Jeff Bloom – Page 5 – Jeff Bloom's Blog

November 5, 2015

Learning Content is the Trivial Part of Learning

We really have it all backwards. We are completely focused on having kids and adults learn copious amounts of content as the supreme goal of education. But, such a goal is really rather trivial within the entire scope of learning. This is blasphemy in the politico-corporate controlled institutions of education, testing, and publishing, but I do believe we’ve completely gone astray. We’ve lost sight of the depth and extent of learning. We’ve lost sight of children (and adults) and all of their abilities, capabilities, characteristics, and needs. We no longer value curiosity, creativity, inquiry, play, time to ponder and process, time to make mistakes and try again, time to explore, time to talk and argue, time to negotiate.

I’m not suggesting that content knowledge is useless or irrelevant, but it is superficial knowledge compared to other kinds of learning. And, what we have done is create a world of superficiality, while thinking it’s the most sophisticated knowledge ever. It’s an extraordinary illusion. Or, rather it is an extraordinarily confused view of knowledge and what is worth knowing. A mistake that is strikingly apparent in the move to online courses and online degrees, which really amount to no more than a grand scam.

And, let me say here that while this superficial knowledge may have some importance and interest, when it stands as alone as the total package of knowledge, it is more or less meaningless, disconnected, and irrelevant. The way we package knowledge into textbooks and then test the supposed acquisition of this knowledge is just further testament to the decontextualized and disconnected approach we have developed to our relationship to knowing and knowledge. We think that all of these bits of information mean something, like money in the bank, but unlike money in the bank they are worthless without context, meaning, and relationship. On the other hand, these bits of information are money in the bank for testing companies, publishers, and politicians; and very big money at that.

But, what is misunderstood and misrepresented about learning is the big issue. Learning is dynamic and continual. We are always learning … in all situations, whether we like it or not. Learning is not an accumulation of static information in neatly packaged structures. Learning about any kind of relational information is always changing and morphing as new connections are made and lost. Learning doesn’t just happen in the brain, but is distributed throughout our bodies. And, in fact, there seems to be ample evidence that social learning is distributed among people. Look at a highly coordinated sports team where the thinking and immediacy of learning is taking place within the team and no one individual. In fact, learning seems to be distributed among individuals in coordinated contexts much more often than we ever imagined. Our bodies are comprised of more microbes than human cells. And, on top of that, we have millions of other inhabitants living in most parts of our bodies. This vast ecosystem is not just a bunch of individuals disconnected from one another, but is a community of different species living in an interdependent, coordinated way. And, this whole ecosystem has to learn together in order to survive. We are just beginning to understand how complex these interactions are, but we can get a sense that our learning is not just what some book says, but is about how we respond to, adjust to, react to, and make sense of all kinds of information with which we are confronted all the time. Most of the time, we don’t even know we’re learning or where the learning is taking place, but it is happening.

So, we have this distributed learning happening all of the time as we encounter new situations and new contexts. We walk on a new hiking trail, swim in the ocean, ski, ice skate, go to a new country or any new place, we are renegotiating the ways we do things, re-assessing our assumptions, reworking our relationships and ways of relating. These new renegotiations are new learning.

But, let’s return to what I’ve referred to as superficial textbook learning. What this textbook learning tries to address is the accumulated depth and expanse of learning that has occurred by organisms, ecosystems, and living systems of all kinds. Authors and publishers try to condense this knowledge down to discrete bits of disconnected, decontextualized, static informational strings. The vast depth and extent of interrelationships are never explored and discussed. The dynamic, changing, and uncertain nature of our knowledge is never recognized. The knowledge claims are all very clinical, dry, lifeless. We are not presented with the complexity of interacting systems that affect one another in countless ways, and that within these systems are even more relationships affecting aspects of all of the players in the systems.

In a world where the issues are increasingly intense and increasingly important to our continued survival and well-being, we and especially our children need to be learning in ways that enable us to make sense of what is happening. We need to be able to dissect out the nonsense from the sensible. We need to see the complexities and interrelationships. We have to see the faulty assumptions that we and others are making and then take appropriate actions. We can’t do this by learning lots of disconnected, superficial information. We must be learning at deeper levels of relationship and context.

