Peter Gray | Rethinking Education: The Power of Play and Self-Directed Learning - Self Directed

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jesper Conrad (00:00):
So today we have the big pleasure of being
together with Peter Gray.
First of all, welcome.

Peter Gray, Ph.D. (00:05):
Thank you.
Thank you for the invitation.
Very happy to be here.

For the people out there.
The last time we were togetherwith you was two years ago,
where we had the pleasure ofrecording our first episode with
you, and now we are almost 100episodes down the line.
So we have learned a lot, a lotof inspiration and a lot of
questions.
So are you ready?

I guess I am.

Cecilie Conrad (00:34):
Where do you want to start?

Oh, there's so much things we can go into depth
with, and on our podcast, whichis called Self-Directed, we are
talking about self-directededucations, but one of the
questions that could be fun togo into is talking about what is
education.

Yeah, I was reading your article about the
future of education and I justthought, yeah, but really, what
do we mean?
What is it?
What's?

the goal mean .

What is it?

What's the goal?
Yeah, you know.
I mean in our culture today wetend to equate education with
schooling.
So if you ask somebody you knowhow much education have you had
?
They'll tell you how many yearsof school they've had or what
degrees or diploma they had.
That's a pretty shallowdefinition of education.
I think we all know people whohave had a lot of schooling and

(01:25):
we wouldn't particularly saythey're well-educated, and we
probably also know people whohaven't had a lot of schooling
and we would say, on the basisof who they are, what they seem
to know, what they seem to do,this pretty well-educated person
.
So I define education.
I actually have two differentdefinitions which I use

(01:50):
depending on the audience.
Usually, when I'm talking toparents and teachers and the
like, I define education in away that I think is meaningful
on a day-to-day basis in ourpersonal lives.
That education is everythingthat a person learns or knows

(02:15):
that helps them in their life,everything that is useful.
We learn a lot of stuff thatisn't useful.
We learn trivia, we learnthings that are wrong, we learn
bad habits.
I don't count that in thecategory of education, but
everything that we learn thatmakes our life better in some

(02:36):
ways or allows us to contributeto the world in a better way
that I count as education, nomatter how you learn it the
world in a better way that Icount as education, no matter
how you learn it.
So if you think of education inthose terms, I think most

(02:57):
people, if they reflect honestlyon their lives, would say that
most of their education has beenself-directed, no matter how
much school you've had.
I mean, I've been in school mywhole life and yet I would say
that most of my education is notthe things that I learned in
courses or from teachers, butrather the things that I got

(03:17):
interested in, the things that Idid.
Everything you do, you've gotto learn something in
relationship to what you'redoing.
That's what life is all about.
You're continuously learning asyou do new things, and even as
you do, you've got to learnsomething in relationship to
what you're doing.
That's what life is all about.
You're continuously learning asyou do new things, and even as
you do old things in new ways,you're always learning.
So that's my definition.

(03:38):
When I'm talking we don't wantto get too much on a tangent on
this, but when I'm talking togroups of anthropologists, much
on a tangent on this.
But when I'm talking to groupsof anthropologists, I define
education as culturaltransmission.
I point out that we, whichevery anthropologist knows that
we are the cultural animal.
We're the animal that survivesby making use of the ideas and

(04:02):
material things, the mores, thatwere developed by our ancestors
.
We don't create life anew.
We take what was previouslydeveloped, previously invented.
This is the uniquecharacteristic of we human
beings.

(04:22):
This is why we have language,so we can pass along.
It helps us pass along ideasand share what we human beings.
This is why we have language,so we can pass along.
It helps us pass along ideasand share what we're doing.
So I say, I argue that education, from an anthropological
perspective, is culturaltransmission.
It's the whole set of processesby which each new generation of

(04:45):
human beings acquires at leastsome of the skills, the
knowledge, the beliefs, themores of the previous generation
.
And then I point out that thishas always occurred.

(05:05):
As long as we've been humanbeings, each generation has
educated itself.
We've only had schools in amass kind of way for at most 200
years, but we have been humanbeings, depending on how you
count, for at least 50,000 years, some would say a million years

(05:27):
, and we've been passing alongand each generation has been
building on the previousgeneration, and that's one way
to think about education.

When you say education, it's hard not to
think parents and children.
And then I start just spinninga little bit on the idea that
with the school system, we'retrying to make this transition
happen.
Not in that relation.
We're taking the children awayfrom the parents and giving them

(06:07):
up for strangers to educatethem, and that responsibility is
no longer the parent'sresponsibility.
Do you think there is?

Well, I would say there's some truth to that,
but I don't think thateducation is primarily parents'
responsibility.
Education is the child'sresponsibility.
Children are born knowing thattheir job is to educate
themselves.
They come into the world withburning curiosity, all kinds of

(06:42):
questions.
They come into the worlddesigned to play and explore in
ways that result in theireducation.
Now, throughout most of humanhistory, when we were all hunter
gatherers, parents were not theprimary educators.
Parents were not the primarypeople that kids interacted with
.
Kids interacted with everybodyin the band.

(07:04):
Everybody was involved and theyinteracted with one another and
they explored and they engagedin activities.
Kids throughout.
You know, anthropologists whostudied children in indigenous
cultures and even in othernon-Western cultures say that

(07:24):
children educate themselves muchmore through their interactions
with other children than withadults.
They play in age-mixed groups.
They acquire higher ideas.
They engage in moresophisticated activities by
playing with children who are alittle older than themselves as
well as children who are youngerthan themselves.

(07:45):
This is the normal childenvironment throughout most of
human history.
Now that environment gotdisrupted as we went into
agricultural times and we hadmore isolated families and
children weren't so connected toother children, and so we

(08:08):
developed an idea that parentsyou know the role of parents
took on.
Parenting took on a bigger roletwo or three years ago in my

(08:32):
Psychology Today blog aboutstudies of certain indigenous
groups where they would ask themother sort of what is your
responsibility for your child?
And the mother would say,basically my responsibility is
when the child is four.
You know I have to that littlechild.
That little child really needsme.
But by the time the child isfour I'm free from that child.
That doesn't mean I don't lovethe child I'm putting words into

(08:55):
this woman's mouth here butthat doesn't mean I don't love
the child.
Care about the child, but thatis not my child anymore.
That child belongs to theuniverse.
That child belongs to the wholeculture.
That child is learning fromeverybody, not just from me.

But when I look at where we are today with the
nuclear families, then I'mquestioning how the culture
supports that learning you'reexplaining.

Yes, so I'm old enough that I was a child in
the 1950s.
In the 1950s, children werespending more time outdoors
during the daytime than indoors.
They were away from parentsmore than they were with parents

(09:47):
.
That wasn't true just for me.
That was true for many kids, ifnot most kids.
Your group, you were outplaying in the neighborhood.
You were out from age four orfive on you were.
When school wasn't in session,you were out doing things with
other people.
So I, for example, you know Iwas into fishing, among other

(10:11):
things.
I spent huge amounts of timefishing.
A huge part of my educationcame from fishing.
Who was I fishing with?
Not adults.
There were no adults involvedwith us fishing.
It was kids, some of whom hadbeen fishing much longer than I
was, and I learned a heck of alot from them about not just
about fishing, but whatever youget into deeply sort of expands

(10:34):
on to all sorts of other aspectsof life.
So I think in our culture, inour culture, we put too much
onus on parents and we havetaken away the opportunity for

(10:55):
children to be learning frompeople other than parents or
other than the school, becausewe don't allow them the freedom
to play and explore outside ofthe home with other kids.
We pretty much isolate kidsfrom other kids.
Almost the only way they can doit these days is online,
through computer play or throughsocial media through sharing

(11:21):
videos, and they do that andthey learn a lot from that.
But it would be a lot nicer ifthey could also do that in the
real physical world, and that'swhat we've deprived kids of.

