Appreciation? Yes. Appreciation circles? No thank you.

Have you ever been publicly appreciated? Have you ever had to sit in a circle with a bunch of other people and do a ‘go around’ where each person is pinned down, and has to endure ‘touchy feely’ comments describing the myriad ways that they appreciate you? Did you have to offer appreciation in turn-obligated and put on the spot while doing your best to appear gracious and sincere?

That’s what happened to me at a working retreat I was on. Stunned by this unexpected ‘team building exercise,’ I refused to participate directly- saying only that I appreciated the entire group as ‘salt of the earth’ and for their dedication to the work they do.

I do not like feeling forced to do things- it’s the rebel in me to blame. To my mind, there is a time and place for offering appreciation. Just like I drag my heels and feel resentment when the pressure to join in to say, Christmas spirit, so too do I drag my feet when such situations are imposed on me. I don’t like it and being stubborn, I won’t oblige-or I’ll do it my way.

There’s something wrong with this picture for the following reasons:

• When we are all forced to ‘appreciate’ the other, it is not authentic. Appreciation can be offered in ways that are less obvious. One person told me afterwards that she felt uncomfortable, paralyzed about what people would say about her, worried that they wouldn’t say anything nice. She felt like it was like a popularity contest and was disappointed because she only got four comments. “Why didn’t you say something about me?’” she said, but there was a hidden grievance.
• I think the whole exercise ends up messing with people’s insecurities- and we are adults. I can only imagine what that would stir up in kids. So to me, this ‘appreciation circle’ is akin to praising- they are in the same category and both suck.  Just as we are told that praising kids is harmful to them because what we are doing is actually judging them, so too is the appreciation circle business where after the ‘appreciation’ people are left pondering why they said such and such and not so and so: “Oh, they didn’t say anything about my leadership skills. Does that mean they think I’m not a leader?”

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate,” said Thoreau.

Contrived situations like the ‘appreciation circle’ tend to suggest and even impose on the person being appreciated,  how others view that person, subtly shaping the way we view ourselves.  In the end, what I think about myself is more significant than what others think about me. So please, no praise, no appreciation circles around me!

I am curious to  hear from others about their thoughts on the topic. Do you find merit in the exercise? Do you use it?

The Mother (Jane Goodall's supporter).

"I was born lucky to a truly amazing mother," begins Dr. Jane Goodall at tonight's lecture put on by BurlingtonGreen.
"Mother had a big influence."
Goodall recalls going to bed with earth worms at age 2.5 years old and her mother telling her they would die because they needed the earth to live and she bursting into tears.
When she was 5, she visited a farm with her mother (they lived in London). She was so curious about how hens laid eggs and kept asking people where the eggs came from. Not getting a satisfactory answer, she remembers hiding in the barn and then "waiting and waiting and waiting for a hen to come and lay an egg."
Her mother could have yelled at her for having caused everyone so much concern and fear searching for her hours on end, "possibly killing the excitement and interest,” but instead mother sat down with her and listened to her tell her story about what she’d learned in that barn.

Books were important. They couldn’t afford a bike let alone books but her mother read to her and she gave her Dr. Dolittle books which was how she learned to read, "because I was so deeply interested." Between 10 and 11 she found 'Tarzan of the Apes' in a used book store (she still has it) and read it over and over.
“That started the dream of going to Africa, living with the animals and writing books," Goodall shared.

Again, it was her mother who supported her (this at a time when she was the ‘wrong sex,’ as girls were not encouraged to dream big). While other  people scoffed at her, laughed at her saying, ‘Set your sights on something attainable," her mother said, “Work hard, never give up and you will find a way.”

She adviced Jane to do do secretarial work and save her money because they couldn’t afford university. Turns out that being a secretary for a documentary films in London worked to her advantage. When an old school friend invited her to go to Kenya, she was introduced to  archaeologist Louis Leakey,curator at the Natural History Museum. This lead to him offering her a secretarial job because he was so impressed with her knowledge and passion on the subject of animals.

Eventually, Leakey offered her the opportunity to study chimps. She said yes immediately. Her dream had come true. She was young, untrained but an American business man gave some dollars towards a six month trial. The stipulations were such that she had to have a companion and who was it who came with her? Her mother (who bore up under all the tough conditions-including snakes and spiders!!).

When Goodall was desperate because the chimps, never having seen a "white chimp" kept running off so that she couldn’t study them, her mother boosted her morale. Mother pointed out all that she was actually learning a lot: how they move, what plants they were feeding on, how they made their sleeping platform etc.
Goodall says it was really sad that her mother left before the break through with the chimp using the twig as a tool to get a the ants; stripping the leave so as to modify a tool.

She talks about how how studying the chimps she learned that they were very much like humans.
She found that there were good mothers and not so good mothers. The mothers who were attentive, not overly tolerant, affectionate and playful and most importantly supportive, had offspring who would grow up to play more prominent roles in society. In contrast, the off spring of ‘bad’ mothers were tense, and nervous in the community so the key feature to Goodall's mind was that of support.
As in the case of the chimps, so in her case: “My mother supported me.”

More insights (not related to mothering):

Jane talked about Leaky saying she had to get her own money as he wouldn’t always be around and to do so. She needed to get at PhD. “No time to mess about with a Bachelors degree," said he, so she went straight to Cambridge where she was told she was doing it all wrong; "You weren’t supposed to name the chimps, etc etc."
Jane had many other insights and stories she shared with the audience. She spoke about her Damascus moment in 1986 when at a conference she was so moved by the presentations she came as a scientist and left as an activist. Still passionate about saving the chimps she realized that it was all interrelated-Africans living in poverty,deforestation, resource extraction. "How can we try to  save the chimps when people are so desperate?" she asked herself.
Her strategy? Asking the question, "What do you feel will make your lives better?" From there, answers and results started to emerge that addressed all these issues including saving the chimps.