For a great treatment of a different way of viewing learning, read Nora Bateson’s Symmathesy: A Word in Progress.

October 25, 2015

Being in a Learning System

Last evening, I had the pleasure of participating in the International Bateson Institute session at the October Gallery in London with a number of wonderful IBI colleagues and extraordinary guests. Our discussion skirted around the notion of how systems learn. At one point, one of the guests asked, “What is it like to be in a learning system?”

Of course, all living systems are learning systems, but I think what he meant was what is like to be in a learning system that has the characteristics of the kind that supports the learning the IBI team had just observed at a Reggio Emilia inspired nursery school a few days before. This school and schools with similar learning “systems” lack the typical authoritarian relationships between teachers and children. Children control the flow of their own learning within stimulating contexts developed by the teachers. Learning emerges, percolates, and loops back and winds its way through the day. Children follow their curiosities and interests. They share and negotiate knowledge, while developing relationships with one another and among rich conceptual contexts. They seamlessly integrate sensory and disciplinary explorations.

But, back to the question about what is it like to be is such a learning system. As I pondered this question, it struck me that I had experienced such learning systems with my dog. I, of course, took her to dog training classes, which were as much about training the owners as about training the dogs. However, much of her learning was outside of these contexts. And, some of the most powerful learning for both of us occurred on our twice daily excursions into the forest near our home. For her, she lives in a world of relationships. It’s incredibly apparent as you walk through the forest with her. She is completely engaged and paying attention to as many sights, sounds, and smells as she can handle. She watches birds and things I couldn’t see with great intensity. She followed scent trails, and listened intently. And, with all of this she kept an eye on me. She’d run off exploring and following smells, but she’d keep track of where I was. And, sometimes our communication became coordinated without any verbalization needed. Sometimes just a glance and eye contact was all that was needed to coordinate which direction to go or when we needed to stop for a drink or a snack. At one, point we were off trail and climbing up the side of a mountain. We reached a point where the only way to go was both me to crawl under a tree to reach a more open area beyond. Part way under the tree, she became very agitated and looked at me saying, “we have to leave.” My initial impulse was to push on, but I “listened” to her, and backed out, then proceeded back down the mountain. I realized, she probably knew there was a mountain lion nearby.

The only other time she acted with such intensity was after we had moved to another city and went to a new veterinarian for an ear infection. When the new veterinarian entered the exam room, she reacted as if a threatening entity had just entered the room. I controlled her, but dismissed her behavior as a weird aberration, but I shouldn’t have. She was right. The veterinarian was a genuinely nasty person, not only in her demeanor, but also in her approach to sucking as much money out of her clients as possible… $677 in this case. I will listen to my dog from now on. (A week later we went to another veterinarian for a urinary tract infection. When the vet walked in to the exam room, she greeted her as she usually does with a kind of “oh, you’re okay” greeting. It was an interesting contrast… and $77 in comparison to the previous vet.)

But, the point of this learning system between my dog and I during these outings is that they involve mutual learning based on relationships of trust and respect. In the good learning systems of children in schools, the learning systems are based on relationships of trust and respect. But, most schools blow it. They may say they value trust and respect children, but it doesn’t take long for them to undermine the very tenets they say they hold.

The minute they raise their voices or exert authoritarian control, they have undermined trust and respect. The minute they take away what the children value as important, they have undermined trust and respect. And, of course, with most schools, when children enter and are immediately subjugated by the official curriculum, codes of conduct, grading systems, and high stakes tests, we have taken away all trust and respect.

The same holds true for taking a dog and putting her into a cage, followed by harsh treatment with hitting, yelling, etc. The dog has received no respect and trust… and will not respect and trust its owner.

What other learning systems function on trust and respect?

What systems are not based on trust and respect?

October 11, 2015October 11, 2015

Solidification, Policy, and Fear

For a number of years, I helped run a small satellite organization of a much larger international one. It was a place where people could gather and learn something about themselves within a nice social context. The number of people who came fluctuated, but there was a core group who came and helped support the week-to-week operations, including donating money to rent space. The group was loosely organized. We did have someone who took care of money and someone who took care of our web presence. Other tasks were more spontaneous, but it worked.

