A rant about "learning toys"

It probably would surprise no one to hear that I think that children and teens spend far too much time immersed in electronic realities. Granted, I’m more of a Luddite than an early adopted when it comes to technology, but aside from my own biased opinion, there’s numerous studies that prove that electronic media is neither a necessary, nor particularly beneficial ingredient in early childhood development, and may in fact be quite harmful.

Casual observation makes it clear that the marketing of electronic distractions to small children has been quite effective. It seems like everywhere I go, young children are glued to some sort LCD screened device. A recent study published by The NPD Group notes that “the average age at which children begin using consumer electronic (CE) devices has declined from 8.1 years in 2005 to 6.7 years in 2007” (NPD Group, “Kids and Consumer Electronics Trends III.”)

As a teacher, it appears as if the rising numbers of electronic users correlates almost exactly with the rising percentage of students I have each year who have a prescription for Adderol or Concerta…in other words, I’m implying causality here, ladies and gentlemen. If this were not the case, and one wanted to make the case that all of this electronic immersion resulted in smarter children, I would expect to see large numbers of children who show up to school ready to learn, an armada of small geniuses, with test scores to match. Needless to say it ain’t happening folks. And until it does, I reserve the right to be wildly skeptical about all this emphasis on the desirability of providing children with electronic toys.

It’s really sad to me, but by the time they're teens, they honestly go through technology withdrawal symptoms when they’re at school. They have no idea how to entertain themselves without batteries. Their media-deprivation is torture to them, and the idea of doing “real” things is completely alien. They’ve never played a board game. They have no idea how to have a real conversation. They completely lack a sense of imagination. The only kids who aren’t like this tend to be recent immigrants, or have “kooky” parents who don’t let them watch TV and (gasp) made them play outside as kids. I’ve made a note of it.

So needless to say, I’m not in a big hurry to expose my own child to a lot of the electronic noise that passes for entertainment these days. But given the current trends in product marketing to children, it’s actually become incredibly hard to find toys (and other products for children) that aren’t electronic gadgets.

Want a simple swing to rock a colicky baby in? Apparently it’s almost impossible to find one that doesn’t come with flashing lights, electronic jingles, and other annoyances. (If I was a baby who didn’t feel good, I think all that noise would just make me cry even harder!) Anything you might purchase to put a baby in when you can’t physically hold it comes equipped with enough gadgetry to require an engineering degree to assemble. Apparently manufacturers think that babies require vast amounts of stimulation—the same amount that would probably induce anxiety disorders in lab rats! Developmentally, it isn’t clear that all of this “improvement” results in positive outcomes in learning and behavior.

Given that you can’t hardly buy toys for a baby that don’t come with flashing lights and electronic noises, by the time they’re toddlers, forget it. Apparently manufacturers are convinced that kids can’t possibly be expected to enjoy something unless it comes with strobe lights, a constant barrage of sound effects, or a constant stream of inane electronic narration. Everything has been made-over to require batteries and earplugs. Given the state of toys in this day and age, I’ve made it very clear to everyone in my life that I would prefer not to receive any toys that make noise and require batteries.

My mother –in-law reported that she had a rather interesting encounter with a toy store employee while shopping for birthday/Christmas presents for the babe (who is now 2). I imagine the exchange went something like this:

Toy store employee to Grandma: “Can I help you find something?”

Grandma to toy store employee: "I'm looking for toddler toys that don't require batteries or make weird artificial noises and books that don't require you to push a button or record a message".

Toy store employee to Grandma: "Well, what does the kid do???"

(I wasn’t there, but this is what I would have said in response): “Here's what my poor electronically-deprived toddler DOES:
• He brings me things all day long so I can confirm their identity.
• He builds imaginative monuments out of my recyclables.
• He giggles and laughs at his own private jokes.
• He loves flashcards.
• He knows his colors, most of his shapes, several numbers, and quite a bit of the alphabet.
• He picks up every shell and rock on the beach and gives them to me as a present.
• He points out every street sign we pass. His favorites are the stop signs.
• He pushes his toy trucks around on every horizontal surface in the house.
• He puts all his stacking rings (and any other ring-shaped object he can get over his hand) on his arms and shows off his collection of bracelets.
• He rolls all my old coffee cans across the kitchen floor in a glorious orchestration of synchronized movement.
• He showers us with affection, giggles, and smiles.
• He sits in my lap and listens to me read (and points at everything on the page).
• He turns eating into a comedy routine.
• He thinks plastic lids are awesome.
• He loves splashing in water.
• He walks backwards whenever possible.
• He watches airplanes and birds fly overhead.
• He will run around for hours up and down a pile of sand.

What does he do, indeed! What any normal toddler would probably do—play!

