In fact, Buck is a documentary about how people (and animals) learn – and a reminder that just because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way to do it.

Against a backdrop of horizontal landscapes, azure skies, and shape-shifting clouds, the movie follows Buck Brannaman as he conducts horse clinics across the country. But these clinics aren’t solely about helping people learn to ride horses. “A lot of times, rather than helping people with horse problems,” he explains in the film’s opening minute, “I’m helping horses with people problems.”

Buck’s own life story bears this out. A professional rodeo entertainer by the age of six, he was beaten mercilessly by his hard-driving father, Ace. By the time a gym teacher spotted the network of thick welts on his back and buttocks, the young boy had grown silent with fear and mistrust. Swift interventions by caring adults and a loving foster family slowly restored Buck’s sense of self-worth, but the father’s beatings left a permanent wound the son sought to heal through a different understanding of human and animal nature. “I was looking for a peaceful place to be,” he explains in a clipped, twangy rhythm.  “There’s a lot of fear in both the horse and the human. So there has to be trust.”

Unfortunately, the historic approach to horse training was about anything but trust. Horses were tied to posts, whipped, prodded, and constrained – the logic being that the only way to get such strong animals to submit to a human’s will was by literally “breaking” them down. Brannaman’s clinics demonstrate a different approach, one based on a deep sense of empathy, respect, and communication – and filled with valuable lessons for the participants that extend beyond the riding circle.

“You can’t be a good guy when you leave the barn, and a bad guy when you enter the barn. Human nature doesn’t work that way.”

“Your energy moves the horse.”

“Everything’s a dance.”

“Respect isn’t fear; it’s acceptance.”

“It’s not the young-un’s fault. He just doesn’t know what’s expected of him.”

At one point, Brannaman demonstrates what he means by holding one end of a rope and asking a participant to hold the other. “If I jerk at you, hard and sudden, like this, you’re going to flinch every time I approach you. And that’s definitely one way to get the horse’s attention. But if I just pull gently and steadily until you feel the tightening of the rope, like this, then I’m operating on feel, and I don’t even need to grip the rope tightly. It’s how you get there, to that point of deep communication, that matters.”

What makes Buck such a powerful film is the way he proves what we instinctively know to be true about how people learn – and struggle to act upon. Too often, instead of providing the parental or pedagogical equivalent of what Buck does with horses – call it “kid whispering” – our actions result in whispering kids. Instead of engendering a deep sensitivity to the invisible, orderly dance that occurs between two beings learning to trust one another, our efforts result in visible indicators of control. It’s the modern manifestation of the age-old saying: children are to be seen, not heard. And it’s just as out of tune with how we learn as horse breaking is with how they learn.

Buck reminds us that when learning is understood as the effort to empathize with another, it transforms both teacher and student. He reminds us that the journey is certain to surface what is submerged, and require us to make sense of what we see. And whether we’re parents, teachers or trainers, he demonstrates that the art of the whisper comes in the search for, and discovery of, the delicate balance between reassuring structures and empowering freedoms, something Buck describes as the ‘soft feel.’

“Most people think of a feel as when you touch someone,” he tells us. “But a feel can have a thousand meanings. Sometimes a feel is a mental thing. Sometimes it’s a glance exchanged between horse and human from across the arena. But always it’s an invitation from the horse to come closer, and it’s a moment of perfect balance.”

Since that time, Blue Man Group has become an international phenomenon, and an unlikely aesthetic portal through which to vicariously experience the wonders of inquiry, discovery and mischief. And now, those same core ingredients are at the heart of a remarkable new school in New York City – a school I got to visit and see through the eyes of two of its founders, “Blue Man” Matt Goldman and his wife, Renee Rolleri.

“Blue Man Group started in the 1980s as this outrageous idea,” Matt explained, shortly after we entered the school’s kinetic entry hall on a recent Friday morning and placed our shoes amidst a beehive of cardboard storage tubes lining the walls. “Our goal was to inspire creativity in our audiences and ourselves. We wanted to speak ‘up’ to the intelligence of our audience members while reaching ‘in’ to their childlike innocence. We wanted to create a place where people continually learn and grow and treat each other with just a little more consideration than we typically find in the ‘real world.’ And we wanted to have fun doing it.”