But, when I moved away the larger organization stepped in (the timing was impeccably bad) with requests for aligning to certain policies, which related to getting insurance coverage through their carrier and giving a certain amount of money to the central office every month. Well, that little policy maneuver is going to end the group. They will quietly dissolve into nothingness, leaving a number of people high and dry. And, what hurts so much is that these people could have benefited by the continued existence of this group, even if it was struggling and hobbling along. The group provided support and inspiration for the people who came. And, now, because of the inflexibility of “policy,” they will be abandoned.

I was around when this “big” organization was small and had no policies. It dealt with situations as they arose. There was a sense of personal connection with everything that was done. Now, dealing with the organization feels remote and cold. And, they talk about how to make it more personal, but they shoot themselves in the foot before they even begin.

Policy solidifies everything. The minute you start creating policy, you doom your organization to an inability to change, to an inability to be flexible or to adapt. Such solidification of the ways in which “things” function has led to the extinction of organisms. If a species doesn’t have the ability to adjust to changes in the environment, it is not going to survive over long periods of time.

Such a tendency to solidify things, such as creating policy, seems to be rooted in a fundamental fear of change. People are afraid of change and of things that are different. So, we solidify what we can. We solidify our view and opinions. We solidify who we think we are. We see this solidification in prejudices and biases of all kinds, in hate, in acts of violence and aggression, and in acts of avoidance. Policy and bigotry are parts of the same beast. “Policy” sounds official and legitimate and is easily justifiable with all kinds of seemingly rational reasons for the existence of policy, but it still arises out of a basic fear of change, uncertainty, and difference.

How many of you have had issues with businesses where their response is, “well, it is our policy….”? Such statements are an immediate attempt to shut down the conversation. Problem solved. They do not have to think about the issue at hand. It’s policy. All the while, you have been screwed. My response to that statement is that I could care less about their policy. There is an issue here that usually borders on some level of illegality that needs to be addressed whether they like it or not and whether there’s a policy or not. I also recently encountered a new twist on policy with a medical practice. I had an appointment for my son with a top specialist, but he really needed to see someone sooner. My question was, could he see someone sooner, but still keep his original appointment. The answer was, “no, he would have to only see the new person. He could never see the original specialist. It was policy.” Who benefits from that policy? Not the patient. It’s for the convenience of the medical practice, or for the egos of the practitioners. On the other hand, I went to see specialist group where I’ve seen different doctors. They tag team so that patients can get in to see someone as needed. Who benefits from the flexibility? The patients.

Policy and solidification is a way of freezing our hearts. We lose our hearts. We need more than ever before to re-connect with one another as fellow human beings. We need to try to understand one another. We need to empathize and share our humanity. Policy and other solidifications disconnect. They harden our hearts and narrow our minds.

October 8, 2015October 8, 2015

Living In Sync With Context

It is difficult to live in sync with the natural context. In big cities, we are surrounded by cement, asphalt, steel, and glass with spots of grass and trees. But, such synchronization, as much as possible, should be our challenge.

Take a stab at guessing in what natural context this house (in the photo below) belongs.

When we think about where we live, what are the natural surroundings? What are the native soils, plants, terrain, etc? Our mere presence in a natural setting makes a difference, but what sort of dwelling and grounds will have the least impact on the local ecosystem? We may find that our impacts are more than we like, or less than we may have expected. But, this exercise can help us begin to think about how we can live and think in ways that are more in line with our local ecosystems.

By the way, the context for the house shown above should look something like that shown in the photo below. It is quite interesting how people move into the desert, then try to make it look like they live in a temperate forest setting with a large pond, trees, and grass. What isn’t shown are the sprinklers for the acres of grass.

There’s a fundamental disconnect here… not even an attempt to live in sync with the desert ecosystem.

October 7, 2015

Play and the Killing of Children’s Spirits in U.S. Schools

Play may be the most powerful form of learning. Play allows us to break rules, test boundaries, look at things upside-down. I can’t imagine a Richard Feynman who didn’t play; or, a Charles Darwin, or an Albert Einstein, or a Carl Sagan, or a Lynn Margulis, or a Stephen Jay Gould, or a Jane Goodall, or any great thinker, scientist, poet, artist, inventor, innovator, who didn’t play.