Almost all children are perfectly capable of entertaining themselves with very few props. Most kids under 5 would be perfectly happy coming up with their own new and imaginative uses for ordinary household objects, or things you find outdoors (mud/sticks/rocks/puddles). Combined with physical activity for it's own sake, and all you have to do is sit back and watch the show.

It’s my observation that all of this “playing around” is far more educational than anything you’d find in the section of a store devoted to “learning toys”. I’m glad there are a few people out there bucking the trend, people who still make “beloved objects” and toys for children that have stood the test of time…the kinds of things that deserve to be around forever, and passed on down to one’s children and grandchildren. Finding these kinds of gifts in a mainstream store is very hard, and the people who make these things are competing with forces who are much more organized and have a much louder message.

It’s very clear to anyone who pays attention to such things that our very DNA is hardwired for experiential, direct, hands-on-learning, and yet toy manufacturers seem to think that to circumvent this is desirable. Part of the joy of parenting is helping children discover the world around them, but that’s being lost in this flood of electronic distractions that encourage the depersonalization of human connections and reduce the child (learner) to the role of a passive observer. The cynical beast within me is convinced that it’s all a sinister plot to create an army of passive consumers. I’m inclined not to do them the favor of paying for the ammo myself.

learn from the neck down

Question: Where have I learned and lived in 2011? In my head, in my body, or both? What would living more fully in my body in 2012 bring to me? How can I embody life and learning as I move through this liminal space between now and next? How can I more fully learn from the neck down in 2012?

After a couple of years of living (mostly) in my body, I’d say I’ve shifted back the other direction again. Two years ago, I was pregnant for the first time, which was definitely a whole body experience (that could NOT be ignored), and part of the spiritual journey of that time was coming to terms with the obligatory change that comes of giving up certainty over the self to accommodate the growing of a new life. I never knew how much I had taken for granted…the limitations of the body were imposed on me for the first time in my young life. For once, the body had power over the mind. For once, I did not matter what I wanted, the body was going to have its say. And a pregnant body can definitely clobber the mind into submission.

After my son was born, and as my body gradually returned to a more normal state, the realities of caring for an infant meant that the body still had dominion over the mind. No intellectual activity was going to take place in that state of sleep deprivation! I was also in the midst of the long process of trying to regain some of the strength and stamina I once possessed. If nothing else, I was on a quest to fit back into my regular wardrobe. None of these things could be accomplished through intellectual meandering—only through the power of the body.

A year later, and in a sense, how easy it is to lose sight of the lessons learned. As a teacher, I live and work in a world that is very much dominated by the mind and its pursuits.

Education, especially in this day and age has the tendency to compartmentalize and disembody experience, isolating it into purely intellectual tasks. As valuable as book learning can be, it does have the tendency to discount direct experience, disembody knowledge into facts, and divide up the world into “subjects” with a host of “facts” that should be memorized and regurgitated on a test. Combined with the greater use of technology, it adds a dimension of passivity to the whole process of education that was unheard of fifteen years ago.

I do not think the standardized testing movement would be possible without the growth in technology, just as I often wonder if the loss of hands-on-learning and PE are also casualties of the greater reliance on technology (this is why I find the Wii vaguely disturbing)…ironic thoughts given where I am sitting and what I am doing…
Thousands of years of experience as humans, and I do not think we are really psychologically ready to let computers take the place of our bodily functions. We are designed to breathe, and move, and feel pain and joy. Modern life makes it very difficult to trust the instincts we’ve evolved with. We now need “experts” to tell us the very things our bodies are trying to communicate to us. That the world is out of balance. That our food and water are poisons. That we are deprived of things that we don’t even know we needed in the first place (fresh air and natural light).

As a teacher of at-risk youth, first and foremost, I want my students to learn to trust themselves, to develop the sense of self they will need to be in charge of their own lives (even with the decks stacked heavily against them). Sometimes this requires certain intellectual skills that need polishing. The classroom could be a good place for that. But some of these lessons can only come through direct hands-on experience, in settings where the body, not just the brain, “do the thinking”.

I think we all could benefit from more time spent “grappling” with experience, not just words, and as much as I am in the business of training minds, I cannot neglect the training of bodies. I am in a unique position to do this work, so in order to do it well, I need to be mindful of the lessons of the body in my own life. I need to not get so wrapped up in the intellectual nature of my profession, but rather take the time and space to ensure I am not ignoring the needs of the body—and teaching my students to do the same.

Winter Break Teaching Reflection

And it’s half-time for the 2011-2012 school year. The kids are off to their respective wherevers, and it’s just me and a quiet classroom full of papers and folders, bulging trashcans, and piles of books.

It’s also nearly the one-year mark for this gig (I started just after MLK day last year). The last year went REAL fast!

