Before long a team of ninja fighters roved into the area, posing fiercely, boasting of their powers, and thereby (from what I could tell) defeating bad guys. The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that their pools of lava (by now they had several) were actually bad guy traps. They informed me that as a good guy, I was immune to the lava, and no longer needed to worry about falling in. The lava would only burn bad guys.

It was around this time that a loud wail went up on the other side of the swing set, a boy suddenly bursting into tears as if injured. As I approached, the crying boy pointed at another boy who was standing some distance away, "He hit me!" At this, the accused, behaving very much like a guilty party, took off for a distant corner of the playground. As I consoled the crying boy, I learned that he hadn't actually been hit, but rather had been told that he was going to be hit "a lot of times" and it had, naturally, frightened him. I asked, "What can he do to make you feel better?" to which he replied, "I don't think he'll tell me he's sorry." I asked, "Would that make you feel better?" When he answered that it would, I suggested that we at least talk to him.

By now the tears had ended. He took my hand as we started down the hill, looking for his nemesis, but didn't immediately spy him. I said, "It's like he disappeared," to which the boy replied, "Maybe he's a ghost," a joke that let me know he was no longer harboring a grudge. We made spooky ghost noises together for a minute, then he released my hand and returned to his play.

Back at the bad guy lava traps, I was informed that they had, in my absence, trapped several bad guys who had hit people "a lot of times."

Not long after that, the boy who had earlier been crying was running toward us, his face flushed with joy. He was being chased by the boy who had threatened to hit him a lot of times. "Help! Help! I'm being chased by a ghost!" And behind him, the ghost wailed and moaned in mock ghostly misery. They had obviously made amends, racing away in their game of chase.

The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that their bad buy traps were actually ghost traps. "The ghosts fall into the lava and get dead."

The older boy on the swing informed them that ghosts were already dead.

The diggers reflected on that, then decided that their lava traps made the ghosts "extra dead." Then they went back to their project of digging in the new wood chips.

******

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!

What Kind of Human Being Creates a Peaceful World?

2026-04-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

Last week the President said, “We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country. We’re fighting wars.”

As play based educators, our work is rooted in building a more peaceful world through how we educate our children.

Montessori schools seek peace through independence and self-discipline.

Reggio Emilia schools through relationship and community.

Waldorf schools through moral imagination.

Democratic schools (Sudbury) through freedom and shared power.

Forest schools through connection to nature.

Indigenous approaches through belonging and reciprocity.

It's all play based learning.

They all ask the question, What kind of human being creates a peaceful world and how do we grow that human?

We are a big country. Peace is better than war. We can’t afford to not take care of our children. We must protect our children's right to play.

******

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!

It's Like Learning to Ride a Bike

2026-04-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life. ~Susan B. Anthony

I recently watched a neighbor teaching his grandchild how to ride a bike she had received as a Christmas gift. It got me thinking about my own journey as a cyclist.

My first bicycle was a red Western Flyer.

Dad was going to be out of town on a business trip, but he promised to teach me how to ride when he returned which meant I had a few days to get to know my new two-wheeler before I was to receive proper instruction. Riding a tricycle had been a snap -- just jump on the seat, put your feet on the pedals and go -- but the bicycle proved to be much trickier. I could straddle the bar with my feet on the ground. I could even lift my bottom onto the seat and one foot on a pedal, but, of course, when I lifted my other foot off the ground I fell over.

At one point, I figured out how to lean the bike against a tree trunk in such a way that I could sit on the seat, with both feet on the pedals, but there was no way to move forward from this position. I got pretty good at sitting on the seat with one foot on the ground, then rocking the bike to the other side where I caught myself with the opposite foot. I spent at least an hour playing with my bike in this way, but as for forward motion, as for two feet on two pedals, I was stumped.

Mom, witnessing what she must have interpreted as my struggles, gave me a tip: "Get a foot on one pedal then push off with the other foot to give yourself some momentum." I'd never heard the word "momentum" before, but in context I understood it as you have to get going a little bit before you can get going a lot. It made a certain kind of sense, but it also struck me as something of a paradox. How do you get going before you get going?

When Dad got home, he took me to a little used dirt road that ran along behind the newly-constructed elementary school that I was destined to one day attend. His idea was that since I was likely to fall a few times, a dirt road would offer a softer fall than asphalt. The first thing he did was ask me to show him what I'd figured out on my own, which to my mind wasn't much. I showed him how I could sit on the seat properly if I leaned the bike against a tree. I showed him how I could rock back and forth. And then I attempted Mom's "momentum" move, giving it my all, resulting in my falling into the dirt.

As he dusted me off, he said, "You already know everything you need to know to ride a bike. You know what it feels like to sit on your bike. You know how to take your feet of the pedals to catch yourself if you start to fall. You know how to balance a little. And you know how to fall."