Gregory Bateson suggested that play was one of the three ways that we can find the limits of the possible. The other two ways are exploration and crime. But, all three of these seem to overlap and may, in fact, just be different ways of looking at the same process in different contexts.

Play is critical to learning. Without play, we lose the emotional impact that helps to embed learning richer and more meaningful contexts. Without play, we lose the ability to connect to multiple contexts and multiple ways of seeing and knowing, which are essential for deeper understandings. Without play, there is no curiosity, no “aha” moments, no joy of discovery, no astounding mistakes (as opposed to oppressive mistakes of tests, etc.).

And, yet, in the United States, we have now moved pretty much all of schooling away from play. We don’t even have recess. Kindergarten is now relegated to “work” and standardized tests. We are killing our children at the root of their humanity. Their very spirits of inquisitiveness and joy are being cut off at the knees. These are our children. What are we thinking!!! It’s an unconscionable act of psychological violence.

And, by the way, not all developed countries do this to their children. Here’s an article in a recent issue of The Atlantic about school in Finland:

”The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland”

October 1, 2015October 1, 2015

Jerome Bruner Turns 100 Today, October 1, 2015

Jerry Bruner was and still is an inspiration for my own work (teaching and research). I mentioned to him many years ago that he reminded me of Gregory Bateson, and he responded that he wasn’t even close to being at that level. He is a humble man with a great mind and heart. And, I only wish more people would pay attention to what he has to say about children, learning, teaching, and schooling.

Happy birthday, Jerry Bruner!

See Chris Watkins’ blog entry on Jerry Bruner:

Bruner scores a century!

Some of Jerry Bruner’s books:

Bruner, J. (1977). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J. (1987). Actual minds, possible worlds. Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J. (1992). Acts of meaning: Four lectures on mind and culture. Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J. S. (1966). Towards a theory of instruction. Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J., & Haste, H. (1987). Making sense: The child’s construction of the world. New York: Methuen & Co.

Bruner, J. (2003). Making stories: Law, literature, life. New York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux.

He also edited and has a chapter in a book on play in which Gregory Bateson has a chapter:
Bruner, J. S., Jolly, A., & Sylva, K. (Eds.). (1976). Play – Its role in development and evolution. New York: Basic Books.

September 30, 2015

Thinking, Flexibility, and Dogma: Survival or Extinction

Dogma has a meaning related to an official opinion or a set of principles or knowledge that is handed down from some sort of authority. But, we often use this word to mean any sort of knowledge claim that is presented in an authoritative way. I’ve used it that way. However, I am not sure that usage falls within the definition of “dogma.” Nevertheless, the point I’m working up to here is that both dogmatic and authoritative ways of presenting things bug me. My immediate reaction is to tense up when I hear or see something being presented in that way.

I react the same way when I’m trying to resolve an issue with some company and they come back with a statement like, “well, it’s our policy.” Or, just the other day, I called a doctor’s office to see what they would recommend doing for my son. He has an appointment coming up with a doctor who comes with a high recommendation from another doctor who we really respect. I was asking if someone could see him in the interim or if he could go to an ER with a note from the physician we are going to see. However, the only suggestion was that he could see someone else tomorrow, but he could never see the doctor we want him to see. That was the policy.

These kinds of situation of dogma, authoritative claims, policy, and so forth are all examples of trying to solidify some “thing,” some process, some set of knowledge claims, or whatever. Such solidification processes are really problematic. They only serve to benefit a certain set of people (in the case of human social systems), but only in the short-term. In the long-term, such solidification processes are detrimental. Solidifying processes, procedures, knowledge, and so forth interfere with an individual’s or a group’s ability to adjust or adapt to changes in the environment. In terms of corporations, policies may seem to make things run more smoothly and increase profits, but could prevent them from responding quickly enough to changes in the market place. The same hold true for governments, institutions, and organizations of all kinds. In fact, this is a basic principle of evolution. Those species that are flexible in their responses to changes in the environment are more likely to survives than those that have rigid limits of response.

As individuals, we may get considerable comfort from our personal authoritative views and statements, but they may not serve us well. On the other hand, not believing everything we say is a bit disconcerting. But, it’s a slogan I try to remind myself of everyday.