So we are from Scandinavia and a difference
I've noticed between our cultureand the American culture is
that our children and teenagersare way more independent and way
more free.
We had a lovely American familyliving with us in Denmark last

(11:55):
summer, and so that was a veryeasy way to see the contrast, as
I could talk with the other momabout what she saw.
And you have here children downto the age of seven taking the
train for several hours to theother end of the country all by
themselves.
They have the payment card intheir back pocket and the phone

(12:16):
and they know what to do if theyget lost and they just take
their little backpack and go tosee granny or a friend or they
walk the streets, they, they dotheir after-school activities or
just go to a museum or libraryby themselves and they are
self-organized, that they makethe plan, um, and they are

(12:39):
allowed, uh, of course they.
They make an agreement with theresponsible adults around them,
but, but they do these things,and for the American friend that
I had here, that was deeplyshocking that you could have
such young children on their ownunderstanding too, and I've

(13:06):
written about both Finland andDenmark as places where children
are pretty close to as free asI was in the 1950s in the United
States.

We could do all those things then, but
beginning around sort of themid-1970s, and certainly by the
80s, those opportunities beganto be taken away from children
in this country.
And that's also around thebeginning of the mid-1970s to
early 1980s is also when webegan to see a steep rise in

(13:37):
anxiety, depression, suicideamong school-aged children.
And I've written an articlepublished about a year ago in
the Journal of Pediatricsarguing that this restriction on
children's freedom, wherethey're not allowed to do the
things that naturally bringchildren pleasure, the sense of

(13:59):
independence, independent play,and where they're not developing
the kinds of skills and thekinds of mental attitudes and
characteristics that make youresilient, you learn that I can
get into trouble and find my wayout of trouble.

(14:20):
I can get lost and find my wayhome.
Of course today with the cellphone it's impossible to get
lost, but it used to be fun toget lost when it was possible.

One of ours actually got lost last year in
Barcelona because the cell phoneran out of battery.

So that's great and it was raining she was
pretty lost.
For real, that was aneducational experience.

Yes.

That's great.
So I hope that you hold on tothis and you don't follow the
path that so many othercountries and the UK is every
bit as bad as the United Statesand some of the other European
countries are moving in thatdirection also.

Oh I think it is starting.

The Scandinavian countries.
It's going downhill.
It's going downhill, it's not.
I mean, I hope that we can.
We're having this discussionright now about children's
freedom and maybe, hopefully,someone's listening and maybe
hopefully, someone's listening.
It is harder.
When I was a child in the 80s,we would also have the you come

(15:34):
home from school and you go outand play kind of situation,
Whereas you know, the streetswould be full of children, the
parks would be full of children,we would play with balls and
play hide and seek in thegardens and there would be this.
And I don't see that any longer.
I see a lot of after schoolbeing organized by adults and

(15:59):
being these organized activitiesthat replicate school.
You have a goal and you have ateacher and you have a timeframe
and a little bell, and I thinkwe all and I would be interested
to hear what you have to sayabout how do we fight against it
?

I mean, I don't know exactly how you do it
, but what I keep trying to dois to get people to understand
the value of truly free play andindependent activities.
This is how children grow up.
This is how they're designed togrow up.
This is how, when children areplaying, they are practicing

(16:41):
being adults.
When children are playing awayfrom adults, they have to be the
adults.
They have to be the ones whodecide on the rules.
They have to be the ones whodecide if something is safe or
not.
They have to be the ones tonegotiate with their playmates
about how they're going to playtogether.
They have to figure out how todeal with bullies.

(17:01):
This is all part of growing up.
When we quote, protect them fromall of that by doing it for
them, we're not allowing them togrow up.
We're not allowing them, as Iwould say, to educate themselves
.
We are putting up and we arealso and this is so obvious in
this country and we are also andthis is so obvious in this

(17:23):
country we are also in somesense teaching them that they're
incompetent.
We're teaching them you knowyou can't do these things
yourself.
I need to do them for you.
You are unsafe, you're nottrustworthy out there.
I need to be with you whenyou're out there.

(17:43):
That's the message that we'resending and it leads to a kind
of emotional fragility thatdoesn't go away.
Even young adults in thiscountry college students are
having mental breakdowns all thetime whenever something
stressful is happening, becausethey're not used to dealing with

(18:04):
stressful things.
Every life has some upsettingthings that happen in them.
But if you've always beenprotected from those upsetting
things as you're growing up,then you don't know how to deal
with them and you have abreakdown of depression or
anxiety, and it's interferingeven with higher education.

(18:26):
In this country this has beentrue for some years now.
You hear more and more that youknow professors feel they can't
give certain assignmentsbecause some of the kids will
have breakdowns, or they can'tgive a low grade because some
kid will fall apart if they geta low grade.
I've never gotten anything lessthan an A before.
I can't get anything less thanan A.

(18:46):
It's been years since I'vetaught and this was just
beginning at the end of myteaching career at university,
but now I hear that this is very, very common, these kinds of
things.
Students used to say I can't dothe test because you know my
mother died or because I've gotthis serious disease or

(19:10):
something.
Now they say I can't take thetest because I'm anxious.
You know that's so.
You have to give me a.
You have to wait until I'm notanxious.
These things are literallyhappening in the university
level because we haven't allowedkids to grow up and learn how
to deal with their anxiety, howto deal with stress, how to deal

(19:33):
to feel confident.
You know, I can face difficultsituations.
I've faced them before and Ican handle them and I can handle
them.
Among the most important kindsof play that we deprive children
of increasingly in this countryis risky play.
Kids everywhere like to play inrisky ways.

(19:55):
They climb trees higher thantheir parents would want them to
.
They dive off of cliffs intorivers, of cliffs into rivers.
They skateboard down banisters,depending upon the culture, and
they like to play with fire.
They like to play withdangerous tools.
This is universal with kids andthere's a good reason for it.

(20:17):
Other mammals also play indangerous ways when they're
young.
Why do they do it?

It's because that's how they develop courage.
That's how they learn.
I can feel a certain amount offear and I can handle it, and
also I can assess what isdangerous and what is so
dangerous I should maybe not doit.

That's exactly right.
And the other thing thatparents don't realize.
So Mother Nature, which is mypersonification of natural
selection, endowed children withthis desire to play in risky
ways, but she also endowedchildren with a pretty good

(21:01):
understanding of what theircapacities are.
Even little children, eventhree-year-olds two and
three-year-olds have a prettygood understanding of what their
capacities are.
Even little children, eventhree-year-olds two and
three-year-olds have a prettygood sense of how high they can
jump off of something and nothurt themselves.
And by the time they're five orsix, they have a pretty good
sense.
How high can I climb in thistree and still manage things?

(21:26):
They really have a good senseof that, and other animals do
too.
If they didn't have that sense,we would not have survived as a
species.
They all would have killedthemselves growing up.

I have all the tree climbing in my mind right
now.
The friend of our kids whowould always climb a tree with
his rubber boots on, which isthe worst tool for you to wear
while climbing trees and then hewould go higher and not be able
to come down, but knowing thathis oldest siblings and parents

(22:01):
were inside the house.
And I also remember our oldestdaughter climbing up.

And not being able to get down.