By the mid-2000s, their oddball idea now a full-fledged, flowering franchise, Matt, fellow founding Blue Men Phil Stanton and Chris Wink, and their wives formed a parent-run playgroup. Soon thereafter, they realized the same principles that formed the foundation for a successful theatrical performance could also be at the center of a successful school. “Better still,” Renee added, “those principles might even help spur a re-imagining of education for a new era, and a restoration of some of what this recent era of test-driven accountability has cast aside.”

The school’s mission statement spells out the core ingredients such a re-imagining will require: “cultivating creative, joyful and compassionate inquirers who use courageous and innovative thinking to build a harmonious and sustainable world.” And all of these characteristics are visibly on display for anyone who visits the school’s building on Water Street, formerly the Seamen’s Church Institute, near the southern tip of Manhattan. Student artwork is ubiquitous, from paintings to sculptures to support beams that have been turned into trees. Every floor has a common space that the children are responsible for decorating. A construction lab features a treasure chest of wooden blocks of all sizes, and everyone likes to spend time in the “wonder room” – a black-lighted, fully padded playspace with a disco floor – yes, a disco floor. Otherwise-drab hallways are brought to life with pastel colors, feathers, and fabric. And each classroom is anchored by adults who are deeply skilled in progressive teaching practices that date back more than one hundred years.

In that sense, aside from its distinctive decorative flourishes, much of what the Blue School does is not new, and does not claim to be. After all, John Dewey knew a thing or two about how people learn, and as Renee pointed out, “Dewey’s Lab School was both a destination for learning and a base camp for cultivating culture. That’s what we want here as well.”

However, two components of the Blue School’s program are new – groundbreaking, even – and the rest of us would be wise to take notice.

The first is the school’s educational framework, which takes its organizing principles directly from the personality profile of the Blue Man himself. “When we were designing the show,” Matt explained, “we imagined the characters seeing and interacting with the world like children do. The Blue Man continually explores and researches the world around him. So we imagined him doing so via six different lenses:

1. The Group Member – the lens of collaboration, connection, and global citizenship
2. The Scientist – the lens of curiosity, critical thinking, experimentation and analysis
3. The Hero – the lens of perseverance, commitment and leadership
4. The Trickster – the lens of provocation, innovation, and play
5. The Artist – the lens of imagination, instinct and creative expression
6. The Innocent – the lens of emotional awareness and mindfulness

“These six lenses are mindsets or approaches children, teachers, and others in our community can assume to explore work, academic areas, an environment, and materials,” Matt shared while we watched a cluster of four-year-olds make mud in their airy, light-filled classroom. “We want to teach our kids how to surf in all of those different energies. And we want to help them develop critical life skills and practices along the way.”

An educational framework organized around archetypal personalities, each of which is mapped to different core attributes that combine to make up a creative, joyful and compassionate person? I have never seen another school organized in such a way, and the elegance of the design extends to which lenses are likely to be most compatible with which components of the curriculum (which, befitting a progressive school, is negotiated between children and adults, and which therefore largely unfolds in real time based on expressed student interests). This is what makes Renee proudest. “We’re still learning, but so far we’ve been able to create a healthy, warm, safe, nurturing environment where community is paramount and where children’s interactions between classes are just as important as what happens during classes. It’s the kind of educational program I wish I’d had for myself and which we all dreamed we’d have for our children – a place where people feel like there is genuinely no better place to learn and to grow.”

What makes the Blue School’s framework even more exciting is its commitment to explicitly link everything it does to the latest research about how the brain works, and about how people learn. As Renee explained, “we know there is a broad range of expectations within each age group and that the rate of development varies greatly between children. This is why we believe age doesn’t matter nearly as much as sequence. There are clear developmental progressions that children experience – physically, cognitively, emotionally, and linguistically – and no one experiences any of them at quite the same pace. Why, then, do we continue to educate children in a linear, grade-by-grade process, when the research clearly tells us that this is not how people learn?”