“Don’t believe everything I think and say.”

“Don’t believe anything I think and say.”

After a while, it lightens up things a bit. Helps in the humor department, too. But, it still isn’t easy.

September 28, 2015

The Tragedy of Simple Science Illiteracy

I’m a science educator, but I’m not a big fan of promoting science as more important than the arts or any other subject matter area. I often cringe when I hear people talk about the importance of science literacy. But…. there comes a point, when I think, “wait a minute! Everybody should know this.”

Last evening, I took my dog as usual to the dog park. It was perfect timing. We arrived just before sunset and moon rise and the lunar eclipse. As I stood around talking with people about the impending eclipse, one woman, said, “but, where is the moon? It was way up here last night at this time.” I gasped silently, thinking that people had no clue how the whole Sun-Moon-Earth system worked. Yes, it does confuse people, but if you just observe the sky a little bit, you can figure out a lot of things.

At the same time, I found it pretty cool to watch the 1/3 blocked moon rise above the horizon. And, from the vantage point of the Phoenix dog park, one could see the moon move upwards. We don’t usually see the movement so clearly. But, with buildings and other structures on the horizon, it provided a foreground that made the movement very obvious. I went up to a group and excitedly pointed out this observation, which was met with something less than a ho-hum shrug.

When I was teaching elementary science teaching methods the vast majority of students had no clue how the Sun-Moon-Earth system worked. So, it really shouldn’t have been a surprise. But, for some reason, I thought that older adults would know or should know. But, we’ve destroyed our relationship to science… and to knowing for that matter. We really do not seem to value knowledge and understanding. People like the eclipse for the “magic show” quality, but not for the actual science of what’s happening.

My students and future teachers seemed to care less about how things worked. They cheated on their moon studies, which asked them to observe the moon for 5 minutes a night and record their observation and reactions. I told them, I didn’t care about “right answers,” but I did want them to struggle with trying to figure out explanations for the observations they made. But, too many years of schooling had damaged them. They had to look up information and make it sound like they had made the observations. I could tell they cheated, because they said they saw the moon when we had heavy snow storms and no visibility. Or, they did really poorly by just making up things without looking it up, in which cases nothing made any sense at all.

It really isn’t all that important to our survival that we understand how the Earth-Moon-Sun system works at this point. Maybe if we have to return to living without technology, it will be more important, but for now it isn’t. But, it just seems odd, that people have no curiosity about how the world around them works. It seems odd that people don’t look at things in the world. People don’t ask questions. They don’t try to explain anything. It’s just downright strange.

September 25, 2015

Teaching, Learning, and Time

Almost all of schooling is focused around warped uses of time. By “warped” I mean trying to squeeze a lot of material into a short period of time. “Efficiency” is the key word that marks this insidiously warped use of time.

When I talk about schools in this post, I am generalizing about the vast majority of schools. I’m talking about the institution of schooling in this country (the United States) and those in many other countries. This “institution” is the ephemeral, fuzzy bordered context of schooling that includes public, private, and charter schools. It’s a political, corporate hegemonic spider web of stuckness. There are, of course, exceptions. Courageous teachers who buck the system. And, odd schools that manage to do their own thing in the midst of their district’s craziness. Or, the occasional charter or private school that manages to break away from the hegemony of schooling, but then these schools bring up other problems of undermining the public system and serving elite populations. But, in general, when I talk about schools and schooling, I am talking about that big fuzzy institution of schooling and the schools that fall within this context.

The underlying push of schooling is “efficiency.” Schools and teachers have to be efficient. They have to cover the curriculum in the shortest possible time that will result in the highest student test scores. Time is the big issue in schooling. Time is marked by bells. Students’ lives are run by bells. Bells end classes. Bells begin classes. Bells tell when to go to lunch. Principals observe teachers with stopwatches. They go from one class to another to make sure all of the same grade level teachers are teaching the exact same thing at exactly the same time. Tests are timed. Some teachers set strict time-limits on activities, jumping from one activity to the next like grasshoppers going from one plant to the next… except that grasshoppers actually stop to take a nibble.