But he always came down.
Yeah, it's just, it's funny,it's one of these things they
climb high and they go fast, andI also think I've really seen
the more risky they play.
I mean, they have differenttemperament.
All the children that I'veknown in my life and some are

(22:34):
pretty risky and also like thephysical challenge of something
and they like that.
But if they do that, they alsohave more of that, what you said
exactly more of the okay, butwhere's the line?
How far can I take this?

Right, I think that's right.
And there's an occasional kidwho really does need to be sort
of controlled.
You know, I had a friend when Iwas probably 10 years old and
this kid would break some partof his body every single summer
and he eventually actually brokehis neck and survived it.

(23:11):
He lived for a couple of years.
He went for a couple of yearswith a big brace around his neck
.
I mean, that was a kid whodidn't seem to learn from
experience, but that's rare itis rare, that's rare and most
kids, you know they'll breaktheir arm and then next time
they'll be a little bit morecareful when they're doing
something that's dangerous.
I also think there aredifferences in temperament, and

(23:34):
while I say that risky play isvery important, I want to
quickly add that doesn't meanyou should push your child to do
risky things.
Mean you should push your childto do risky things.
That what it means is, to thedegree that your child wants to
do risky things and is ready todo risky things, let your child
do it.
It doesn't mean, oh, my childshould be diving off the high

(23:58):
board.
And so you put the child on thehigh board.
The child is standing there,shivering, frightened out of his
skin.
That terrifies the child.
That's not how the childdevelops courage, and
everybody's different.
To be honest, I was a kind of atimid kid.

(24:20):
I've always been very cautious,but I was lucky that I actually
described this story in my bookFree to Learn.
I had a friend, a girl acrossthe street who was just a little
older than me, smaller than mebut definitely braver than me,
and she would show me how toclimb the tree and encourage me
to climb the tree, and I wouldtry to emulate her and climb as

(24:42):
high as she did, or at leastalmost as high as she did.
But that would be verydifferent from if an adult, some
authority figure, would saywell, you really ought to be
able to climb the tree this high.
That would be shaming to me andit would not be a good growth
experience.
I think one of the worst thingsthat happens in physical

(25:05):
education classes in schools, atleast in this country, is when
they require you to climb therope to the top of the gymnasium
.
And of course there are somekids that can do it and they're
showing off and they feel greatabout doing it.
And then there's other kids whothis is the worst condition to
do it You're doing it in frontof other kids who might be,

(25:27):
whether they're making fun ofyou or not, you believe they are
.
You're feeling shamed by thegym instructor that you're not
able to do what he thinks you'resupposed to be doing right now.
These are not good learningexperiences.

It's when children take their own
initiative, and all childrentake their own initiative, I
believe, to varying degrees.
For some children this meansskiing down a steep mountain.
For other kids it means divingoff the low board in the pool.
Peter, how powerful it is forchildren to be able to explore
by playing and how controlledthey also seem to be by parents
who have fear, and by the schoolsystem and about the now it's
called extracurriculums, likewhatever they do in their free

(26:22):
time almost yeah, free time.
Almost yeah, free and free.
Then one of the big attractorsfor many children is the
computer, where there isn'toften the parental supervision
they are.
You can say, free to play onthe computer and as powerful as
that is, then sometimes I amquestioning the value of being

(26:49):
free to play on a computer whenthere is a monetary goal from
someone else that have createdthe play.
So maybe there's difference onthe games people can play, or
there can be difference on whatkind of game it is and how
strong the algorithms are to getpeople to do a specific thing.
But I'm super much as a parentin doubt about the whole

(27:12):
computer thing sometimes becausepart of me can see the
attraction of oh, here I havefreedom to play as I want to,
but then the game has beencreated by someone to earn money
, and that's why I'm like howmuch control is it?

yeah, that's a good question.
I think that to the degree thatthey're playing for money or
they're kind of beingcontinuously, you know, provided
with motivation to spend moneyto get to the next level or to
get something in the game, Iguess I as a parent would say

(27:51):
you know, I'm not giving you anymoney for that.
There's lots of ways to playcomputer games that don't
involve any money, and onceyou've got money involved it's
no longer so fully play, and youknow it becomes a little bit
more like gambling.
Or becomes a little bit moreyou know it's not so fully play
and you know it becomes a littlebit more like gambling.

(28:11):
Or it becomes a little bit more, you know it's not so fully
play.
Play is free, both in the senseof free activity and not
costing anything.
You know sometimes you paysomething for the opportunity to
play.
But I really think that thatdoes disrupt.
I think that I don't know whatthings are, how people feel in

(28:32):
Denmark.
In this country there has beenfor some years kind of a panic
about panic, moral panic, as Icall it about computer play, all
kinds of dangers people believeabout it which just the
research absolutely does notsupport.
I mean, this is real play.
The kids are getting out of it,everything they get out of play

(28:55):
except that they don't getfresh air and outdoor exercise
and physical strength from it.
But it certainly is much moreplayful than board games because
there's more creativity in it,there's more different things
you can do with it, there's moreof you being invested into it

(29:17):
and most of the games today thatreally attract kids are very
social.
They're playing online withother kids.
They're learning how tocooperate.
So you know, if you run throughwhat my defining
characteristics of play computerplay meets all of that.
But I agree with you.
I'm not an expert on this, butit certainly could be destroyed

(29:40):
by monetary incentives.
It's very similar in that sense.
In that sense, when I playedsports as a kid baseball or
touch football or anything elseit was just a bunch of kids
getting together and playing iton the vacant lot, no adults

(30:02):
involved, and it was for fun.
We didn't care that much whowon.
We might keep score, just forthe fun of keeping score, but by
the next day nobody rememberedthe score and the teams were
different every day.
So now at least in this country,kids are not doing that anymore
.
Instead they're playing sportsdirected by adults, where the

(30:23):
goal no matter what the adult,the adult coaches might say oh,
it doesn't matter whether youwin or lose, it's whether you
enjoy the game or not.
But they don't mean it and thekids know they don't mean it.
The kids know that they wantthem to win and the kids want
and the parents want the kids towin, and the parents are there
cheering them on.
That's no longer play.
That's now doing something foran external incentive, that's

(30:47):
doing something for a rewardoutside of itself, which is that
championship or thecongratulations you get from
your parents for doing so well.
And this is really replaced inthis country free play to a
large extent, and it's not forthe good of the kids.

I wanted to circle back to exactly that you
said truly free play and I thinkit would be interesting to hear
what exactly is that.

So I have a definition of play and um, and
what I mean by play is free play.
To me it's kind of a redundancyto call it free play, because
if it's not free it's not play.
But in my definition, in my wayof thinking, but I define play
as an activity that has thesefour characteristics.

(31:44):
The first characteristic isthat it is freely chosen and
directed by the playersthemselves.
So it's the initiative for itand the direction for it comes
from the kids, if we're talkingabout kids playing.
But the same would be true ifit's adults playing.
So if the initiative anddirection is coming from an

(32:08):
adult, that means right off it'snot play, at least not fully
play.
So if a teacher stands up inthe front of a classroom and
says now children are all goingto play this, it's not play,
because that was initiated bythe teacher and not by the kids.
The second characteristic, whichis the one that I just referred

(32:29):
to with regard to how rewardscan spoil play, is that it is
intrinsically motivated.
It's something that you'redoing for its own sake, it's
something that you're doingbecause you enjoy doing it.
There may be goals in it, butthe goals are intrinsic to the

(32:50):
game itself.
You're trying to accomplishsomething, but you're trying to
accomplish it just for the sakeof accomplishing it, the
pleasure of accomplishing it.
So when I said that I used todo a lot of fishing, I wasn't so
much fishing to get fish, I wasfishing for the great fun of

(33:10):
catching the fish.
If an adult came along and saidoh, you can stop all your
fishing now I'm going to giveyou all these fish you can take
home to your family, that wasdisappointing, right, I needed
to catch the fish myself.
It was no fun to just have thefish.
I felt good about bringing homefish to my family, but that

(33:30):
wasn't the primary point of it.
So play is something you'redoing for itself, to the degree
that it has goals.
You're trying to catch fish.
You're trying to score points.
Whatever it is you're trying todo is with, or you're trying to
build the most beautifulsandcastle that you can imagine,
knowing that it's going to bewashed to the sea when the next

(33:54):
tide comes in.
You're putting a lot of effortinto doing something beautiful.
And well, not because you wantthat thing, not because you're
going to keep that thing, notbecause it adds in any material
way to your life, but justbecause you want to do it well.