Lindsey Russo, the school’s director of curriculum documentation and research, agrees. “Schools were not applying this new neurological science out there to how we teach children,” she said in a recent article profiling the school in the New York Times. “Our aim is to take those research tools and adapt them to what we do in the school.”

Consequently, children at the Blue School learn directly about the different regions of their brains, and what thoughts and behaviors they control. Adults speak daily about the importance of meta-cognition and helping children develop “supported autonomy.” And school leaders seek advice and feedback from leading scholars like UCLA neuro-psychiatrist Dan Siegel and NeuroLeadership Institute co-founder David Rock.

“Teaching and learning are reciprocal processes that depend upon and affect one another,” Renee said, smiling, as a phalanx of strollers and parents surrounded her. “We just hope our school can be one of the places to help us understand, as a country, how to support those processes in ways that help as many people as possible unleash their wildest, most beautiful selves on the world we all share.”

As I watched him stare blankly back at me, struggling to find an answer, I found myself wishing I could have a parental do-over. Why do we ask children this question so often? Would it make a difference if we asked it a different way?

Anyone who’s a parent knows what I’m talking about: we’re always asking kids to tell us their favorite color, pick their favorite TV show, or select their favorite relative. And our intentions are in the right place; after all, we’re trying to learn about how they see themselves and others, and to give them a chance to reflect on what feels good and pleasing.

But here’s the problem: children don’t see the world as a set of isolatable favorites; we make them see it this way.  Watching Leo’s face, I realized that for him, there was no single favorite memory – just a pastiche of happy experiences that blended together to make up a general feeling I’ll call “Weekend with Nana.” It wasn’t until I asked the “favorite” question that it even occurred to him he should decide which of his experiences with her was the best of all.

This distinction is not exclusive to Leo. All of us benefit greatly when we develop metacognition – or the skill to reflect on our own thoughts and feelings, see ourselves interacting with the environment and people around us, and become familiar with our own preferences and the preferences of others. Recent research even suggests this may be the most important skill of all when it comes to learning how to learn, both in school and in life. Yet the reality is that asking kids to pick favorites isn’t an optimal path toward helping them become more holistically self-aware; it’s an emotional short cut that teaches them to artificially divide their memories into preferred parts.

How might Leo have responded differently if I had asked this question instead: “What made you feel happy this weekend?”

The difference between the two questions is subtle but significant. With one, we’re asking children to rank the world. With the other, we’re inviting them to reflect on it.

Only one of those questions will actually help build the muscle memory of metacognition, and allow for a fuller understanding of the multiplicity of experiences that shape how we think and feel. And that’s not playing favorites.

Moments later, we learn of Tyler’s painful path in the adolescent years that followed – years that were marked by relentless bullying and abuse at school, and years that culminated with his decision to hang himself, in a closet in his family’s home, at the age of 17.

Bully is a must-see film because it makes visible one of the most painful, universally kept secrets of our society and our schools: Every one of us has been bullied, and every one of us has bullied someone else.

Continue reading . . .

Let’s merge the Departments of Education, State and Defense.

Georgetown professor of foreign policy Charles Kupchan indirectly argued for such blasphemy when he noted the ways in which the landscape of modern diplomacy is shifting uneasily beneath our once-sturdy Western feet. Pointing to the nascent revolutions in the Middle East, the success of state capitalism in China and Russia, and the growth of left-wing populism in India and Brazil, Kupchan illustrates the ways in which “rising nations are fashioning their own versions of modernity and pushing back against the West’s ideological ambitions. As this century unfolds,” he argues, “multiple power centers, and the competing models they represent, will vie on a more level playing field. Effective global governance will require forging common ground amid an equalizing distribution of power and rising ideological diversity.”

In foreign policy circles, Kupchan’s observation is not a new one. Just a year ago, two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff anonymously released a Pentagon report (published under the nom de plume of “Mr. Y.”) in which they questioned America’s ongoing willingness to overvalue its military might, and undervalue its young people.  “By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans,” they argued, “we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future.” In a subsequent article for Foreign Policy, Center for American Progress scholar John Norris sang a similar tune: “The key to sustaining our competitive edge, at home or on the world stage,” he wrote, “is credibility – and credibility . . . requires engagement, strength, and reliability – imaginatively applied through the national tools of development, diplomacy, and defense.