He said, "Okay, so let me be the tree." He held the bike upright as I climbed on, putting both feet on the pedals. "I'm going to rock you back and forth a little bit and you use your feet to catch yourself." We did that a few times. "Now I'm going to help you with momentum. I'll push you a little bit while you pedal." And that was the moment that I really understood what that word meant. He held the back of the seat as I moved exhilaratingly forward. It was a sunny day and I could see his shadow on a dirt, behind me and to the side, connected to the shadow of me on my bicycle. I then forgot about Dad for a moment, turning my attentions to the road ahead.

When I looked back for his shadow it was gone. I was riding on my own!

Then came a surge of thrill and panic as I wobbled and fell. We tried it again, but this time I started with one foot on the ground while Dad again helped me with momentum. This time he let go almost right away. I felt the momentum. I was riding again! As I got farther and farther away from Dad it occurred to me that I didn't know how to stop. I knew the bike had "coaster brakes" but it was like with the concept of momentum: I got it in concept, but I couldn't get my body to do it. Indeed, I couldn't stop my legs from pedaling forward, so I steered toward a patch of roadside grass and leapt for it, leaving my two-wheeler to careen along without me until it lost momentum and fell.

It was time to head home for dinner. Dad promised me that he'd teach me how to properly stop the following weekend.

Not knowing how to stop seemed like a very minor problem to me. After all, the riding was the important thing. And besides, I did know how to stop. It involved leaping into the grass and every house along our cul-de-sac had grass lawns. I could leap off anywhere I might want to go, which is what I did all that week. One of the older kids called me "James Bond," which I took as a cool compliment even though I had no idea who James Bond was. It wasn't long before several of the other kids had adopted my dismount technique. We even started competing to see who could get their bike to continue the farthest without a rider.

The following weekend, I showed Dad what I could do. I'd figured out how to use the brakes to slow down. I showed him how how I could go really fast. And I showed him my James Bond dismount. He congratulated me, saying, "You've learned to ride a bike."

I don't actually remember learning how to stop and dismount properly, but at some point along the way, I obviously figured that out as well.

What I didn't know until I watched my neighbor putting his grandchild in the position to learn about momentum, balance, braking, stopping, speed, practice, falling, and freedom, was that I'd also learned a lot about teaching. I'd learned about the importance of letting go a little before the learner thinks they're ready. I learned that teaching is indistinguishable from loving. And I'd learned, that instructions and concepts are mere words until they are put into action.

Or as the late great Bev Bos would say, "If it hasn't been in the hand and body, it can't be in the brain."

******

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!

"We Are What We Learn"

2026-04-02T06:50:00.000-07:00

"Be yourself," writes Oscar Wilde, "everyone else is already taken."

Lao Tzu, the seminal Chinese philosopher, is quoted as saying, "When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you."

And then there is Taylor Swift: "Just be yourself, there is no one better."

It's advice that we've given one another since the dawn of time. We tell our children to listen to their inner voice, to not be influenced by their peers, to be proud of who they are. Indeed, it's such common, every day wisdom that most of us take it for granted, yet so very few of us actually get to live it.

For one thing, there are rules and social conventions that forbid certain expressions of self. This is especially true when we're young. When children, who are just trying to let their own light shine, make too much noise or move their bodies too assertively, they are too often chastised. In other words, we teach them that while they should strive to be themselves, they can't do it in school, in church, in a theater, a museum, or, frankly, pretty much in any public space, especially if how you express who you are could possibly offend the sensibilities of others.

As Fran Lebowitz, a woman who has made a career of being herself, says, "Being offended is part of leaving home." And while that is true, most of us would rather not offend our fellow humans, even if that is part of who we are, which is why we learn to temper who we are at times if only out of courtesy.

But the real difficulty in living up to the challenge of being yourself is to first figure out who and what your self actually is. When we are born, before we can even understand the concept of self, I would argue that this is the moment when we are most ourselves, but after that it's about learning.

As Doris Lessing writes, "We are what we learn."

A child of abuse learns that they are a victim, that they somehow deserve it, and, more often than not, without a lot of therapy, they grow up to abuse others. They are what they learn.

A child of privilege learns that they are superior and that they somehow deserve it. They are what they learn.

A child that is over-protected learns that they are always in danger. A child who is not interested in school work learns that they are stupid. A child who is loved unconditionally learns to love unconditionally. They are what they learn.

Your self isn't something you are, but rather something you learn, and you don't always have a choice about what you learn. This is most obviously true in standard schools where the adults have decided what you will be by choosing what you will learn and then judging who you are according to meat-cleaver measurements like grades and test scores.

No wonder it's so incredibly difficult to "be yourself." When do we ever get the opportunity to learn what that is? If we really want a world in which each of us has come alive, childhood should be about discovering who we are and that means allowing the children themselves, to the degree possible, to choose what it is they will learn. In other words, let them play, because self isn't something to discover, but rather something we create. That's the only way anyone has ever learned to be themself.

******

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!

