Just heard about this film scheduled for release this coming fall… http://www.racetonowhere.com/

I was walking back from the bus stop and heard two city employees talking about the granite curb they were about to install at the corner.  I was surprised by what I heard, and then annoyed at my surprise.

“The thing I’m concerned about is…”

“Well, the worst that could happen is…”

I can’t finish the sentences, because I don’t know enough about granite-laying to have retained the content of their conversation.  But my surprise came from the fact that I don’t expect to hear city guys in Carhartts negotiating with each other in the course of their work.  Apparently I think they’re just out there doing manual tasks free of thought and interaction.

Of course, I know better, but it reminds me of Matthew Crawford’s book about the dying off of technical training in high schools.  We have a tremendous bias about what constitutes good work, and what’s enough to merit good pay and treatment, even though we need people to do this work, and do it thoughtfully and well. And there are young people who are smart in the right ways for that who get discouraged from doing it.  Crawford reminds us that “work that is straightforwardly useful can also be intellectually absorbing.”  (Not to mention lucrative, a point that, bafflingly, often gets lost in platforms about how kids need college degrees to have good jobs so they can earn a living.)

What if school had never existed?  What if when your child was born, or when you were considering having a child, you had to decide how he or she would spend years 5-18 just as you decide how the child spends years 0-4?  

Here’s what I think you’d do.  You’d look at your child, and you’d look at the world as it is now, and you’d decide what kind of environment and what kinds of activities would make sense to introduce.  You’d probably take into account what kinds of careers were at the forefront of the economy (though I’m not sure, because I suspect that some of this orientation/focus is the result of school, and if it didn’t exist then neither would the accompanying orientation), or maybe the occupations that had the happiest healthiest people in them.  You might look at the natural abilities of your child, and see where the overlap might be.  And then, I suspect, you’d go looking for or create opportunities for your child to develop and grow in accordance with what was so in the world and with your child.

If you look at how school is today, at the schooling that’s available for your children’s attendance, does it match?  Are they getting what makes sense for them?  It probably isn’t a yes or no answer.  They’re likely getting some things that you’d want for them, and some that you wouldn’t.  And they’re likely missing some that you’d have put in if you’d been the sole engineer of the extent of their young lives.

We aren’t often invited to consider this, but if we stop and take the time to look, it puts our attention on the gaps.  And if your attention is on those gaps, rather than only on the areas in which your child struggles in a system designed in a different time with different priorities and different children, you just may find a path out of the chronic unworkability and insufficiency.

One thing adults love to say to kids is “Well, too bad; there are some things you just have to do.”  If you watch a kid’s face when someone’s delivering that line, you’ll know right away how many times they’ve heard this before.  In most cases, LOTS.  You’ll also get a sense of how inspired they are to act as a result of it.  In most cases, NOT PARTICULARLY.

It’s something we say to each other, as adults too, and it’s implied in much of what we do.  Because, of course, we heard it all the time back when we, the present-day adults, were kids.  So we assume it’s true and in good conscience, we pass it on.  We want them to be ready for the real world.  And it helps us feel as though life is supposed to be as much of a drag as it can feel like when our days are full of things we’re doing because we think we just have to.

But it’s TRUE isn’t it?  There are things we just have to do.  Don’t worry; I’m not going to argue that it’s not true.  I’m going to argue that it’s incomplete.  On its own, the statement is in fact not true.  You don’t actually have to do anything.  You have to do some things if you want a specific outcome or you want to avoid a specific outcome. For example, nobody actually has to do the dishes. You might have to do the dishes if you don’t want to throw away all the ones you’ve used and buy new ones. Or you don’t want to cause a rift between yourself and a loved one.  Or you have a job as a dishwasher and you want to get paid at the end of the week.  So it would be more accurate to say “There are some things you just have to do if…” Or “There are some things you just have to do unless…”

What’s tough is that as soon as you decide you’re going to make it a point to complete the sentence, you start to see how much you’re insisting upon (from yourself and others, kids included) that demands deeper consideration of how the sentence should end.  Don’t worry, though.  There’s gold at the other end; if you commit to inquiring into why/if you have to do things, and why you actually insist on what you insist on for others, you’ll find that a lot of the fight falls away. Kids, in particular, will perk right up.  They can hear the difference between things we say on auto pilot and things we say because we’ve considered them and determined that they have some value.

There’s a sign outside the neighborhood elementary school that clarifies the school’s policy on taking off jackets at recess.  (It’s been balmy the last few days.)  Children in grades K-2 are to keep their jackets on, children in grades 3-5 may take them off.

I’ve watched many battles over jacket-wearing, and I don’t quite understand it.  When kids get cold, they usually (in the absence of actual thermostatic dysfunction, which the reading I’ve done suggests is extremely rare) act quickly.  And they’re not usually quiet about it.  Getting their needs met is not something children tend to take lightly.

So it’s a little strange that we decide to try to regulate their temperatures for them.  To me it seems like a recipe for not learning how to regulate various things for yourself in much the same way as scheduling meals and eating regardless of hunger can teach kids to eat when they don’t need to and shouldn’t.  We tell them they’ll be cold, if they don’t wear a jacket, though we have no idea how they’ll actually feel because their hormonal makeup is entirely different from ours. (As each of ours is from everyone else’s.)  They don’t get the chance to find out whether they’re hot or cold, how many layers they need, whether they need a jacket or not.

If it’s too warm to be wearing a coat, left to their own devises, kids know.  And similarly, if they’re too cold, they can put coats on.  We say these things, like “wear a coat or you’ll be cold,” with good intentions, but they don’t always hold up under inspection.  When kids resist, it’s worth a look to find out what the source of their resistance may be…

A popular way to teach vocabulary is to issue a list of words and then instruct kids to look them up, write them in a sentence, record the part of speech, and complete a variety of other related tasks.  Often we give them blanket tasks to perform for all the words even when the tasks can’t be applied to some of the words.  (Adjectives with very specific meanings like “indentured” that don’t really have antonyms, for example.  I heard a child suggest “someone who has to work for their own servant?”)

Kids mostly glaze over at this kind of assignment.  Particularly if it’s a regular part of their school or homework, they just slog through it.  Kids who can’t make sense of the definitions, and this is a lot of them, come away with at best a vague understanding of a few of the words, at worst thorough but inaccurate understandings.  Dictionary definitions are not written for people who have been reading for only a few years.  They’re written with great formality, and by formula, so as to be consistent.  Unfortunately the form renders them nearly unreadable to young readers.  (Not to mention that it exposes a great hypocrisy.  Kids are told not to use a word in its own definition, but the dictionary, it’s OK for the dictionary to do that (and don’t try to tell them that what we meant was they couldn’t use the exact form of the word in its definition; they know that’s not different).) The dictionary ends up feeling like just another club kids aren’t invited to be a part of.

But I digress.  I went looking for an online dictionary that might be written such that it conveyed for at least some words a degree of meaning that could be ascertained by a typical 10 year-old reader.  Here’s the best I found, Scholastic Word Wizard.  Pronunciations, definitions, synonyms, antonyms (where possible), and often a sample sentence.  The pages are mostly unencumbered by advertisements, which can’t be said for most online dictionaries I’ve found.  If you’ve found a better one, please let me know and I’ll pass it on.

A recent New York Times article apparently inspired some chatter about book choice for young people. Here’s Nancie Atwell’s clarification of her approach and her response to some of the criticism.