When I showed up at Job Corps almost 12 months ago, I had no idea what to expect, but I took a huge leap of faith and decided to throw my lot in with the good people of Lincoln County, Oregon. Based on the prosaic position description (Reading Teacher), I knew I’d probably be teaching Reading to 20 -year-old boys, but beyond that I had no idea what to expect. But after four years of subbing, I figured no matter what it entailed, I could probably do it.

I felt pretty sure I’d be teaching somebody something, but as far as who the somebodies where, and what we’d be doing, that part fell into place over the next 12 months.

This time last year I was in a profoundly stressful and rather miserable place in my life. I had to move out of my house on Christmas. On top of that, factor in all of the stress and hassle you could possibly imagine. The task was immense because I had lived in my own home for the past 3 years (and had not envisioned moving out anytime soon). And just for fun, throw in an 11-month-old baby who definitely didn’t understand why nobody was paying any attention to him for the better part of two months. (What could possibly be so compelling about cardboard boxes, right?)
When the clock struck midnight for 2011 I was in a completely unfamiliar place, didn’t know up from down, and most of my underwear was still in a box somewhere, but I was psyched about the year ahead. Because for the first time in a while, I knew where I was going to be working every day, and could hear and smell the ocean from my front door.

My students learned a lot this year. Whether they wanted to or not. The proof was in the huge volume of paper that I am dutifully recycling before they come back from winter break. We studied all kinds of things: biology, geography, history, culture, ecology, health, social skills, career preparation, literature, driver’s education, you name it. The nice thing about teaching Reading (versus Literature) is that you can read a ton of non-fiction as well. Half the time, I asked the students what they wanted to learn about, and half the time, I came in with the things I thought were important. Looking over my curriculum files, we covered a lot of ground in the last 12 months. But they probably learned just as much from each other. And to be honest, I learned a lot from them.

Students are full of surprises, and in spite of the groaning and complaining, often do care, and provide a lot of their own energy and life to the classroom experience. Sometimes an offhand remark or a simple discovery could turn into a powerful learning moment.

Another thing that’s been driven home over the course of the past year is the importance of people, relationships, and belonging to a community.

Over the course of the year I’ve watched countless kids come and go. It happens faster at Job Corps than it does in a standard public school setting because it’s an open-entry, open-exit program. So people come when they’re ready (or so they think!) and leave when they finish (or when life has other plans). For some it takes a few months (6 months), for others it takes a couple of years. Some kids come and decide right away that Job Corps is NOT for them, and they’re only in my life for a handful of days. Others get homesick after a month and go AWOL (run back home to mama). Others get kicked out for using drugs halfway through the program. The rest stay long enough to finish an unfinished high school diploma, or get a GED, or complete their trade apprenticeship.

So in an environment like this, people come and go. Friendships form and dissolve. Relationships are often fleeting and brief. It’s hard to form deep bonds, but for what it’s worth, I try to use what I know of community building where I can carve out a little space in my classroom for people to feel comfortable, accepted, and welcome regardless of who they are or where they came from. Whether they only have me for two-week mandatory, or their entire stay at Job Corps, I try to create an environment within my classroom that is open to hearing their stories, and that will hopefully awaken some curiosity about the world within everyone who walks through the door.

If there is one lesson I hope that my student took with them from my efforts this year it would that reading is really just a reflection of the world. I think we all need a place and time to tell our stories (and make sure they’re heard), and that the process of learning doesn’t have to be mysterious, difficult, or boring. That reading is a lot like life, and there’s something out there for everyone. What I’d ultimately like to see is them take this attitude with them and let it grow beyond the walls of my classroom.

One thing I love about teaching is that it’s more than a job, more than a career, it’s basically a “path”. Teaching is not something you “do”, it’s something you “are”. It’s more like being a samurai. That probably doesn’t make sense, but ultimately it’s a convoluted way of saying you don’t start being a teacher when the bell rings, and stop when the kids walk out the door. You are always looking at the world in terms of what lessons it holds for you and others.

The beauty of teaching, and the things that makes it so difficult at times, is that it is something that you have to be “real” in order to do it well. You can’t separate yourself from it. It’s not a part of your life—it IS your life. So you can’t pretend to be anything other than who you are, or the kids will know right away that you’re a fraud. And once they come to that conclusion, you can be sure they will reject ANYTHING that you have to offer.

The past year has been full of a lot of talk about reform. There’s an intense political battle going on in this country over education. There’s a lot of taking sides, and pointing fingers. Regardless of how it all shakes out, I will continue on as always. I am one of those people who is willing to be a positive deviant, and keep on teaching by any means necessary. I’m not going to be sitting around waiting for permission to do things that I think are necessary. I just hope this country doesn’t have to hit rock bottom to find the courage to do the right thing.

My students remind me on a daily basis that we all need to be courageous. We all need someone to care about our stories. And we all could use a little unexpected magic and joy in our lives.