Every Child is a Scientist

2026-04-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

"Let's build a tower to the ceiling!" (physics)

"I made mud!" (chemistry)

"We found ladybugs in the garden!" (biology)

"Mommy said no, but grandma said yes!" (social science)

Every child is a scientist. This has been true since long before the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, long before the Islamic Golden Age, the Ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians.

The word "science" has be co-opted by the professionals in recent centuries, codified and made dry and dull with officious processes, reviews, and dense jargon. They sell the myth of "objectivity," the pretense that they are considering nature from the impossible perspective of the gods. In school "science" plays out as "correct" answers, laboratory processes for which the results are already known, and mathematics so abstract as to make the world around us unrecognizable.

The great mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote, "(A)ll training in science should begin as well as end in research, and in getting hold of the subject-matter as it occurs in nature." Whitehead famously defined nature as not a thing outside ourselves, but rather a process that intimately involves us.

When children have permission to play, they cannot help but begin with scientific research. When they say, "Look what I did!" or "Look what I found!" or "Guess what, Teacher Tom?" they are sharing their moments of Eureka! And as educators our responsibility is to acknowledge that moment by saying "I'm looking at what you did," "I see what you found," and "I can't guess what, but I'll bet you can tell me." Ours is not to judge or correct them. It is not to take-over by extending or scaffolding them in a direction of our choosing. They are the researcher, they are the scientists, and we are, at most, their lab assistant. Although most of the time we serve them best by marking the moment with them, then letting them go to the next place their curiosity takes them.

Curiosity and Eureka! driven science stands at the heart of early learning. It's a hands on, full body, life-derived process. The discoveries are localized, previsional, and apt to suggest further lines of inquiry. It's what humans have done since long before we knew it was anything more than life itself.

I once taught a two-year-old who used his index finger to push on the nose of a classmate as if it was a button. I imagine that a loved one had showed affection to him by booping his nose. In this case, however, the other child cried. The boy's was clearly confounded by this response. For the next several days, he tried his nose booping experiment over and over. As we adults scrambled to convince him to keep his hands to himself, he continued to make his study, trying it out on different kids, trying different amounts of pressure, combining it with different facial expressions, choosing different situations. And then, one day, his research into booping was complete. I knew this because he stopped doing it. Perhaps he concluded that booping was a welcome act of affection under certain circumstances, but not at school. Maybe he had, in the process, developed new theories about how to show affection. I don't know and it's none of my business.

What I do know is that our schools seem to have lost sight of what science is all about. It's not the exclusive domain of scientists, textbooks that are out-of-date before they are published, or sterile laboratories. Science happens anytime a person, no matter their age or education, is free to pursue the satisfaction of curiosity about the process called nature. This is what children are doing when they play.

******

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!

What Makes a Good Preschool Teacher?

2026-03-31T07:07:00.000-07:00

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable. ~David W. Augsburger

Not long ago I had a series of conversations with business people about teaching. I've been a preschool teacher for over two decades, yet I had a hard time with some of their questions, and specifically those centered around the idea of what exactly it is that makes a "good teacher." It's in the nature of business people, it seems, to want to take things apart, to figure out how they work, to reduce them to their essentials, and then find ways to replicate them, preferably very efficiently and for profit.

They were good conversations, useful, casting a new light on our profession for me. Are there some things that all good teachers do? I genuinely don't know. Maybe. I don't even know if someone can be taught to be a good teacher, even as I know that many, many of us demonstrate the skills. Generally speaking, it's widely assumed that it takes at least five years in the classroom to even know if someone is a good teacher or not, because nothing replaces experience. It seems that apprenticeship, working alongside veteran teachers, can accelerate learning, but as for "teaching" them to be teachers, I don't know.

I mean in all honesty, although I go by the moniker Teacher Tom, I'm not sure I do much of what these business people would define as teaching, which is widely understood as a synonym for "instructing." I know that the children I've worked with have grown and learned. I even have a pretty good idea what they've learned in some cases, but as for successfully instructing them, I have a very short, undistinguished track record. Can I prove that the children have learned? Can I prove what they've learned? No, at least not to the satisfaction of someone who is looking for the kind of hard data that business people tend to like behind the things they do. Traditionally, we've done it by starting with "learning objectives," providing instruction, then testing to see if the kids meet our objectives. I've never done any of those things because, while it produces data on the effectiveness of certain types of direct instruction, it forces children through a process that is the antithesis of how we know children's brains are designed to learn. Will we ever be able to produce acceptable hard data on children learning through play? I don't know.

I do know that I've spent very little time over my career in the role of instructor. People have suggested that maybe a better word for what we do would be facilitator or coordinator or perhaps more whimsically, guide on the side. I put quite a bit of energy into preparing the environment for children, getting it ready for them, providing what I think they will need on any given day to pursue their self-selected interests or answer, through their play, their own questions. I can do this because I've spent the previous day paying close attention, observing, studying, striving to understand their motivations, individually and collectively. I've never, however, taken it on as a systematic study, but rather an intuitive one with a sniff test that manifests along the lines of "Oh, the kids are going to love this!" or, equally as often, the singular version, "Billy is going to love this!" Could this be made into a systematic, replicable thing, a chart or something with boxes to tick? I don't know.