(34:16):
That's one of the evidences.
The purpose of play is learning.
The purpose of play is to learnhow to catch fish or build
something or score points or getalong with your playmates so
that you can have a good game.
So that's the secondcharacteristic.

(34:36):
Those are the two mostimportant defining
characteristics.
Those are the characteristicsthat are most frequently
destroyed when adults intervene.
Adults take control of the play, and that destroys point number

(34:58):
one, and adults turn the playinto competitions with rewards,
which destroys characteristicnumber two.
The two remainingcharacteristics are the third
one is that all play has rules,and that surprises a lot of
people.

(35:18):
Why would I say that free playhas rules?
It's not free.
So when kids decide to play,they are voluntarily putting
themselves into a situationwhere they're not free.
But they have voluntarily putthemselves into that situation

(35:38):
and they can step out of thatsituation at every point, every
form of play.
When I say rules, you know itcould be guidelines.
It could be conceptions of whatyou're supposed to be doing, be
guidelines, it could beconceptions of what you're
supposed to be doing.
So you know you're.
Imagine kid, imagine a couple ofboys and having a play flight.

(35:58):
You know it looks like reallywild activity.
They're chasing one anotheraround, swinging sticks towards
one another, pushing one anotherdown really looks wild.
But if you watch for a whileyou realize this behavior is
governed by very strict rules nokicking, no biting.

(36:20):
If you are the bigger and thestronger of the two, you have to
self-handicap in some ways.
You can swing the stick at theother person's stick, but not at
them.
You can push the other persondown, but it has to be on
something soft.
They don't even have to statethe rules.
The rules are intrinsic.
Everybody who play fightsunderstands those rules.

(36:43):
If somebody, eitheraccidentally or on purpose,
violates a rule, the one who'sviolated will immediately say
hey, no kicking, I'm out of hereif you keep doing that.
So all kinds of play.
You're building a sandcastle.
You're not just randomly pilingup sand.
There's structure here to whatyou're doing.

(37:03):
The rule is you're using sand.
That's the medium and you'recreating something that fits
your conception, and maybe yourshared conception with your
playmate, of what thissandcastle is going to look like
.
It's very controlled behavior.
Play, among other things, is howchildren learn to control their

(37:23):
impulses.
It's how they learn to controltheir behavior towards the end
that they're working for withinthe context of play.
So that's the thirdcharacteristic.
And the fourth characteristicis that, even though play has
rules, the rules are never sorigid that play is not creative.

(37:47):
Play is always creative.
Every move in play is creative.
You always have choices to make, or it's almost every move.
Play is always creative.
Every move in play is creative.
You always have choices to make, or it's almost every move.
You've always got choices tomake and especially for little
kids, play is almost alwayshighly imaginative.
You're putting yourself in animaginary world.
You're putting yourself in ahypothetical world.

(38:09):
You're putting yourself in awhat-if world.
What if that kitchen table is abridge?
What if there's a troll underthe bridge?
How should we behave, giventhat there's a bridge with a
troll under it?
And then somebody says well, weshould give the troll a cookie
so it doesn't eat us.
So this is hypothetical,deductive reasoning which

(38:31):
children, even little children,are practicing in play, because
they're putting themselves in animaginary situation and
behaving in accordance.
If you're willing to stretch theidea a little bit, you can make
the case that all play isimaginative.
You're putting yourself even aformal game like chess.
You're putting yourself into ahypothetical, different world

(38:55):
where bishops can only move onthe diagonal.
In the real world the bishopscan go wherever they want, but
in chess they can only move onthe diagonal.
So you're behaving within thisset, this set of hypothetical
constructs that are differentfrom in the real world, and that
means you've got to thinklogically about what those

(39:18):
hypothetical constructs mean.
What can you do and not dowithin this context?
So just from the definition ofplay, you can see the amazing
things that children are alwayspracticing and learning in play.
They're learning how toinitiate and direct their own
activity.
They're learning how tonegotiate with their playmates

(39:40):
to direct the activity.
They're learning how to followrules and create rules.
They're learning how to becreative and they're learning
how to think hypothetically,because almost all play requires
hypothetical reasoning.

Peter, thank you for the definition, and one of
the things you have said duringour talk is that the main goal
of playing is learning.
And then, with this definitionyou ran through, I find it a
little difficult to look at aschool and see it tick off those

(40:15):
boxes you just mentioned.
So what is school if this ishow you learn?

Yeah.
So school, the way I thinkabout school.
When schools were firstdeveloped, schools are the model
that we have now.
They had little to do withlearning.
Even the rhetoric about themhad little to do with learning.
It had much more to do withcontrol.

(40:46):
Initial schools were the schoolsthat we still developed, the
model that we still follow, weredeveloped in Prussia and even
as far back as the 17th century,but certainly by the 18th

(41:10):
century, by Protestants, andthey were Protestant-run schools
and they had clear protestantgoals.
Now, protestants at that time,uh, believed that we're all born
in sin.
Children are natural sinnersand you've got to train the
sinfulness out of them.

(41:31):
And the manuals for schoolmasters because they were
generally men then and calledmasters were very clear on that.
Now, they did have the functionof teaching reading at a time
when many kids couldn't read,reading at a time when many kids

(41:55):
couldn't read.
And the Protestants believedthat it's every Christian
person's duty, every humanbeing's duty, because they all
should be Christian to read theBible themselves.
So reading was an importantlesson and the Bible was the
primer.
Reading was an important lessonand the Bible was the primer,

(42:16):
or little verses taken after theBible, so the children would
learn their ABCs where A standsfor Adam, in whose fall we, adam
who reached for the apple andin whose fall we all fell, or
something like that, and it goesall the way to Z in that way.
So every lesson is a catechism.
Every lesson is about is toinstill the fear of God and,

(42:41):
indirectly, the fear of allauthority figures in children.
The primary motivator forchildren was the stick.
They would beat children,literally beat children, if they
didn't learn their lessons.
But this was the model, and sothe very clearly stated purpose

(43:03):
was to teach obedience and toindoctrinate the child in
Christian doctrine.
Those were the stated purposesof it.
Now, eventually, those schoolsin Prussia were taken over by
the state.
As the power of statesincreased, the power of

(43:26):
government increased and thepower of religion declined,
states took over the schools andthey didn't change the way
schooling was done Still done inthe same way Kids sitting in
rows, listening to lectures,reading assigned stuff, feeding
it back word for word, to thedegree possible, being tested on
it.
This was the model then andit's still the model now.
This was the model then andit's still the model now.