Meanwhile, in the same section of the paper, journalist Amy Harmon reported that one in 88 American children are now diagnosed with some form of autism. While not everyone agrees about the root cause for the spike in numbers, Thomas Frazier, director of research at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Autism, thinks it’s an accurate reflection of modern society. “Our world is such a social world,” he said. “I don’t care if you have a 150 I.Q., if you have a social problem, that’s a real problem. You’re going to have problems getting along with your boss, with your spouse, with friends.”

Drawing a link between these two articles may feel like a stretch until you consider that the central problem in both stems from the same troubling source: our systemic inability to make deep and lasting sense of the perspective of others. In fact, there’s a growing theory in the scientific community that autism is the result of an early developmental failure of mirror neurons – the cells in the brain most responsible for allowing us to imagine (and empathize with) the thoughts and feelings of others. This theory may help explain why the greater the impairment in an individual on the autism spectrum, the greater the likelihood that individual will fixate on objects, not people. And it may help explain why some of the most promising new treatments involve little more than non-autistic adults imitating the behavior of autistic children. As UCLA neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni explains, “When the therapist imitates his patients, he may activate their mirror neurons, which in turn may help the patients to see their therapist, literally.”

What both articles underscore is how badly we need to invest in our collective capacity to see the world, and each other, more clearly. Kupchan’s characterizations about the changing landscape of geopolitics echo Dwight Eisenhower’s warning of more than 50 years ago, in his final formal act as commander-in-chief, when the five-star general suggested that the most promising path to peace rests in “learn[ing] how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.” And Harmon’s report on the rise of autism speaks to a larger deficit in our society – a deficit we have partly fueled by putting the knowledge cart before the emotional horse for so long. Indeed, whereas the 20^th century cast the quest for global harmony as a black and white battle between neatly categorized competitors, the 21^st century playing field is shrouded in overlapping shades of gray. To negotiate such a surface effectively, we need citizens endowed with a different set of habits and skills – ones more aligned with what Tom Friedman famously called the end of the “command and control” system of organization, and the beginning of the “connect and collaborate” approach.

For these reasons, the future fates of these three departments – Defense, Education and State – are more inextricably linked than ever before. America’s approach to foreign and domestic policy cannot be separated any longer. “Smart power” abroad will never be wielded without “smart growth” at home. And when it comes to contemporary notions of diplomacy and national defense, there is no American institution more essential to the unique modern cause than our public schools, and no skill-set more valuable than the ability to see – and be seen – without firing a single bullet.

Two unrelated articles in yesterday’s New York Times – one about the ostensible decline of influence in American geopolitics, and the other about the ostensible rise of autism in American schoolchildren – have led me to consider a radical proposal:

Let’s merge the Departments of Education, State and Defense.
Georgetown professor of foreign policy Charles Kupchan indirectly argued for such blasphemy when he noted the ways in which the landscape of modern diplomacy is shifting uneasily beneath our once-sturdy Western feet. Pointing to the nascent revolutions in the Middle East, the success of state capitalism in China and Russia, and the growth of left-wing populism in India and Brazil, Kupchan illustrates the ways in which “rising nations are fashioning their own versions of modernity and pushing back against the West’s ideological ambitions. As this century unfolds,” he argues, “multiple power centers, and the competing models they represent, will vie on a more level playing field. Effective global governance will require forging common ground amid an equalizing distribution of power and rising ideological diversity.”

In foreign policy circles, Kupchan’s observation is not a new one. Just a year ago, two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff anonymously released a Pentagon report (published under the nom de plume of “Mr. Y.”) in which they questioned America’s ongoing willingness to overvalue its military might, and undervalue its young people.  “By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans,” they argued, “we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future.” In a subsequent article for Foreign Policy, Center for American Progress scholar John Norris sang a similar tune: “The key to sustaining our competitive edge, at home or on the world stage,” he wrote, “is credibility – and credibility . . . requires engagement, strength, and reliability – imaginatively applied through the national tools of development, diplomacy, and defense.