The presentation was heartening as she talked about her successful involvement with youth through the roots and shoots program that she’s established and the Jane Goodall Institute.

A little sand in the gears of the system

I remember a conversation I had with John Taylor Gatto over the phone. He said to me-about changing the system- that you, "develop the mind of a saboteur."
"You look and move like everybody else, you don’t draw attention to yourself, but from time to time, you find where the gears are meshing and you put a nice handful of sand in them."
He said if they come to majority with independent critical minds, with a good attitude towards things, without expecting change to come easily, enjoy the struggle of testing themselves, "the biggest handful of sand will be your children."

That day has already come.

In my experience, the children who are growing up/have grown up outside of the education system seem to have a different perspective/take on things. Outwardly there is no immediate difference; they don't have yellow noses or purple chins. What is striking to me is how they approach situations. They seem to have a broader understanding of things. For them, the long range view. They tend to see the world not from a place of 'should and have tos' and 'musts' but rather,  'how can this be different?' They seem less afraid of speaking up, are not so desperate to hide ignorance- not terrified of failure, of doing the wrong thing, not worried about fitting in, or of making a faux pas.

That is why my oldest is in the throes of a confrontation with a teacher who thinks statistics and facts are not to be believed and that our society is actually a matriarchal society. Here's what she said to my daughter: "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. At home, I'm the boss even though hubby might think otherwise." And to validate her position, she added that she knows many other families for whom the situation is the same as hers.
Suffer fools gladly? Not my girl. Raised to question authority, she has to speak up; she feels she would be going against her true self if she sat there and swallowed blatant ignorance.Let's hope that the price of her challenging isn't too high. The trick is figuring out when to push and when to pull back isn't it?

School cramping her style?

So, my unschooled daughter started school. Grade 9.
As school folks know, the school year began on Tuesday.
Daughter went on Tuesday. She went on Wednesday, and Thursday. On Friday, recognizing an opportunity when she saw it, she accompanied her father and grandmother to the nation's capital city for a visit to her cousin's.
Should I have let her skip school? Barely days into the new experience and she is already taking off.
I've said it before, once an unschooler, always an unschooler.
I ask her about her first impressions of high school are: how was her first day? She notes how easy it is to slip into a situation where she's done almost no 'desk work' and it's not  a disaster.  "How little most kids actually know- facts included."

What really left an impression was that the school day is so long. "Why does it have to be this long? We could do all that in half the time. We could go in twice a week."  Her sister agrees: "There should be an 'intense school' option that goes for three months or so."
It doesn't have to be the 6 hour day every day plus homework.

I hate waste of any kind.The fact is, school is a time guzzler. If you're going to insist on school, then for pity's sake make it worth people's while. Stop wasting their time, their youth their energy their creativity, their LIVES.
With school, it's a drawn out affair. It's inefficient. It's expensive. It uses up far too much of our resources; human and otherwise.I know, I know. It's a multi-billion dollar business. I get it.
Even the structure of the day revolves around the school year and while everywhere work is becoming more flexible school remains as rigid as a ruler.
So? What happens now? "Testing, testing," daughter says. She'll see.

Common Misconceptions About How Kids Learn.

September’s here again. Glorious, vibrant month!  September: tinged with nostalgia at the passing of another summer. The weather starts to cool down, the woods are alight with leaves turning, the city gets down to business and what do we do? We smother it with school. What a squander.
But since we will insist on packing them off to school, it’s worth taking a look at common misconceptions about how children learn. And here they are:
1. Kids must learn socialization from other kids.

Do we really believe that socializing children to the ways of our world is best left to those youngest, most immature of our society--their peers?  Do we really think that a child, who is surrounded by people in his /her family and community, is not being properly socialized?

2. Learning must be drilled into kids otherwise they would want to hang out all day, playing video games for the rest of their lives.

Have you watched young children trying to learn something new? The energy, the determination the focus they bring to the task is astounding.  They’ll give you hell if you get in their way or try to stop them, or do it for them.  Learning is natural to humans. 'First do no harm' should be the going motto for every parent, school teacher etc.

3. Kids want to grow up to be stupid and lazy so we have to force them into learning.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard any kid say, “When I grew up I want to be a bum.” No. They want to grow up competent, confident, contributing members to society. Let’s help them get there by respecting what it is they want to do.

4. Education can only take place guided by curriculum. And deviation from the curriculum is a strike against the learner and that learning is irrelevant (because it is not government approved or because you should learn it in grade 10 not grade 6, or you should have learned it in grade 6 not in grade 10).

The belief that we need a prescribed list of what we must know, followed in a precise order is fraudulent. Kids are natural learners; they want to learn--at their own pace.

5. You don’t know something unless you prove it by passing a test--at which point you know it.

 And then don’t know it anymore because you only studied it for the test and promptly forgot it.

6. The curriculum is law forever and ever.

Until someone challenges it.

7. Kids must learn how to deal with bullying and knocks to their self-esteem so that they can go out into the world and as grown-ups, endure the bullying of their bosses/spouses/neighbors etc.

Raising children in a respectful environment makes them more resilient when the knocks inevitably come around because they would have learned self respect and self love. A sage once said, in a world that is insane the best thing for a child is for the adults around her to be sane.

8. Experiences kids gain at school are better and more valuable than those experiences gained anywhere else.

The prom. The locker. The boredom.The cafeteria. The gym. Yeah, but I’ll pass any day for the café, for the open market, the used book store, the university lecture hall, the swimming pool, the art gallery, the library, the community, the open trail,……..

9. Learning happens in bit size pieces.
Maybe so. In my experience, learning happens in great, hunking gulps.