As an early childhood educator in an independent school setting, I have been thinking a lot about current attitudes towards the concept of play within my small classroom, school community and American culture at large. While Pink seems to focus on the attitudes of lightheartedness, joy and the act of physically playing games, I am finding it helpful to explore play (and the resulting creation of flow) as defined by Edward Hallowell in The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness. He uses the word play to describe activities that provide room for spontaneous invention and/or change. In his mind the opposite of play is not work, it is being told what to do. Providing time, space and materials for young children to explore their own interests and support those interests as they lead from one thing to another is a more improvisatory style of teaching which requires a basic trust that you and your students can handle what may transpire. You do a lot of thinking ahead of time, a lot of observing and listening during your time with students, make a record of what is happening, and then you reflect afterwards. I often feel like a musician getting ready for a jam session. We bring our instruments, decide on a beginning style and key for the piece, then take a deep breath and we’re off!

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My read of Flow and my life experience related to it suggest that kids get it into the state of flow, mostly, while at "play": literally on the athletic fields, and in free play, and on the stage. It seems rare to me at the school level to see kids "in the flow" im am academic context, meaning at the peak of one's game, lost in time and space, like "Cortez (sic)...silent upon a peak in Darien" over a microscope or in an academic Q&A.

Now, on the other hand, great teachers are "in the flow" frequently, riding the wave of a discussion or explanation, engaged and engaging, so obviously feeding on the intellectual juices.

So, for me at least, the trick is to demonstrate, not so much teach that. The level of professional "flow" comes from a lifetime of study and practice, not to mention some God-given talent. You want kids to see it, and want that for themselves, and know they have to work for it.

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Will raises a great point. If flow is so important to learning, and I believe it is, then why is it so difficult for teachers to adjust. There are many hypotheses that likely miss the mark. It is not because teachers are inflexible, insecure, uncreative, or slow to catch on. Certainly what we are used to drives much of our behavior, but we generally change our ways when we recognize a technique or an approach that improves teaching and learning.

I think Pink's right brain focus is far more than a realization regarding underutilization of our mental faculties. The advent of robust networks and internet services has changed the shape of traditional knowledge (as described by David Weinberger). Perhaps what Pink is suggesting is that left brain functions, while still important to our future, are currently challenged by the increased need for right-brain functions. If the left brain is no longer critical for one of its functions, to memorize and catalog millions of facts because we can locate them in a fraction of a second, then we need the right brain to answer the questions: "What does it mean and how will I apply this knowledge?"

For those who teach, this is an epistemological shift of the most profound degree. Some teachers, in their busy roles as triple threats, will not recognize the change. Some will recognize the change and reject it for the moment, and some will begin to change their approach to take advantage of a flat world of knowledge and increased emphasis on the right brain. There are hundreds of baby steps that can be taken. Big steps require school faculties to rethink pedagogy on a grand scale.

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I like this phrase from the last paragraph of the book. I think we experience the "customer" aspects of our relationship with parents as having a "rigid" feel, certainly not a mutual exploration of goals and values, certainly not a confab of expert and novice, a chance for discovery, or anything like. And the teacher who catches someone Googling Sir Thomas More had best not be "rigid of mind" in the Conceptual Age. Maybe Susan is close to the heart of the matter when she wonders just how much "flow" we can take in schools.

Is the problem that schools are just plain "flow intolerant" much of the time?

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Some of Pink's work references Csikszentmihalyi's idea of flow. Most students don't achieve that in school. For the most part, they have been passive learners as Pat says. But with teaching for the 21st Century, we can allow students to become partners in their learning. Of course, this is more easily accomplished with a one-to-one laptop program. Synthesis-taking the parts and making sense of the big picture. Meaning-doing one's own research, collaborating with others across the globe. We can give them the opportunity to "be in the flow" as they learn. And, yes, the teacher's role changes.
Story! The other day, a student told me he was not trying to be disrespectful in an English class when he Googled Sir Thomas More. It was just that when the teacher mentioned the name, he wanted to know more. At that moment. So, while they were discussing in class, he simply opened another window and Googled. Our classrooms will need to change, and this will create some discomfort for all of us. But think of the possibilities!

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In a sense, great teaching for the 21st. C. is all about knowledge gaps. The great revolution comes in demonstrating both what the teacher knows and beleives is useful for his or her wards to learn and know vs. what is up for grabs. Of course the Socratic method is based on the latter--the notion that once you have enough knowledge to sit at the feet of Socrates, you have the responsibility to use your own mind to solve problems. The teachers role becomes more Socratic, finally and once again, as we enter the Conceptual Age.

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In thinking about fostering the right brain’s strengths of grasping the whole picture and creativity, I was reminded of a point made in the book, Made to Stick by Dan Heath and Chip Heath, which we discussed here online a few weeks ago. According to the Heaths, in 1994, George Loewenstein authored the “gap theory” of curiosity. He proposes that it is the gap in knowledge that causes curiosity and that one is compelled to fill that gap provided it isn’t overwhelming large.

So what if we just tweak some lesson plans a little (a little so we don’t scare anybody off) as to create some gaps in the whole? Do a little backward engineering with students. Start with the big picture and find all kinds of ways to break it apart and put it back together. Every new piece of the puzzle that the left brain finds analytically would cause a new picture in the right brain’s “eye”. How about purposefully creating knowledge gaps that will get our students’ two brains working together?

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I couldn't resist when I saw this sign near my work:

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Regarding this point: "I am troubled by the assertion that right-brain thinking, and by extension, future success, are part of an economic elite produced primarily by Independent Schools. The notion of a select group of young people possessing the unique talents to move this global society forward does not sit well with me; it creates still another meritocracy."

I personally see the value independent schools can add to the larger society as less to do with training an economic or social elite and more to do with modeling the best there can be for teaching and learning. With our resources and environments, if we can't get it right, no one will. So in a sense we should be the laboratory for experimentation. I wouldn't get too hung up on class issues and customer/client distinctions: after all, "the hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world." There will always be obtuse parents, but kids know, remember, adn value the teachers in their lives who took an interest in them, inspired them, helped them find who they are. So, back to Pink, in that role, we have much to do in manifesting in our teaching the right-brained, empathetic side to kids. So long as we don't neglect the left-brain in the process, own parents will get it and appreciate it.

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I agree with Kevin. Independent Schools do a better job of developing the six right-brain skills Pink describes in his book. Still, I am troubled by the assertion that right-brain thinking, and by extension, future success, are part of an economic elite produced primarily by Independent Schools. The notion of a select group of young people possessing the unique talents to move this global society forward does not sit well with me; it creates still another meritocracy.

And while we at Independent Schools can congratulate ourselves for fostering school cultures of connectedness where right-brain thinking can thrive (more on this when we discuss Ned Hallowell’s book), our hands are not clean either. We have made the families we serve customers instead of clients, and as a result, we are compromising our right-brain principles to meet the needs of those paying customers. Describe to me how symphony, empathy, and play, in particular, fit into a world of racing for better credentials, better schools, more activities and degrees, and finally, wealth and success as a measure of happiness. In our independent schools, we could support Pink by taking advice from Hallowell. If we want to preserve right-brain thinking, we must “lay claim to our role as experts.” Parents don’t always realize it, but they really need our expert advice. That makes parents our clients, not our customers, says Hallowell. So when parents argue that they can make better decisions about their children's learning because they are paying large sums of money to send those children to our schools, our response should be, according to Hallowell, “for the money you’re paying us, we owe you the truth.”

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