(43:49):
This is an excellent model forteaching obedience and for
indoctrination, but that's allit's good for.
You can't be creative in thatcontext.
You can't be a critical thinkerin that context.
It's not a context fordeveloping a love of learning.
It's simply a context for beingbrainwashed, and that was the

(44:13):
purpose of it.
That was the designated purposeof it.
Of course, they didn't call itbrainwashing.
They thought of it as impartingthe truths to children who were
otherwise not going tounderstand the truth and
imparting obedience to childrenwho are naturally sinful.
So that's how schools gotstarted and they never changed

(44:34):
in terms of their structure.
Now, today, I don't know anyteachers.
I think most people who go intoteaching are very wonderful
people.
They care about kids and theyreally believe they want to go
into teaching and teach inschool to, you know, bring the
best out of children, to fostera love of learning, to promote

(44:56):
creativity, critical thinking,all this.
But then they go into a schooland what are they faced with?
20 to 30 kids or more sittingthere in rows, a system where
their main job is to prove thatthe children are learning
whatever the curriculum saysthey're supposed to be learning.

(45:17):
That's the new dogma.
It's no longer the Christiangospels they have to be learning
, but it's whatever was decided.
Some arbitrary slice ofeverything we know in the
universe is said to be thatcurriculum, and the teacher's
job is to make sure that thesechildren learn it.
There's no conceivable way thatall those children could be

(45:40):
interested in that lesson at thesame time.
That's not possible.
So you can't possibly allow anykind of real self-direction to
occur within that context, asmuch as the teacher might want
it.
And that's even more true nowtoday in our schools than it
used to be, because in the pastteachers had a little more say.

(46:00):
When I was in school, teachershad more say in the classroom
than they do today.
If you had a really niceteacher, she could kind of judge
what we're interested in andmove it in directions of what
we're interested.
They can't do that anymore inmost schools in the united
states, ever since what we callcommon core, where every, every
classroom is supposed to be onexactly the same page as every

(46:22):
other classroom, learning thesame stuff, taking the same
tests and so on.
So teachers have lost thisability to adapt what they're
doing, and so the old ideas thatthe pietists came up with in
Prussia in the 18th century arestill are ever more present

(46:47):
today in our schools than theywere when I was in school.

Well, we have the same thing going on here.
We have a common core, similarthing been going on for a long
time in the public school system.
Yeah, that thing I think isvery widespread, and the
Scandinavian schools are oftenjudged to be the better schools,
and maybe they are, but theyare still bad.

(47:15):
It's still the same basic ideain the same structure and I was
thinking what has happened sinceschools were invented in
Germany a long time ago?
Have we copied that model intothe rest of the time the kids

(47:37):
have, more or less the parenting, the free time they have when
they go home from school?
Is that being invaded by thesame ideas about how to handle
childhood?
There's, of course, thehomework, which is an invasion
of the free time, but what aboutall the other time the kids

(47:59):
have.

Right, that's a really good point.
I think you put it very wellthat the sort of school ideas
has invaded the rest of ourinteractions with children, and
I think that's become more andmore true over time over my
lifetime.
So when I was a kid, first ofall the other thing that's

(48:24):
happened, of course, even inthose Prussian schools, thank
goodness the kids weren't inschool that many hours.
They weren't in school for nineor ten months out of the year.
They were in school for a fewweeks and for a few years, but
not for 13 years.
So school was terrible, but itdidn't.

(48:49):
It didn't monopolize theirlives.
It wasn't like a full time job.
We've turned school into a fulltime job, you know, the irony,
as I often point out, is, youknow, in the United States and
this is true also in much ofEurope at the same time that we
declared that full-time work,child labor for children is

(49:10):
illegal, we turned schoolcompulsory school into full-time
work for children Worthlessfull-time work.
They don't even have thepleasure of thinking they're
producing something and it's,for children, the worst kind of
work.
It's sedentary work.
Children would rather beworking in a factory.

(49:30):
I mean, that's a little bit ofan exaggeration, but at least
they're on their feet, at leastthey're doing something physical
which children are designed todo.
They're not designed to besitting in their seats doing
worksheets hours and hours a day.
We adults have difficultyhandling that, but kids, that's
just not what they should bedoing.

(49:51):
So that's part of the irony.
School has monopolizedchildren's lives and done so
increasingly.
With every passing decade, atleast in the United States,
school year gets longer, schoolday gets longer, less and less
recess, less and less breaksduring the day.
Lunch hour used to be an hour,it's now at most 20 minutes.

(50:14):
Kids barely have time if theyhave to go to the washroom and
then stand on line.
They barely have time to gulpdown their food before.
I mean, what we're doing in theschools is horrendous.
It really is horrendous.
I'm amazed that parents aren'tup in arms about it.
They're rebelling about it, butI think because it's been
gradual.
The change has been gradual andso with every generation the

(50:37):
parents think well, this isn'tthat much different than when I
was a child, than when I was inschool, and it's not that much
different.
But if they were to go back andlook at the difference between
when their child today is inschool and when I was in school
in the 1950s, if you suddenlymade that change, if you
suddenly said we're going toreduce recess to 20 minutes a

(50:58):
day we had a total, countinglunch hour, of two hours of
freedom to play outdoors when Iwas a kid.
If you suddenly said we'regoing to take that away and
they're only going to have 20minutes and they're going to 20
minutes to eat lunch and maybeanother 20 minutes in elementary
school, but not in middleschool to go out and have recess
and it's going to be a verycontrolled recess, parents would

(51:21):
have rebelled.
If you had said you know, we'reexpecting high school students
to spend three or four hours anight doing homework, parents
would not have stood for it.
That would have been too big achange.
But the change has been gradualover time.
And you know, I know the storyabout the frogs.
You know, putting them intoever hotter water is apocryphal.

(51:44):
That's not a true story, butit's an analogy that fits here.
You make the change gradual andpeople get used to it that this
is how children need to beraised, and then what other
thing that has happened is whatI call a schoolish philosophy of

(52:05):
parenting, a schoolishphilosophy of child development,
the idea that children developbest when they're carefully
guided and directed by adults.
And so you begin to get thesemessages.
Mothers are constantly bombardedin this country with messages

(52:25):
about all the things they'resupposed to be doing for their
child.
You know, goodness gracious,even before your child is born,
you're supposed to be talking toyour child or playing classical
music or whatever the belief is.
And then, and then you, andthen you.
You know somebody figured out.
Well, middle-class parentsspend say a certain number of

(52:47):
words per day to their child.
So everybody and middle-classkids tend to do better in school
, so every parent is supposed tosay a certain number of words
every day to their child.
I mean, this is so artificial,and so parents have these
responsibilities and duties.
So not only are you supposed tobe protecting your child every

(53:08):
minute from any possible danger,including psychological dangers
God forbid, your child doesn'tget invited to somebody's
birthday party.
So not only are parentssupposed to do that, but they're
also supposed to be teachers.
They're supposed to beregularly teaching their child

(53:28):
stuff, and so the idea that sochildren are never free from
school, even when they're notdoing schoolwork at school or at
home, in some cases, they'rebeing taught.
And then this whole thing ofputting them in adult-directed
activities, that's acontinuation of that.
They believe that you know youplay this sport, whether it's

(53:53):
baseball or soccer or whateverit is.
You play it with an adultleague and you're learning
something, you're being taughtsomething.
When you're just doing it onyour own, you know that's just
random stuff, that's just youknow.
That doesn't count.
So I think that there is, we'vedeveloped this attitude that

(54:14):
children, children grow by beingguided and taught, not that
they grow like every otherorganism on earth from an
internal plan that tells themwhat to do, that makes them grow
, that makes them use theresources around them.