Is there anything that all good preschool teachers do? It's a question worthy of thought. I know that the foundation of what I've always done is to simply strive to treat children like people. What do I mean by that? It mostly means that, like with non-child people, I don't get to tell them what to do. It means I should avoid offering unsolicited advice, because most people, most of the time resent it. If I ask them questions, they should be real questions in the sense that I don't already know the answer and I have a reasonable expectation that this child can tell me what I need to know. And the most important thing is to listen to them, to shut up and let them say all the words they want to say to me about what's on their minds. (This is something that I actually do much more consistently with children than I do with adults.) And then to let them know through my words and actions that I've heard them.

Can this be called teaching? I don't know, but it's what I do and I know it's what the great teachers I know do. As Mister Rogers said, "Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors." And at the end of the day, this is why I struggle so much to answer the questions these business people ask me. Love can't be qualified or quantified, although I think it can be replicated, quickly: it is infinitely scalable. Love is like play. It is a pure good that can't be defined or measured, even when we know it when we feel it. That is what a great teacher of young children will always be: someone who loves us and who is loved in return.

******

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

The Blind Spot

2026-03-30T06:53:00.000-07:00

Karntakuringu Jukurrpa

Long before the advent of alphabets and literacy, human wisdom was stored and passed along as stories told from one person, one generation, to the next. Our modern, Western prejudice has long been that these stories, or "yarns," as author Tyson Yunkaporta calls them, may be entertaining or enlightening, but that they that are unreliable when it comes to passing along so-called "facts," especially of the scientific variety.

I mean, after all, the great breakthrough that we call the "scientific process," the tradition of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, strives to assume a position of objectivity, of pure logic. It is a tradition of observation, replicable experiments, and learned debate. Indeed, one of the primary missions of science is to separate mythology from "fact."

In his book Sand Talk, Yunkaporta tells us about the oral tradition of his Apalech clan (from what is today the far north of Queensland, Australia) that stretches back at least 7000 years, long before Western people began writing things down:

"We yarn about the sentience of stones and the Ancient Greek mistake of identifying “dead matter” as opposed to living matter, limited for centuries to come the potential of Western thought when attempting to define things like consciousness and self-organizing systems such as galaxies. Western thinkers viewed space as lifeless and empty between stars; our own stories represented those dark areas as living country, based on observed effects of attraction for those places on celestial bodies. Theories of dead matter and empty space meant that Western science came late to discoveries of what they now call “dark matter,” finding that those areas of “dead and empty” space actually contain most of the matter in the universe."

Indigenous peoples from around the globe tell ancient stories like this. The Ojibwe and other midwestern tribes tell stories that go back to the end of the last Ice Age, 10,000-12,000 years and perhaps beyond, yarns from "time immemorial".

Western science is only now beginning to catch up with much of this indigenous knowledge.

Yunkaporta writes, "In contemporary science and research, investigators have to make claims of objectivity, an impossible and god-like (greater-than) position that floats in empty space and observes the field while not being part of it. It is an illusion of omniscience that has hit some barriers in quantum physics. No matter how hard you may try to separate yourself from reality, there are always observer effects as the reality shifts in relation to your viewpoint."

Today, many of us hold science up as the gold standard of factual knowledge. And not without some validity. The scientific method has lead directly to the technological advantages that made both actual and cultural colonialism possible. Even us non-scientists seek to erase doubts about what we are going to say by starting off "Science tells us . . ." We shake our heads over those who take medical advice from anyone other than "trained" professionals. We teach oral traditions as literature or religion rather than an alternative perspective on truth.

Most scientists are humble enough to not pretend to know the "truth." They see their role as pursuing truth with the understanding that whatever we think we know today will be, at best, a stepping stone to a greater truth, if not an outright mistake. But there's little question that Western culture as a whole has embraced its science as a kind of supreme system for knowing things.

In their new book The Blind Spot, a scientist (Adam Frank) and a pair of philosophers (Marcelo Gleiser and Evan Thompson) explore what they call "the blind spot" of modern science in light of the story science has told over the past two centuries or so. This blind spot is made up of four main aspects of the progress of science (and most specifically physics) from the Ancient Greeks to the present day.

The first aspect of this is what mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called "the bifurcation of nature." This refers to the assumption that we can separate human experience from nature. For instance, science tells us that atoms and light waves are "real," whereas experiences like color or hot and cold are merely psychological, manufactured by our minds, and thus not a part of so-called "objective reality." An example that comes to mind is that my doctor tells me that the placebo effect is "just in your mind" even if my lived experience is that the sugar pill, because it cured my ill, is real medicine. As Yunkaporta points out, the world since Einstein has shown us the process of bifurcation leaves us with an explanation of the world world, the quantum world, that makes no sense to those of us who live our day-to-day lives as an inseparable part of nature.

