How to be a Warrior for Childhood and Save the World

I spent an hour and half today talking with second graders about teeth; from lost tooth traditions all around the world, to the difference between incisors and canines. (Yes, we did this all on Zoom.) When I told them that their teeth transitions would linger into their twenties (wisdom teeth), they seemed surprised — I sort of was, too, when you think of it like that. It was a small reminder that change and growth is a long, slow journey, well into adulthood, and it is different for everyone. The children I was with today could have talked about teeth for much longer. Their thirst for simple knowledge is not easily quenched. Their curiosity and endurance to play with words and ideas always exceeds my expectations.

There certainly is a lot to learn in the world.

This week the American west was set ablaze, and the skies all around us literally darkened, for days. In the midst of a lingering pandemic, unrelenting social and racial unrest, economic instability, climate fueled disasters and an election that has been described by many as “the most important in our lifetime”, it might seem frivolous to be talking with children for hours about teeth.

There certainly is a lot to do in the world.

But there is nothing more important than what I did today.

It is not uncommon to hear adults or teachers equivocating about how they spend their time with children during these difficult days — should I abandon the art project I had planned for today, and instead enlist the children into a “get out to vote” postcard decorating activity? As engaged citizens, we may choose to act on our conflicting feelings and concerns in any number of ways. Charged with the care and education of young children, though, what is our job? Who will these future grown ups of the world be, and what do they need now to become the people that we so desperately need?

If we think we have no time to waste, that we have been complicit in our apathies, and if you care about the future for children, it could certainly be tempting to politicize our classrooms for change. Whatever your deeply held beliefs, hopes or fears are, there is a growing sense that we must engage our youth in the currency of change, put them to action, silence the bad, let each good voice be heard. I see well meaning educators, and parents with all sorts of views, struggling to walk this line all the time. They too, seem to be frustrated, stuck, stagnant, but often compelled to act. Should we move children to act before they learn to listen and understand? Are adults unable to listen and learn anymore, too? Does it matter, now that we can see with our eyes that the world may be burning? No time to waste, we need to educate them to be our warriors for change. Don’t just stand there, do something!

Maybe though, our mistake is that we set our sights on hurrying them along to grow up, when what we need to do is to let them grow. And that, no matter what, is a slow process, that deserves space, and is different for everyone. Better to follow the guidance of those pesky Quakers, and don’t just do something, stand there!

What lesson, even danger, is there, if we mark them too fast with our views and certitudes, and rob them of their chance at the messiness and complexity that comes with deep learning, and of the joys of their childhood?

School children are not almost voters, they are children still. We need to think about where they are, and for ourselves we need to find a way back to their interests, their amazingly simple, focused world. But often now, rather than meeting children where they are, we seem to be driving them more and more, and at even younger ages, to meet us where we are — drawing them into our politics, cultivating their “inner activists” in the hopes that they will do what we haven’t been able to do. After a summer of uncertainties and upheavals, I continue to wonder what it all might be doing to the souls of young learners. I fear the children are being robbed of something that is most preciously theirs. I fear that adults should be showing them a clearer way but are instead showing them a muddied one. I fear the consequences of our inability to do so are showing up in our daily news feed, in our classrooms and campuses, and even on the streets.

When I was young, I spent every afternoon after school watching Mr Rogers, drawn in by his warmth and sympathy — by his ‘love bombs’. When he said, over and over again, “you are special” I knew he meant that specialness was something we all had in common, that I was special, just like everyone else! I was being invited to join that amazing imaginative world of children and caring people. His puppets were perfect emblems of childlike simplicity. In Mr. Rogers Neighborhood things as routine as getting a haircut became momentous and even sacred. Every afternoon he would uplift what each small child needs and deserves: acts of kindness, love and inclusion.

These are essential ingredients for a healthy young heart and mind. But now what are these children watching, and what might they be thinking or thinking of doing, as the media bombards them daily with images of fear, and even aggression, and the adult world is preoccupied with enlisting them in the battle?