(54:37):
So children in self-directededucation yeah, they need adults
.
They need all this stuffbecause they use it.
This stuff because they use it.
They use their parents to helpthem learn.
They use their friends to helpthem learn.
They use books when they wantbooks to help them learn.
These things don't have to beimposed upon them.

Peter, we are a very self-directed family.
Besides, our kids don't go toschool.
We have been traveling fulltime as a family for the last
seven years, so we are very freeand also work from wherever we
are.
So we have also taken the goingto the office out of the
equation.
Part of me can look at the restof the world from the outside

(55:26):
and think that looks kind ofweird.
I don't know why you're doingwhat you're doing, sending them
to school while you're going towork.
Maybe it would be better tojust close down the schools.
But then, on the other hand,I'm like but there's no culture
left to support them.
So the idea of let's just tearit down kind of rebellion part

(55:51):
of me can have.
I'm like, well, that wouldn'twork right now because the
parents are not there for them.
That's not culture.
Yeah, I can't see it.

No, I agree completely, and so it's why I
think that this is not arevolutionary process.
It's an evolutionary process,and some people think I'm overly
optimistic, but I think thatthe change is already beginning
to occur in interesting ways.

(56:22):
So in this country, fewer andfewer kids are going to regular
schools Every decade.
Fewer kids are going to regularschools Every decade fewer kids
are going to regular schools.
There was a sort of jump inleaving schools during the
pandemic, but many of the peoplewho took their kids out of
school then didn't send themback Already.

(56:44):
There was a movementHomeschooling already before the
pandemic.
About 5% of American schoolchildren are being homeschooled
already before the pandemic.
That went up to 11% by the endof the pandemic.
Many of those have gone back,and I don't have real we don't
really have real numbers for theUnited States as a whole, but

(57:06):
reports from homeschoolingorganizations in individual
states suggest that a good guesswould be that something like 8%
of American school children arebeing homeschooled now.
That's a huge amount, and youknow, people who talk about
social change say that changeoccurs gradually at first, and

(57:29):
then it begins to accelerate andthen it reaches a tipping point
where everybody knows somebodywho's doing this thing in this
other way and if this thing inthis other way makes sense, it
really leads to something betterThen the change occurs

(57:50):
gradually.
I mean I give examples in mylifetime of how this occurred.
So there were decades anddecades of gays and lesbians in
America having to live in thecloset, gradually some of the

(58:13):
brave ones coming out, some ofthe brave ones saying we're gay
and we're okay with that, we'reproud, we're even proud of it
Marching in the street.
They took a lot of ridicule,they took a lot of risk for that
, but they came out and thatencouraged a few more people to
come out.

(58:33):
And then at some point wereached the tipping point where
everybody it didn't matter whatreligion you had, whether you
were a Republican or a Democrat,a conservative or a socialist
didn't matter.
You knew people personally whowere gay and you could no longer

(58:56):
with a straight face say thatperson is a sinner or that
person is mentally ill.
You had to begin to accept youcan be gay and be normal.
Now that doesn't mean thateverybody's going to become gay,
because you have to have abiological predisposition for
that.
But the acceptance everybodyessentially everybody now under

(59:20):
the age of 40 in the UnitedStates accepts this as a normal
and acceptable way to live.
That's a sea change thatoccurred very quickly after a
long period of very, verygradual change with setbacks.

(59:41):
I predict the same thing withschooling.
I think, maybe when it's 10%,maybe when it's 15% of families
that are basically doing someversion of self-directed
education or something in thatdirection, that then the schools
will empty out.
They won't empty out all of asudden, but then the schools

(01:00:06):
either they're going to becomecomplete, the public schools are
either going to becomecompletely irrelevant or they're
going to have to changedramatically in order to
accommodate what people want.
So far, for the large extent,people have not believed and for
many people, maybe the majorityof people, this is true that

(01:00:33):
they don't have a choice.
They have to send their kids toschool and they've also been
convinced that this is good fortheir kids.
But the truth of the matter isthe school system public school
system, or even if you combineit with the private school
system that operates inbasically the same way as the
public school system but withmore money that this has had a

(01:00:54):
monopoly.
And whenever you have amonopoly, you don't feel a need
really to serve the needs ofyour clientele because they
don't have a choice.
Because they don't have achoice.
And monopolies are alwaysoriented towards increasing,
becoming bigger, increasingtheir authority, increasing

(01:01:17):
their power, and the schoolmonopoly is no different from
that.
But if people leave it, thenthis attitude changes.
They don't have a locked-in setof customers and if they're
going to survive they're goingto have to change.

(01:01:37):
Either way works out okay.
I think that at the same timethat people are leaving public
schools, organizations thatsupport children and provide an
environment for self-directedlearning are developing.
So we have more and more, asthere are more and more,

(01:01:59):
homeschoolers in the UnitedStates we have more and more
learning centers, or I wouldeven call them learning and
recreation centers forhomeschoolers, organized by
homeschoolers, where kids canget together and play with one
another, where they can beduring the day.
So if you got two workingparents or a single parent who

(01:02:20):
has to work, they can stillhomeschool because the kids are
at this center for a good partof every day, or many of the
days.
So you develop accommodations.
In this country, many librariesare learning that among their
biggest customers arehomeschoolers, so they're

(01:02:43):
learning to accommodatehomeschoolers.
They're learning to get thebooks homeschoolers want.
They're learning to say it'sokay if your homeschooling kid
stays here all day, even thoughthey're only eight years old,
and we normally have a rule thatyou have to be 12 to be here.
They're learning to accommodatebecause libraries, like every

(01:03:05):
other institution, want tocontinue on and the traditional
uses of libraries are no longeras called for as in the past.
You know, uh, you don't reallyneed to go to a library to find
information.
You can get it online.
You don't need to go fewer, as,as books become so cheap and

(01:03:27):
easy to buy, you don't need tonecessarily go to the library to
borrow them.
Libraries are becomingincreasingly finding new ways to
meet needs in their communityand they're seeing homeschoolers

(01:03:49):
as a source of those needs, oneof several sources of those
needs.
So I think that changes as moreand more people take their kids
out of school.
There will be continuouschanges to provide the kind of
environment that those kids andfamilies need.

Cecilie Conrad (01:04:10):
I really hope you're right.
Yeah, I hear so.
It is different in the USbecause you have such a huge
percentage of the populationhome educating.
It's very, very different.
In Scandinavia it's still avery small movement though it
has it's maybe 10 times as manypeople in denmark now compared

(01:04:35):
to when we started 12, 15 yearsago.
So it is growing, it's just itstarted from a very low point.
Um, I just think, of course,very few people can make a lot
of change by consistently goingin one direction and then it

(01:04:56):
grows and grows, and I reallyhope that this tipping point
will happen.
I just think I also see aprocess of I don't know if this
resonates with with from yourperspective, but the young
people.
So now I'm looking at the olderteenagers and maybe the younger

(01:05:18):
college students um, being very, very ambitious, being very,
very.
They have a lot of the systeminternalized.
They are so serious it's almostscares me.
And I think about my highschool years.
I got through, I got nice highgrades so that I could get into

(01:05:40):
university, but I also had a lotof whiskey and a lot of fun
nights and a lot of days where Ididn't show up, and what I see
is a different style now thatthey are so focused that it
almost scares me.