The second aspect of this blind spot is what the authors call reductionism (or the term I prefer, smallism). This refers to the process of attempting to understand larger systems by breaking them down into smaller and smaller parts. The idea is that the smaller the part, the better it represents reality, while our experience of larger systems -- like the human body or the planet Earth -- are just fabrications of our minds. But smallism has taken us to a place in which larger systems simply shouldn't exist as they do . . . Yet they do. There is something about these larger systems that we are missing as we squint into increasingly powerful microscopes.

The third aspect of science's blind spot is what Yunkaporta describes as "impossible and god-like": objectivism. This is perhaps the most profound absurdity of science, the idea that we can somehow step outside of reality in order to take a God's-eye view of things. What the quantum world is teaching us is that there is no place and no time at which a human can stand that is not inside the reality in which we exist. We are always inside it. The metaphor (or perhaps not a metaphor) that comes to mind is that no matter how much we know about what our brains do, we have no idea how it creates consciousness. That's probably because it's impossible for consciousness to take an objective view of consciousness. It's like asking a flashlight in a dark room to find something that doesn't have light on it. Since every direction it turns has light on it, the only conclusion is that everything has light on it.

The final component of the blind spot is what the authors call the reification (I prefer thingification) of mathematics. This means that we mistake the increasing abstractions of math as the skeleton upon which reality hangs rather than a product of our idealized scientific workshops or laboratories. Math can only explain things for which the scientist is seeking explanation, but to do so requires "controlling" for the rest of reality. To paraphrase Fran Lebowitz, let me assure you, in the real world there is no such thing as math. As an abstraction, math is one of the major tools for bifurcating us from our lived experiences.

Indigenous stories tell us of people without this blind spot, who accepted that they, and everything, is part of an un-bifurcatable system of reality in which there is no difference between living and non-living, in which everything is inseparably connected, in which our lived experience of doing, thinking, and being, of color and hot and cold, are as real and essential to understanding reality as atoms and light waves. This is the world of young children who have not yet fallen victim to the blind spot.

In their book The World of the Newborn, Daphne and Charles Maurer write about newborns:

"His world smells to him much as our world smells to us, but he does not perceive odors (as we do) . . . His world is a melee of pungent aromas -- and pungent sounds, and bitter-smelling sounds, and sweet-smelling sights, and sour-smelling pressures against the skin. If we could visit the newborn's world, we would think ourselves inside a hallucinogenic perfumery."

Western science tells us that sweet-smelling sights are not objective aspects of reality. Tens of thousands of years of human experience, and every young child, begs to differ.

******

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!

Mistaking Subject Matter for Meaning

2026-03-27T07:34:00.000-07:00

I recently took a long walk. As I walked, my mind, as one's mind does, wandered. I assume that traffic continued whizzing past me on the roadway alongside which I walked, but because my mind was elsewhere I can't say for certain. I can only assume so because there had been traffic the last time I checked in with the present moment and there was traffic the next time I became conscious in the present. But the truth is that I was, while my mind wandered, somewhere else.

Consciousness is an incredible thing. Even as my body was moving, step-over-step, along a sidewalk, my mind was busy elsewhere: reliving a moment from my childhood; anticipating a conversation I expected to have with my doctor later in the day; regretting an embarrassing comment I made the night before; fearing the implications of a news story I read earlier that morning. Indeed, most of the time I was walking my conscious mind was everywhere other than that sidewalk along a busy road.

Of course, part of me, the unconscious part, was at least vaguely aware of what was going on around me. When I came to a crosswalk, I briefly returned from my time travels to attend to the present as I located the crosswalk signal, checked both ways for cars, and calculated the proper moment to continue. But even before I was on the other side of the street, my mind was, once more, elsewhere.

As author and researcher in psychology Julian Jaynes writes:

"Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of . . . It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that the light is everywhere . . . Right at this moment, you are not conscious of how you are sitting, of where your hands are placed, or how fast you are reading, though even as I mentioned these items, you were. And as you read, you are not conscious of the letters or the words or even of the syntax of the sentences and punctuation, but only of their meaning. As you listen to an address, phonemes disappear into words and words into sentences and sentences disappear into what they are trying to say, into meaning. To be conscious of the elements of speech is to destroy the intention of the speech."

The project of modern schooling is one of directing children where to shine the flashlight of their consciousness and in the process we destroy meaning. We provide their minds with subject matter. In preschool that might be "the letter of the day" or the life cycle of a butterfly. We then proceed to tell them what they are to think of this thing. Then, finally, we grade them on how well they are later able to recall, on command, the salient points.