As a child of a school teacher and a literary scholar, the hallways of our home were filled with recitation and poetry. The Tyger by William Blake, and the images from Songs of Innocence and of Experience were sophisticated, complex, but nourishment for our young lives. These poems and images are imprinted on my mind, and I can recite many of these to this day. Vivian Paley, a well known early childhood writer, advocate and teacher was my own kindergarten teacher — my experience under her spell in her classroom, with the power of story everywhere, became for me a habit of my consciousness. Subsequently, as a kindergarten teacher myself, I became devoted to making time for 6 year olds to tell their stories, acting out among each other the dilemmas they have daily, through tale and metaphor. I felt that this commitment of time to imagination and story was and still is in itself a moral and political act. Imagining, thinking and choosing: these are the essential qualities that a strong, patient mind needs.

I have worked in a Quaker school for some time, and those ideals resonate now; Simplicity, truth, stewardship and integrity bring me back again to recognize that the life of a child requires that we honor the simple emotional necessities that small acts play in their lives; that we thrust them more into nature, and with one another, and, perhaps for this time of their lives, much less into the streets, with us. We are all less and less surrounded by imaginary worlds and more and more driven to think in terms of moral certitudes.

Might we not all be better off if we took more thought from the thoughts and ways of our children rather than driving them into our thoughts and ways? How much better to be gathering in a neighborhood like Mr. Rogers where they can fill their minds with ideas, nature, play, words and pictures — all food and drink for souls that are still forming and that will be, as we know, well until they are grown. Children need all of this to nourish a healthy spirit that will be so important for their later lives, when they will have to deal with strain, complexity, and violence, and when they indeed may be called upon to act in defense of innocence, with their spirits and minds intact.

What is our surest defense against the suffering, egoism, disconnectedness, anxieties, and even trauma that we see everywhere and that so threatens our youth in particular? It is the innocence, openness, and sympathy that children know so immediately and so well.

It’s dark and confusing out there — but the mission is clear, especially if youth is your gig. Saturate children in wonder and learning, it is what they are driven naturally to do; when we commit to it, we open perspectives, hearts, and minds to possibility — and even to doubt. If we do it righteously, we have armed them with something much better than politics; we will have armed them with self-knowledge and the courage of their convictions, and we’ve aimed them in the right direction to bring reason and heart to their educational experiences and ultimately to the future and world beyond.

Educators recognize the tremendous responsibility we have to growing a generation, and a culture, with firmly rooted habits of goodness. Over the last generations, we focused on the importance of creativity. There is ample evidence that we got creativity right (just look at the technologies), but we are often forcing young learners into a stovepipe of moral certitude, at best, and at worst, a moral vacuum (again, search the internet). Good ideas require thinkers to open minds, not close them, and to marry creativity with purpose, self worth, and loving connection with something greater than any one of us. Saving the world requires we have the courage to think differently. Building that capacity is only possible if we allow children to slow cook ideas, and experience humanity, and maybe not just mainline blind action. We want them to make sense of their world, not for them to adopt the sense we want them to make of it.

There exists overwhelming evidence that the only way to grow healthy, creative, resilient, thoughtful, and empathetic people is to focus, undeterred, on cultivating the children’s (and our own) social and emotional health and stability; by deepening relationships with others, and making time for curiosity, joy, and imagination to grow. This evidence exists across disciplines in science, psychology and education. Stress, and worse yet, trauma, impacts the brain and body in ways that can have long term effects on learning and development. A commitment to and focus on the well being of children is essential if we aim to equip them to go out, with optimism and confidence, and make an impact in the world — -bringing light to its often overwhelming darkness. Only a deep initial investment in the truth of childhood innocence can protect a person from the difficult lessons that experience will bring. Their time will come to make their impact on the world, and those foundations in self awareness and curiosity will be key in their ability to do it well, and with courage. If the adults can remind one another of this, keep our “shoulders to the wheel” and the children’s true hearts and unique minds at the center, we may just give them a fighting chance to create a beautiful future.

So, this is why you have my full and unabashed permission to see an hour long dialogical conversation with 7 year olds, about teeth, or any other subject that meets them where they are, as a step in the direction of changing the world for the better. It’s not quaint to say so, and if I’ve failed at convincing you, it is simply that feeble words can’t convey it; you must believe it, too. You know it when you feel it, it is in all of our hearts. Children’s interests must not be seen as distractions from the “real’ life of experience and conviction. They are and have always been the foundation of our morals, our politics, our ethics, and any commitments we make to these things.

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