In life, most of us have jobs that require showing up at a specific time and leaving at a specific time. Some jobs are very much like schools with bells for starting and stopping and for coffee breaks and lunch. I worked in places like that. They were factories. In fact, the ways schools manifest now were designed to train people to work in factories. They haven’t changed much, even though the majority of jobs that children will eventually get have changed from factories to offices and other settings. But, the attitudes and characteristics of being obedient and compliant haven’t really changed. Corporations and politicians do not want people to question or challenge authority or to think critically about the issues they face in their everyday lives.

From the corporate and political perspectives, it is best to play this game that appears like they care about education by promoting higher standards, accountability, and measures of success. But, standards, accountability, and measures are all ruses. In fact, they are worse than ruses, they actually do the exact opposite of what one might think they are supposed to do. They prevent real learning, which is just what corporations and politicians want.

And, then on top of all of this, they put time constraints on learning in terms of efficiency. “Efficiency” in schooling may be the greatest misuse of time. Real, deep, meaningful, relevant learning takes time…. maybe lots of time. To speed through a curriculum is just another way of preventing real learning from taking place. Real learning is a way of…

Savoring
Considering
Reflecting
Pondering
Wondering
Exploring
Making mistakes
Playing
Fiddling
Meandering
Laughing
Screaming

With real learning there is no hurry…. The longer… the better.

Real learning gives us the tools to make difficult decisions. And, difficult decisions take time. We need to ponder possibilities and see things from different perspectives. Some real critically important decisions are going to be presenting themselves to our children in their lifetimes. Many of these issues and problems are already happening. They are only going to become more intense. And, our children have had no models of how to tackle such decision-making processes. Schools never take the time to model such processes. Schools pretend as if everything is going to be just fine in the future. They keep teaching the same old things as if life will just keep rolling along like it always has. When sea levels rise and parts of this country disappear, when food sources begin to disappear, when droughts become so bad that nothing will grow and people become desperate for jobs and water, when states are fighting over water rights, when diseases plague vast proportions of the population, and when energy resources can’t supply the demands – what tools have we given our children to cope with these problems?

The problem with schools and schooling isn’t the teachers. It isn’t the curriculum. It isn’t the children. It isn’t the parents. The problem is a systemic problem of faulty assumptions about what learning is, what schools should be, and what we want for our children. And, one of these assumptions is time. What about time?

September 21, 2015September 21, 2015

Alternatives to Consumerism in Life and Schooling

Over the past few days, I was thinking about this week’s blog entry as a re-analysis of some old research data from a teaching unit. I was looking through old transcripts of students working on a ship building project and how their thinking naturally involved multiple perspectives and seamless multiple interacting systems. I think I’ll get back to that later in this entry, but as “things” go, this morning, Nora Bateson posted something on Facebook about how we should stop buying things and simplify… Here it is:

Today I found this quote in a Wendell Berry story. It has been a week of head banging with the wall of non-communication between the humans and the corporations– frustrating to the bone. I thought of revolutions, evolutions, uprisings and social media viruses. I have been feeling tiny and silenced– and noticing acutely how tightly we are coupled into the corporate web. At this moment, we have not got the infrastructure to live without it. It thrives on our wanting… luxuriates in our insatiable need for having… so: this.

1 – Be happy with what you’ve got. Don’t be always looking for something better.
2 – Don’t buy anything you don’t need.
3 – Don’t buy what you ought to save. Don’t buy what you ought to make.
4 – Unless you absolutely have got to do it, don’t buy anything new.
5 – If somebody tries to sell you something to “save labor,” look out. If you can work, then work.
6 – If other people want to buy a lot of new stuff and fill up the country with junk, use the junk.
7 – Some good things are cheap, even free. Use them first.
8 – Keep watch for what nobody wants. Sort through the leavings.
9 – You might know, or find out, what it is to need help. So help people.

FROM: Nora Bateson, on Facebook, September 21, 2015

This entry started me thinking about how my Dad, who was a young married man and first-time father during the Great Depression, used to save everything many years later after I was born. Our basement was filled with all kinds of things. If something broke, he’d fix it. If he couldn’t fix it, he’d save the parts that were useful and toss the rest. He’d save old nails and screws. Although he was barely literate, he was a genius in all things electrical, mechanical, and structural.