In no other aspect of life, other than school, do we demand this of human consciousness. For instance, I am currently writing this blog post. A moment before writing that last sentence I realized that the words on the screen had no meaning. They had become simply the place where my eyes were resting as my mind, always traveling, was back in the classroom looking around for an example to make my point. I then became aware that I was elsewhere and redirected my gaze out the window where they rested on the view. My mind was then transported briefly to the future where I saw, based on how the sky looked, that it was going to be a sunny day. When I returned my eyes to the screen to write the above sentence that begins with "For instance . . ." the words once again had meaning. And by the time I got around to writing this current sentence, my mind has been around the world, even inside your mind, predicting how you, the reader might react to this or that choice of words. The reality is that I spent most of my writing time, not writing at all, not even really thinking about the words. In fact, most of these words I've written here came to me when I was emphatically not trying to think of them.

When Jaynes writes "To be conscious of the elements of speech is to destroy the intention of the speech" he is putting his finger on one of the great myths about learning and thinking. I've found that one of the worst ways to come up with an idea or solution is to "think" about it like we expect children to do in school. The French call this phenomenon "genius in the stairwell." We've all had the experience of having our best thoughts flash upon us while, say, in the shower. We've all walked out of an interview only to curse ourselves over all the things we should have said. Our best thinking is rarely the product of conscious thought.

Thinking, real thinking, deep thinking, is rarely a conscious process. This is why play is so much more powerful than direct instruction. Play frees our minds to travel, to bounce about between past and present, here and there, now and then, as our bodies engage the present. Direct instruction attempts to chain our magnificent minds, our time traveling minds, our creative, critical, connected minds, to a single point in time. It limits the beam of our flashlight to this meager crumb of reality while the traffic whizzes past us; while the bird soars overhead; while the candy goes untasted. And perhaps worst of all, we punish and drug children when their minds do what minds are designed to do, which is to play.

The reason that a child at play, to quote Lev Vygotsky, is "a head taller than themself" is because when we play our minds, brains, and bodies are finally free to think and learn at full capacity.

******

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

The Love of Children v. the Love of Money

2026-03-26T07:29:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, we have hundreds of children being currently imprisoned in concentration camps by our federal government and billionaire child rapists being protected by our courts, politicians, and the Justice Department. On the other, we have consistent and chronic underfunding of anything having to do with children and families, including education.

We are lead to believe that the culture war is about books, bathrooms, religion, patriotism, or “family values.” It's not. The real culture war is between people who love children and systems that love money. It's easy to despair, but there is some good news.

The Iowa state legislature is putting the finishing touches on a law that would mandate play-based learning in preschool and kindergarten. The law requires a minimum of 3 hours per day of play and child-directed experiences, including unstructured classroom discovery, in addition to recess and physical education. The law only specifies 45 minutes per day in kindergarten, but it's still an important step in the right direction.

Iowa joins Connecticut (2024), New Hampshire (2018), and Oklahoma (2021), all of which have legislated play for their youngest citizens. Nevada, Maine, Michigan, and Illinois have all adopted or are considering play-friendly policies and approaches. The Connecticut law even permits play-based learning through 5th grade. Of course, none of these laws goes far enough in my opinion, but they're all encouraging steps in the right direction.

For better or worse, our Constitution explicitly puts states in charge of education. The federal government is meant to be hands off, leaving states the freedom to experiment. The idea is that if something works in one state, it will be adopted by others. Of course, the federal government, with it's ability to grant or withhold funding has, under both Democrats and Republicans, tried to force misguided educational mandates on our schools (e.g., No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core). This federal (and I think illegal) incursion into our public schools has been one of the main driving forces behind the drill-and-kill high stakes testing regime that has come to dominate the educational experience of a vast majority of our children, including, cruelly, preschoolers and kindergarteners.

My hope is that what we are seeing right now is the beginning of a trend in which states take meaningful corrective measures to protect children from those who love money more than children.

Of course, legislation is not the same thing as making real change. Legislation signifies a direction, in this case a positive one, but it still takes people to make change happen.

For one thing, play, like love, is a notoriously illusive thing to define. Each state has adopted its own definition. I see words and phrases we've all used to describe our work, like "child-directed," "unstructured classroom discovery," "developmentally appropriate," "free play," "games," "movement," "socially interactive," and even "joyful." But when the rubber meets the road, as with anything to do with schools, it comes down to how individual teachers implement it.

Some veteran teachers in Connecticut, for instance, are requiring children to make a plan for their play and stick to it, in the name of "teaching" executive function. I'm pretty sure that can't be taught. It's something that develops through life experience, like those encountered while playing. In Oklahoma, the law prohibits districts from restricting teacher's use of play-based learning, but doesn't exactly require it. The New Hampshire and Connecticut laws define the role of teacher as "facilitator" or "guide on the side," but there is a lot of wiggle room. Only Iowa imposes a minimum number of hours for play-based learning, which means that in the other states the amount of play permitted to children can vary depending on the teacher's bent. It leaves the door wide open for play being dangled before children as a kind of reward or punishment, instead of a right.