Peter Gray, Ph.D. (01:05:56):
Right, as I agree with that.
You know, basically, bydepriving children of play,
we've driven the playfulness outof them and they are feeling
strong pressure to achieve.
They're feeling strong pressurefrom various sources.
They're feeling pressure fromtheir parents.
They're feeling pressure I'mtalking about the United States,
I don't know to what degree thesame is true but they're

(01:06:18):
feeling pressure from theirparents.
They're feeling pressure fromthe schools.
They're feeling you've got.
I hear from kids who say, andsometimes from parents who say
about their kids if my kid getsanything less than an A, my kid
feels like a failure.
The kids say their parents aremaking them feel like a failure

(01:06:39):
or the teachers are making themfeel like a failure.
They believe that they shouldbe getting perfect grades, that
they should all be getting intoHarvard or one of the elite
schools, and that they'refailures in life if they haven't
.
And it's interesting also,there's really good data.
The spearhead of this researchis Sonoya Luther, who died a few

(01:07:11):
years ago, much too young, butwho had been doing research
comparing kids who are at whatshe calls the high achievement
schools, which could be publicschools in wealthy neighborhoods
, where the school pridesthemselves in the high test
scores that kids get and howmany of them go on to elite

(01:07:32):
colleges compared to kids inschools that are less
achievement-oriented by thosemeasures, whether they're public
or private and finds that therate of suicide, the rate of all
of anxiety, depression, everymeasure of mental disorder, is
two or three times as high inthose high-pressure schools as

(01:07:55):
it is in the general population.
This is well-establishedresearch.
But what we've done with CommonCore is to some degree we've
turned all schools intohigh-pressure schools and what
we've done in the indoctrinationof parents in a sense the
parents are afraid notrealistically, this is to some

(01:08:18):
degree myth that the economy issuch that if their children
don't go on to college andideally an elite college, their
children might end up homeless.
Their children might end up inpoverty without a job.
People at all economic levelsare worried about that.

(01:08:41):
There's actually a relativelyrecent book by two economists I
can't remember their namesoffhand, I wrote a blog post
about it not long ago but Istill can't remember their names
right now who had documentedboth cross-nationally and over
time that the parents push ontheir children for high

(01:09:06):
achievement in sort of thesuperficial sense of doing well
at school, doing all the thingsyou're supposed to do,
developing a good resume thatthis increases when there's a
big disparity between rich andpoor.
And so in theory that pressureis less in Denmark and in the

(01:09:31):
Norwegian countries, where youhave a more socialist kind of
situation, more equality amongpeople, than in the United
States.
And so he argues this is one ofthe reasons that places like
the United States you see muchmore of this kind of pressure
than you do in those places,united States, you see much more
of this kind of pressure thanyou do in those places.

(01:09:51):
But he also points out overtime that as we go through, when
we go through, as we, you know,during the time when I was a
kid, where we had, you know,after the Roosevelt years, and
we had a good social network andlabor unions were strong,
strong and you could beguaranteed, almost guaranteed, a
job and job security, you knowI grew up in a working class

(01:10:16):
family.
My parents hadn't gone tocollege.
I had uncles who were allexcept with one exception who
became a lawyer, but the otheruncles were all working.
One of them worked in a factory, one of them became a carpenter
, they all had blue collar jobsbut they also, with one income,
could support a family and couldeven own a home and have a

(01:10:42):
little cottage in the country,all on the wages they were
getting from a factory job.
You can't do that anymore and,moreover, no matter whether you
are relatively wealthy orrelatively poor, you realize
there's no such thing as jobguarantee and anybody could fall
at any time.

(01:11:03):
And so parents believe they'reprotecting their children for
the future by making sure thatthey are quote well-educated and
have the right kinds ofcompetitive skills.
That a major reason thatparents put their kids early on
into competitive sports is notbecause it's important to them

(01:11:32):
that the child learns how to dothe sport, because it doesn't
matter what sport they put themin or it could be competitive
chess or competitive dance orwhatever they're putting them in
because they want to teach thechildren the qualities of
competition.
They believe we're in a verycompetitive society and they
want children to learn how tocompete, the desire to win, the

(01:12:00):
pleasure of beating somebodyelse.
Interestingly, in that sameresearch, when she interviewed
the children, they were moreinterested in making friends and
they felt bad when they beattheir friend.
So this is what we're facing.
This is the kind of thing we'refacing, but at the same time

(01:12:22):
and this is what gives meoptimism.
What I've just described, that'spessimism.
But what gives me optimism isthat more and more families in
the United States are opting outof that.
They're saying we're going forself-directed education.
My children are playing as mychildren can, as we can find a
community of other people whohave this belief and they're

(01:12:44):
interacting and the evidence isthat this is no sacrifice to
their future.
The kids doing this are doingvery and this is part of my own
research following kids upwho've been educated this way
and they're doing well out thereNot necessarily well in
becoming rich, but they're notthat interested in becoming rich
.
They're supporting themselvesby doing things, finding careers

(01:13:08):
that are meaningful to them andare joyful to them.
They're sort of extensions oftheir childhood play.
This is a new way of a muchmore healthy way of living and
within our present culture, kidsare doing that.
Young adults are doing thatsuccessfully.
Kids are doing that.

(01:13:29):
Young adults are doing thatsuccessfully.
We're also seeing in the UnitedStates a sharp increase in
apprenticeships.
More and more businesses arerealizing college doesn't.
There's no reason for me torequire a college degree for
employees, because the collegeisn't teaching them anything
that helps them in this job.

(01:13:49):
I'm better off hiring kidsright out of high school who are
eager to learn.
We'll start off at a lowersalary but work up to a higher
salary and glad to be learningon the job.
And so there's more and moreapprenticeships, more and more
internships, and there's even adecrease within the last three
or four years, actually since2011.

(01:14:11):
In the United States, collegeenrollment peaked in 2011, and
it's been going down ever since,partly because the number of
college-age people has beendeclining, but not entirely
because of that.
Also because more and morepeople are deciding I don't
really need college, especiallymen are.
The colleges are dominated bywomen.

(01:14:44):
Available tend to be, from astereotype point of view, male.
Jobs Tend to be jobs in theconstruction industry, jobs like
plumber, electrician, carpenterand so on, and even engineers
of the type that don't requireit.
There tend to be stereotypemale, but more and more women

(01:15:06):
are catching on to this.
We had a female electriciancome to our house recently.
One of my stepson's girlfriendswas a plumber.
This is beginning to change.

Jesper Conrad (01:15:21):
Peter, when we started on this journey of home
educating, self-directedlearning, many, many years ago,
plus 10 years ago, it feltstrange for me, as it was like
Cecilia's project and I wasn'ton board in this start.
And I'm imagining there's a lotof people out there who are

(01:15:43):
getting curious and reach apoint where they get interested
in it.
But how to start for a parentwho are curious about learning
through play and self-directededucation because it can seem
very terrifying when you havebeen used to growing up in a
culture of school was goodenough for me.

(01:16:06):
So of course it's good enoughfor my child.
You know all these things.
I had that mentality.
I've grown out of it.
But but where should you start?
As a parent who who sees thisopen window when the neighbor's
kids are running around havingfun and you're like what to do?

yeah, that's a good.
That's a good point.
So when it wasn't too long ago,I would say quite genuinely, it
took quite a lot of courage todo what you decided to do a

(01:16:47):
school for self-directed schoolalthough, to be honest, I didn't
have a choice.
He wasn't going to let me sendhim anyplace else.
But so how did I adapt to it?
At that time?
This was almost 40 years ago,and so how did I adapt to it?
The first thing that wasimportant for me to know was to

(01:17:08):
kind of assure myself ordetermine whether I was going to
be okay with his staying inthis school, where they don't
teach any lessons, you know, andhe's just playing all day long
with other kids and followinghis own interests.
I wanted to see some adults whohad already done this, and
fortunately there already weresome adults, and I began by just

(01:17:29):
meeting a few of them throughthe school.
But then, being a scientist, Ididn't want just a few adults, I
wanted all of them.
So I did a formal study of thegraduates of the school at that
time, and then, since then, I'vedone, along with Gina Riley, a
formal study of grownunschoolers to see what they're

(01:17:53):
doing in life.
And so I think one thing forpeople who are thinking about
this is to understand this is nolonger a radical experiment.
This is something that's beengoing on for 100 years.
I mean Summer Hill was startedover 100 years ago.
It's been going on for 100years.
I mean Summer Hill was startedover 100 years ago.
It's been going on and stillgoing on.