Fortunately, a little bit of his “saving everything” and an even smaller bit of his genius rubbed off on me. I save the screws and nails from things that fall apart. I build much of my own furniture and repair things myself. I often try to do what he called “jury-rigging” things… just making up solutions to problems by using parts in ways for which they were not designed.

These types of actions are not “chores” or “impoverished” approaches, as we’re led to believe by the corporate world of buy-more-new-things-all-the-time-or-you-are-not-a-worthy-person messages. In fact, there is something that feels very wealthy about making and fixing your own things. When I make or fix something, I feel empowered. I feel enriched. I feel like I am a more complete and capable human being. And, as I was mentioning to a neighbor yesterday, I have even stopped calling repairmen. More often than not, they charge a fortune and screw up the job anyway. So, I told my neighborhood, “I can do screw it up myself for a whole lot less money.” But, as it turns out, it may take me a little longer, but I usually end up doing a better job than the so-called experts, who also seem to be out to scam people, but that’s another story altogether.

So, back to the children and their ship-building project. I had just given the kids some letters from fictions people asking for bids on ships to take tourists around to natural history sites. Each group had to act as a company to come up with these ship designs over the next couple of months. But, on this first day, they could explore some prototypes and test out their designs. These are mixed groups of grade 5, 6, 7 girls and boys. Here are a few excerpts. The lines are coded as Group# = Group Number, g# = girl number, b# = boy number.

Group 1
g1 Oh, you have to fill it out and then bring it back. You gotta … Wait a minute. Okay. A cylinder won’t work actually … cause even if it does … like it can’t tip, right? But even if it does, if people are sitting on one end and it tips, it all falls to the other end …
b1 Unless …
g1 … and they won’t get there safely.
b1 … unless you had like another cylinder inside the first a cylinder that like at the center (???) … so like there’s another cylinder that moves …
MUCH LATER ON…
b1 We should make up a name for it, like … (???) … like you know how they have names for sailboats and that …
g1 Mm hm.
b1 … (???) … … How about “The sub appeal?”
g1 The what?
b1 “The sub appeal.”

Group 2
b4 No, that’s too ordinary. We want something that people want to come to.
[Pause. Seem to be listening to group three and their discussion of ferries, ferris wheels and so forth.]
b4 Yeah, put a ferris wheel on it. Put a (???) on it and a swimming pool. Actually a swimming pool would be a good idea. Yeah, swimming pool would …
b5 No, no. If we had a swimming pool, we’d have like a really deep, deep hole? … (???) swim in it underneath and it would go …
b4 Yeah … yeah.
b5 So you could just jump into it, and it would be, it wouldn’t be on the ship, because then there would be bars and gambling machines and stuff. [Slight laugh.] No, no gambling ’cause that’s illegal.
b4 No, no, that’s good to … no, it’s not illegal.
b5 Yeah, it is.
b4 No, it … Yeah, that’d be cool.
b5 That would be good though …
b4 A pool, pool hall.
b5 Yeah, a pool table and stuff. Like a bar, a really nice bar and a fancy restaurant. … [Responding to someone at another table.] Yeah, we are.
LATER IN THE CONVERSATION
b5 No, and you can look out them, like underwater, from underwater.
b4 Yeah.
b5 It’s like a little underwater thing down there … and you can look down …
b4 No, it’s like, has like a glass bottom.
b5 Not … no, that’s not good. [Semi-giggle.] This really heavy guy comes along and steps on it. Kshaaa! [Vocal sound effect for heavy guy falling through glass bottom.]

In both of these groups, I’ve selected excerpts that show how children move from the technical-scientific (which is what is generally expected of children) to other “important” issues, like names, bars, and gambling machines. Children do not separate out the “disciplines” of science, mathematics, etc. All of the disciplines (or subject matter areas) arise in their thinking and conversations in blended ways and naturally become part of their thinking. But, this type of thinking is borderless systems thinking. Although we can easily dismiss these tangents as trivial, these tangents are where the important potentialities lie. This is where the creativity is. These tangents are where insights and problem solving arise. This type of thinking is the same sort of thing as keeping odd assortments of screws, nails, and pieces of metal. This is the type of thinking that helps children feel like complete and capable human beings. This is where they feel empowered and enriched.