Still, I'm encouraged. But if we are going to make these laws effective, we are going to have to tighten up our definitions of play and make sure that educators are well-trained in play-based pedagogy. As a play-purist, I'd like to see young children (and that includes children up to at least 10-years-old), playing all day. I know that's not realistic in the current climate, but we should have, as in the Iowa law, minimums set for preschoolers and kindergarteners, otherwise play will continue to be treated as a "relief from serious learning" rather than the proper work of childhood (to paraphrase Mister Rogers). And I would definitely want to see us getting our children outside and away from screen-based technology which is replacing authentic childhood with artificial experiences.

I remain encouraged, even in a world that too often seems to love money more than children. I'm grateful to the bi-partisan coalition of legislators who are compelling schools to follow the science of learning and best practices by mandating play. And I'm fully in awe of those advocates -- educators and parents -- who have had the tenacity and skill to convince these legislators to do the right thing for our youngest citizens.

This is progress. Let's keep it up! No turning back!

******

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!

Telling This Story of Life Itself

2026-03-25T07:11:00.000-07:00

A corpus callosotomy is a surgical procedure by which the bundle of nerves that connect the two halves of a human brain are cut, leaving them without the ability to communicate with one another. It's a rare procedure, most often undertaken as a high-risk, last-ditch effort to mitigate seizures, most often due to drug-resistant epilepsy.

Patients who have undergone this surgery tend to appear and behave normally in day-to-day life, but in reality their divided brain behaves as two separate brains in one body, with distinct personalities, perceptions, and purposes. One hand might be buttoning a shirt while the other is unbuttoning it (i.e., alien hand syndrome). The person(s) might perceive an object in their left visual field (which is processed by the right hemisphere), but be unable to speak about it or name it because speech processed in the left hemisphere. Indeed, these two minds within one body are often completely unaware of one another, often with distinct personalities. In one patient it was found that the left hemisphere personality believed in God, while the right was an athiest.

The left hemisphere unconsciously creates "stories" to explain the actions of the right hemisphere. If the right personality is commanded to walk, the left personality will concoct an explanation for why their shared body is walking -- "I'm getting a glass of water." In other words, a divided brain results not in two halves of one mind, but rather two distinct minds. In this regard, minds cannot be reduced or halved because a mind will always be complete unto itself. This is due in large measure to our minds' capacity for telling stories about themselves.

This phenomenon isn't the exclusive domain of callosotomy patients. We all do it. Cognitive psychologist Stephen Pinker refers to our left hemisphere as a "baloney generator" due to its tendency to concoct plausible-seeming justifications for behaviors and decisions made by other parts of the brain, even when those explanations are entirely made up. Neuroscientists tell us that more often than not we act first, then our minds come up with the story of why we acted after the fact. We are so adept at this kind of storytelling, however, that we genuinely believe it happened the other way around.

Storytelling (or baloney generation) is fundamental to human cognition. We do it every time we open our eyes. There is literally a blind spot in our field of visions where our noses are, yet we don't notice it because our minds tell a story that convinces us that we are seeing a continuous world in front of us. It doesn't seem like baloney, however, because we do it seamlessly and, more often than not, it serves us.

The point is that none of this happens on a conscious level. Indeed, very little of what our brains actually do involves our awareness. This includes thinking. Our conscious mind is very good at say, identifying a problem or challenge. It's called "executive function" because back in the 70's scientists thought our pre-frontal cortex operated like the brain's CEO, managing, directing, and planning. Then, like any good leader, it delegates the details to the rest of the brain so that it can continue to focus on the tasks at hand, which is dealing with the present, short term (or working) memory, and impulse control. The problem is that the more we learn, the weaker the CEO metaphor becomes. Increasingly, we're coming to understand that brains are not so much hierarchical as they are cooperative, so when I think of our conscious minds I'm more inclined to see them as gatekeepers tasked with determining what should be allowed in or kept out.

This is why our best ideas come to us in the shower or while taking a walk or cooking dinner or doing anything other than consciously thinking about the problem. Our unconscious minds weave stories around the problem, a tapestry of metaphors, environmental and language triggers, physical sensations, dreams, and long term memory. It's a meandering process with lots of dead ends, detours, and spirals until a story finally emerges that makes our prefrontal cortex say, Eureka!

Standard schooling, however, focuses almost exclusively on our conscious mind. It makes the ignorant assumption that all our thinking happens in a linear, knowable, provable way. Increasingly, our schools minimize those opportunities for the rest of the brain to get to work, treating things like the music, art, dance, socializing, and recess like interruptions to learning, when, in fact they are exactly what makes learning, deep learning, real learning, possible. So we're stuck with institutions in which children are fed isolated facts to hold in their short-term memory just long enough to pass the test. The rest of their minds, the part that makes sense of things, are almost entirely left out of the process. This situation is made even more dire by proliferation of screens in which "learning" is reduced to children hunched over tablets, their isolated faces illuminated like blue-grey ghosts.