Meanwhile, in the same section of the paper, journalist Amy Harmon reported that one in 88 American children are now diagnosed with some form of autism. While not everyone agrees about the root cause for the spike in numbers, Thomas Frazier, director of research at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Autism, thinks it’s an accurate reflection of modern society. “Our world is such a social world,” he said. “I don’t care if you have a 150 I.Q., if you have a social problem, that’s a real problem. You’re going to have problems getting along with your boss, with your spouse, with friends.”

Drawing a link between these two articles may feel like a stretch until you consider that the central problem in both stems from the same troubling source: our systemic inability to make deep and lasting sense of the perspective of others. In fact, there’s a growing theory in the scientific community that autism is the result of an early developmental failure of mirror neurons – the cells in the brain most responsible for allowing us to imagine (and empathize with) the thoughts and feelings of others. This theory may help explain why the greater the impairment in an individual on the autism spectrum, the greater the likelihood that individual will fixate on objects, not people. And it may help explain why some of the most promising new treatments involve little more than non-autistic adults imitating the behavior of autistic children. As UCLA neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni explains, “When the therapist imitates his patients, he may activate their mirror neurons, which in turn may help the patients to see their therapist, literally.”

What both articles underscore is how badly we need to invest in our collective capacity to see the world, and each other, more clearly. Kupchan’s characterizations about the changing landscape of geopolitics echo Dwight Eisenhower’s warning of more than 50 years ago, in his final formal act as commander-in-chief, when the five-star general suggested that the most promising path to peace rests in “learn[ing] how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.” And Harmon’s report on the rise of autism speaks to a larger deficit in our society – a deficit we have partly fueled by putting the knowledge cart before the emotional horse for so long. Indeed, whereas the 20^th century cast the quest for global harmony as a black and white battle between neatly categorized competitors, the 21^st century playing field is shrouded in overlapping shades of gray. To negotiate such a surface effectively, we need citizens endowed with a different set of habits and skills – ones more aligned with what Tom Friedman famously called the end of the “command and control” system of organization, and the beginning of the “connect and collaborate” approach.

For these reasons, the future fates of these three departments – Defense, Education and State – are more inextricably linked than ever before. America’s approach to foreign and domestic policy cannot be separated any longer. “Smart power” abroad will never be wielded without “smart growth” at home. And when it comes to contemporary notions of diplomacy and national defense, there is no American institution more essential to the unique modern cause than our public schools, and no skill-set more valuable than the ability to see – and be seen – without firing a single bullet.

Depressing, right? But it’s true. To prove it, watch this short video — just 100 seconds long:

You just watched a film about bullying. The larger triangle was harassing the smaller triangle, until the two smaller shapes banded together and outwitted their aggressor. Right?

Except that’s not really what happened; all you saw were shapes and lines moving around on a piece of paper. And although it’s true the subject is in the air thanks to this month’s release of the new feature film Bully, I can assure you that what you saw had nothing to do with the zeitgeist. In fact, people have been seeing that same story in that video now for more than 60 years.

Why?

According to Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner and the author of the current bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow, we all see the same story because our brains seek instant explanations, and the quickest way to do that is by linking what we see to our available cache of memories and emotions. We see the world, in other words, through stories of cause and effect that we instantly (and unconsciously) create, and the stories we create are informed by our constant search for emotional coherence.

As Kahneman and others have shown, our minds are effectively run by two different systems — the “fast” system, which operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and with no conscious sense of control; and the “slow” system, which gets activated for more complex forms of thinking, and which gives us the conscious impression of choice, agency, and concentration.

These insights into how the mind operates are essential for anyone who cares about teaching and learning, because they make us more aware of the mental filters through which we see the world. And when it comes to education reform, we’ve fallen in love with the wrong central character. As Kahneman explains:

When we think of ourselves, we identify with [the slow system], the conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do. Although this system believes itself to be where the action is, the [fast system] is the hero of the book  . . . by effortlessly originating impressions and feelings that are the main sources of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of [the slow system].