(01:18:13):
Sudbury Valley in Framinghamwas started almost 60 years ago
and going strong, and there havebeen people doing unschooling
since the 1960s and so this isnot new.
And so if you really want toknow what happens, look at what
happens.
There's data on what happens.

(01:18:33):
So that was part of the pointof my book.
Free to Learn was to showpeople that there's data on this
.
There's now even much more dataon it.
You can't imagine how manycases there were when my book
first came out of moms tellingme I knew that I needed to take

(01:18:55):
my son out of school or mydaughter out of school, but I
can't convince my husband.

I tried that Been there.

Yeah, but your book seems to be helping
Because basically I say so,here's this professor.
It's a professor with a PhDwho's saying this is okay and
he's done research and you canread this research, and so it

(01:19:29):
becomes a little bit harder forthat stubborn man to say no,
this would be too dangerous.
So I've heard that story manytimes.
Believe it or not, I have atheory as to why it's moms who
get involved.
I used to think, well, maybethere's just something intrinsic
about moms that they're sort ofmore in tune with their

(01:19:51):
children's needs than fathersare.
But I also think that maybe themore real reason is that
traditionally, and still today,it's usually the mom who is more
responsible than the dad forthe day-to-day activities of the
child, and it's the mom who cansee that this child is

(01:20:17):
suffering more so than the dad.
And the mom, and it's generallyspeaking, the decisions about
the child, even past infancy,are made more by moms than dads.
This is not always the case,but generally speaking,
certainly in the United Statesand traditionally this is true.

(01:20:40):
So the mom comes up with theidea of let's do homeschooling
or let's, because this is sortof what moms do.
They come up with the and then,and then the dad has to be
brought along in this.
So I think it's not necessarilyan intrinsic sex difference in
who is the more, who has themore intuitive understanding of

(01:21:01):
their child's needs, as a genderdifference in who traditionally
is it that makes decisionsabout what the child does.

So maybe the men should listen.

And I think they are growing and are ready, Peter
.
I think this is a wonderfulplace to round up the
conversation.

You don't want to go any further in this
direction.

I can tell We'd love to talk more, but we have
promised time for that, so let'snot push it too, much.

So besides your book then you also have a
sub-stack where you share newideas, new thoughts.
I will make a link in the shownotes for it, but can you share
a little about what you writeand share there?

Well, the name of the sub-stack is Play
Makes Us Human, and so I writeabout the role of play in all
aspects of our being human, therole of play in children's of
our being human.
The role of play in children'sdevelopment is what I specialize
in, but I also write about therole of play in adult life, but
the role of play as a vehiclefor cultural change, that

(01:22:24):
inventions come out of play,change that inventions come out
of play, the role of play inhuman evolution.
I argue that the characteristicthat distinguished us initially
from the other apes was anexpansion of our playfulness,
which allowed us to liverelatively peacefully in

(01:22:45):
multi-male, multi-female groups,which other apes cannot do.
But play overrides thedomineering tendencies.
It does totally override them,but allows us to live.
So I write about that, and Iwrite more recently about a lot

(01:23:06):
of the issues that we've justbeen talking about.
I write about the rise inanxiety and depression and how
it relates to the lack of play.
I write about how schools havebecome more and more toxic as a
result of Common Core andchanges that have occurred in
recent times.
I write in defense of theInternet for kids, because we

(01:23:29):
have a panic about that rightnow in our culture that somehow
this is destroying children'sminds, creating anxiety,
depression, getting themaddicted and so on, and I've
delved deeply into the researchand most people really doing
this research don't hold to thestory that this is damaging

(01:23:50):
children.
They see far more benefits tochildren than harm, while
admitting that there are someproblems and we need to work on
those problems.
And so I'm trying to get thatmessage from research out to
people who are reading thesescare headlines about how their
children are addicted to socialmedia and how those terrible

(01:24:13):
algorithms are addicting themand how their children are doing
these things that are leadingthem to compare themselves
unfavorably to other people andtherefore to feel depressed.
All these kinds of stories thatwe tell all of which there's a
certain amount of truth to butonly a certain amount of truth

(01:24:34):
and to take the virtual world,the digital world, away from
children at this time in historyis a very similar impulse to
what we did in the United Statesdecades ago of taking the
outdoor world away from childrenbecause we believed it was

(01:24:54):
dangerous to them.
We've got to say, yeah, thereare some dangers.
Let's teach our children todeal with those dangers.
Let's reduce those dangers tothe degree that we can without
taking the fun of all this away.
That should be our adultresponsibility.
But the knee-jerk response islet's take one more freedom away

(01:25:17):
from our kids, because they'rehurting themselves with this
freedom.

And let's take more or less the only place
where they are free and notunder adult observation away
from them and restrict that it's.
It's a bad plan.
I agree exactly right.
So these are some of the thingsI write about.

one more thing you could link to is I
have a personal website it'sjust petergrayorg where people
can download any of my any ofmany of my academic articles and
chapters, which are easilyreadable.
You don't have to be aspecialist to read them, so you
could.
You could read my studies ofgrown unschoolers if you want.

(01:25:59):
You could read my study of thegraduates of the Sudbury Valley
School.
You could read the chapter Iwrote on self-directed education
for the Oxford Encyclopedia ofEducational Research, which is
the first time that thiscompendium has ever had a
chapter about self-directededucation.

(01:26:19):
They asked me to write thatchapter, so you can find those
kinds of things at that website,as well as videos of some of my
talks.

Peter, it has been a fantastic pleasure and I,
when you talked about thetipping point coming earlier in
our dialogue, I got goosebumpsand got all emotional because it
has been for us a long journey.
We started not alone, but moreor less alone, and I would have

(01:26:50):
loved to be in a country wherethere was so many percentage of
homeschoolers.
It is growing in Denmark, it isgrowing over the world and you
are one of the big reasons and,as all the moms have said to you
during the time, a lot of usmen for some reason sometimes
need a well-educated man sayingit's okay.

A little bit annoyed with the fact that I
couldn't convince him.

You're convinced.
We have been homeschooling forso many years, so I want to
thank you for all your work andfor the time you shared with us
here today.

It's been a pleasure, it's fun to talk to
you.

It really has been a pleasure, and I also just
want to say to the listenersmaybe, that I find reading your
shorter things.
It's like, you know, likehaving a little chocolate with
my coffee.
It's whenever I read a littlesub stack of Peter Gray.
I just find that I have moreinteresting conversations the
following days and I think it'sreally worthwhile to spend your

(01:27:54):
time reading Peter Gray, if youhaven't done it already.

So thank you for all the little things that
you share.
All right, well, bye, bye, thishas been fun.

All Episodes

Peter Gray | Rethinking Education: The Power of Play and Self-Directed Learning

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Crime Junkie

The Breakfast Club

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Peter Gray | Rethinking Education: The Power of Play and Self-Directed Learning