Our minds function best while engaging life itself. Our minds function best when free to wander, to explore, to make and break connections, to physically engage, to discover plot, character, and happy endings that make narrative order of what our conscious minds have let in. Life itself presents real problems and challenges. Life itself is the project in which our minds are meant to be engaged. Life itself is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world around us. Life itself is always a journey, an epic tale told in chapters and episodes and stanzas, one that carries us both outward and inward with no other goal than to discover and react to what happens next.

Play is what we have evolved for this purpose. When we are playing, we create just the right conditions for our full brains to engage in the process of telling this story of life itself.

******

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

The Best Educated People on Earth

2026-03-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

Several of the kids were taking turns boasting about how strong they were.

"I can pick up this whole table!"

"I can pick up this whole school!"

"I can pick up this whole world!"

As their claims escalated ludicrously, some of their classmates called them out.

"No you can't!"

"You can't even pick up a piece of paper!"

"You can't even pick up a piece of toilet paper!"

It was all fun and games, of course, no one was serious. Then one of them said, "I can pick up the whole loft." The loft is a two level piece of furniture that stands in the corner of the room. I recall that when it arrived, decades ago, it came, ready-to-assemble, in cartons weighing a little over 250 pounds. I tossed this information out there, like a loose part, "The loft weighs more than 250 pounds."

The boaster paused, looked astonished, then said, "I guess I can't lift 250 pounds by myself."

A fellow boaster said, "Maybe we can lift it together."

The tone had suddenly changed from one of one-upsmanship to serious consideration of a job at hand. They agreed to try, approaching the loft with their muscles flexed, but they were unable to budge it.

Not stymied, they called out, "Hey guys! We need help!" and "We're going to lift up the whole loft!" As more and more children gathered, I began to get the idea that this might really happen. One or two of them could never manage it, but dozens, working together, likely could. What was the worst thing that could happen? It could topple over and land on the kids. They could succeed in lifting it, then drop in on their toes. I moved closer. As the children assembled, I called a couple of other adults over and we quietly strategized how we could make it safe enough, just in case.

At first, even with nearly twenty children, nothing happened. Their efforts were individual and uncoordinated. But they were still working on it.

"We have to lift at the same time!"

"We have to spread out!"

"We need more people under the low part!"

"I'll count to three!" "No, I'll count to three!" "Let's all count to three, then lift!" "Okay, guys, ready?"

They indicated their readiness with a sudden silence, then together they chanted, "One! Two! Three! Lift!" And the loft began to rise, all 250 pounds of it, hovering one then two inches off the ground. As agreed, the adults then stepped in and took much of weight as we helped them slowly lower it to the ground, cautioning about toes and fingers.

Sadly, this type of experience is all too rare in American schools, especially the farther one gets from the preschool years. Grades and scores and other assessments are individual things. Indeed, to achieve school-ish success in any way other than on your own is labeled as cheating and punished. Oh sure, there may be one or two tick boxes that rate a child's ability to cooperate with others, but no one takes those seriously. Teachers might assign a group project here and there, but we all know that the "smart" kids resent the "stupid" ones, concerned they will "hold them back" or not do enough of the work, taking relief in knowing that the grading, at least, will be individual. Working together to lift a loft, write a report, or solve a problem might be praised in the abstract, but every school child comes to know that at the end of of the day they will be judged not by what they have accomplished together, but rather by how well they compete against their classmates.

In school, to boast of one's prowess is no joke: it is the point.

People often try to make the argument that school must be this way because life is this way, but is it really? Yes, perhaps we do compete for jobs and promotions. There are some professions, like high-pressure sales jobs, in which employees find themselves pitted against one another, but even professional sports teams, like most employers, value teamwork above individual accomplishment.

But even if we stipulate that the work-a-day world has certain competitive elements, that hardly comprises most of what makes life worth living. Most of what we do in our homes, communities, churches, and with our friends involves coming together around common problems, opportunities, or projects. Democracy itself, if it is to work, is far more akin to lifting a loft than competing for grades. This is what school, if it is to truly prepare children for life, should be about: people coming together to lift the loft.

One of the great American myths is this idea of a solitary hero who single-handedly saves the day, but it has never happened outside of a Hollywood movie. No doctor saves a life on their own. No engineer builds a bridge without the support of thousands. No community has ever been kept safe except by the actions of the community itself. No one has ever lived a joyful life unless they have spent it accomplishing meaningful things, shoulder-to-shoulder with others. That is what I wish for the children I teach -- a life in community.

The moment the loft's long legs touched the ground, the children cheered. Spontaneously. For themselves. Together they had done something that had at first seemed like an hyperbolic boast. They hugged and jumped up and down, saying things like, "We did it!" These are the best educated people on earth.

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!