We elevate the wrong hero in school reform every day when we overvalue the importance of academic learning and assume that merely focusing on better curricula and clearer standards will carry the day. Yet the research suggests otherwise, affirming what sociologist Pedro Noguera and others have said repeatedly: “unmet social needs become unmet academic needs.”

If this is true — and the evidence from a range of fields overwhelmingly suggests that it is — then what we are doing is the strategic equivalent of putting the knowledge cart before the emotional horse. That doesn’t mean efforts to improve content or clarify standards are useless; merely that they are necessary and insufficient if they are not considered in direct concert with a greater attention to the mind and how our emotions and memories shape — directly, powerfully, and immediately — the way we see the world, and each other, and whatever it is we are trying to learn about.

What if we gathered a different set of data for our decision-making? And what if this data could actually zero in on the part of the brain that is most responsible for ensuring our emotional growth?

As it turns out, we can do this because we now know which neurons in the brain are most responsible for this sort of development in people. They’re called mirror neurons, and they’re what help us interpret, understand, and empathize with the thoughts and feelings of other people. As Dr. Marco Iacoboni explains in the book Mirroring People, “Mirror neurons undoubtedly provide, for the first time in history, a plausible neurophysiological explanation for complex forms of social cognition and interaction. By helping us recognize the actions of other people, mirror neurons also help us to recognize and understand the deepest motives behind those actions, the intentions of other individuals.”

With this knowledge at the forefront, we could spark a national effort to help schools do a better job of cultivating the capacity of young people to become more empathetic — not as a replacement for academic learning, but as a fully integrated companion to the daily learning process. In fact, there’s already a great tool available for assessing the empathy of young people. It’s called the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and it’s been used by scientists for years.

I think I just found a great new use for the Gates Foundation’s money.

(This article also appeared in the Huffington Post.)

It’s an enticing, polarizing proposal – the so-called “parent trigger.” It’s also now a law in four states, and the subject of debate in scores of others. But is it a good idea? In the end, will parent-trigger laws help parents more effectively ensure a high-quality public education for their children, or will they result in a reckless short-circuiting of the democratic process itself?

The answer, of course, is “it depends,” and what it depends on is the way parents and communities go about evaluating the quality of their neighborhood schools – and, when necessary, deciding on the most constructive path forward.

Continue reading . . .

That show aired today. If you’re interested, you can listen here to my observations about the process as well as many other DC parents and representatives from DCPS.

In November 2010, I wrote a piece in response to a Brooks column in which he wrote passionately about our “emotional education” – the elusive, nonlinear and transformative nature of what all learning should look like (knowing that some days we will succeed, and some days we will not). Yet in the same space he wrote uncritically about a “normal schoolroom” in which it is taken as a given that scholastic learning must always be direct, described, and discrete.

This is an important disconnect, and in a column this morning, he makes a similar mistake — this time while describing a remarkable elementary school in Brooklyn that is, as he describes it, “less like a factory for learning and more like a postindustrial workshop, or even an extended family compound.”

The problem arises in Brooks’ fascination with the way the school is able to create such an environment. “The students are controlled less by uniform rules than by the constant informal nudges from the teachers all around,” he writes, adding later that a key part of the school’s growth came when it “learned to get better control over students.”

This is a subtle but significant misunderstanding of what great schools do; they don’t control their students — they provide an orderly environment in which all people can thrive. If you think that’s a trivial point, look up the definitions of each word. One is about power; the other is about harmony.

These subtle disconnects wouldn’t bother me as much if Brooks weren’t so close to really capturing what a transformational learning environment looks like and requires. “Since people learn from people they love,” he writes in the same column, “education is fundamentally about the relationship between a teacher and student. By insisting on constant informal contact and by preserving that contact year after year, The New American Academy has the potential to create richer, mentorlike or even familylike relationships for students who are not rich in those things.”

Amen, Mr. Brooks. I hope the next time you write about public education, you can shake off the stubborn remaining mental frames of the factory model, and see the unifying picture you keep coming so tantalizingly close to amplifying for the rest of us to see.