Love&Logic: Introduction

An apocryphal story has it that a White European is in a small village in Africa and sees a group of local children. He wants to interact with them and give them something fun to do, so he says through his translator,

“Let’s play a game. You all race to that tree over there, and the winner gets this bag of candy.”

What happens next surprises him. Instead of racing each other to the tree, all of the children join hands and run together. They all get to the tree at the same time. The man is puzzled as to who deserves the candy but the children explain, “We all won so we can share the candy!”.

This story describes the basic tenets of the Ubuntu philosophy: «I am because we are» and “humanity towards others”. The tale can be read in different ways, of course: a kindly gentleman playing with children; a White European man trying to impose his “superior” ways on an African community of children who already know exactly how they like to play; an honest misunderstanding based on a clash of cultures, etc. However, in this book, I would like to take this story to validate a different way of defining “game”.

With the “globalization” of our worldview, most people in the world nowadays share a cultural background more in common with the European man in the story than with the African children, at least where games are concerned. This means we tend to define games as in the definitions above: there must, at the very least, be recognizable rules, goals and some sort of win/loss end-state. This assumption is clear in the story. The man had a certain pre-defined concept of the meanings of words like “race” and “win”, so he assumed that each child would run individually and that one would necessarily reach the tree first. The children seemed to agree that “race” means “run as fast as you can” but they obviously interpreted the pronoun in the plural as in “as fast as we all can if we join hands”. They also interpreted “win” very differently; in their view, there is no limit on how many people can win because whoever fulfills the condition of running to the tree is entitled to some of the candy.

This begs an interesting question to which the story offers two seemingly irreconcilable answers: what does it really mean to win? According to the man’s worldview, each child should aim to maximize the amount of candy they get, so it would logically be in the interest of each to run faster than the others in order to get all of the reward. From the children’s point of view, winning should make one happy, but one child cannot be happy eating candy while looking at the faces of all her companions who have none.

This is not some sort of idealization of a so-called primitive or child-like worldview, though the characters’ backgrounds may make it seem so because of their respective ages and cultural backgrounds. Rather it is based on a firm scientific understanding of the human brain in social settings and of how empathy is activated through a phenomenon known as “mirror neurons”.

To illustrate, let’s look at another story, this one taking place in a laboratory at the University of Parma in Italy, where a neuroscientist named Giacomo Rizzolatti and his graduate students were studying a monkey with electrodes wired up to its brain. One of the graduates began to lick an ice-cream cone in front of the monkey. To everyone’s surprise, the exact same regions of the monkey’s brain showed activity as if the monkey itself was performing the action. A great deal of research followed this discovery, papers were published, and books written. Some of the books and articles produced outside of the academic realm were complete junk, of course, suggesting that somehow, we are all connected at these deep-down levels and isn’t it all groovy, man?

The science itself, however, is sound. The “mirror neurons” exist to allow us to empathize with others. If you’re sad, you’ll bring me down; if I see you stub your toe, I’ll wince. Babies in a nursery with another baby who is crying will cry too. Rifkin calls this “empathic distress”. The point is that those of us who are not psychopaths or otherwise psychologically impaired can feel what others are feeling because we are social creatures. “We are soft wired to experience another’s plight as if we are experiencing it ourselves” (Jeremy Rifkin)

What’s interesting is that, as adults, we sometimes have to force ourselves to deliberately turn this compassion off. You simply can’t give money to every beggar on the street, you can’t let your heart bleed every time you see images of suffering on the news, otherwise you’ll drive yourself literally insane. Children don’t necessarily filter their experiences in this way.

Empathy is a strong drive whose purpose is to enable us to belong to a group. Empathy in children is a value we can appreciate and encourage. Childhood is a special time of life where you shouldn’t need to live and die by the sword. Childhood should be a time for socialization through play.

Play is fun. But what makes playing a game fun for the players?

Richard Bartle defined four different “types” of players, rather cutely matching them up to suites of a deck of playing cards:

Diamonds refer to players who play to win. They play by the rules and they keep the goal in mind every step of the way. They expect other players to do the same, so to them a good game is one where the players win or lose fair and square.
Clubs are players who don’t care so much about winning per se as about beating the other players. They often measure how much fun they had by how much damage they caused to other players.
Spades are the explorers. The rules and goals of the game aren’t nearly so interesting as the game-world itself. They’re the ones who will often contribute arcane knowledge to game wikis online. They might not even play at all. One player described his experience with Myst and Riven back when they came out in the early and late 1990s respectively: he wasn’t at all interested in playing the game, he just wanted to explore the beautiful sets, opening doors and exploring game-world locations.
Hearts are the socialisers. The game is just an excuse to get together with people. Jane McGonigal noted that a large demographic of people playing Words with Friends and other online and social media-based games do so simply to stay in touch with loved ones, and that the most common comments in the chat features were variations on “I love you, Mom!”

So, in a nutshell, what we have are roughly half of players (depending on the game genre) who don’t even care that much about winning, and even less about playing by specific rules or goals. This is amazing to me because it validates what the children in our story meant when they chose to run to the tree holding hands.

So let’s consider our littlest hearts and spades: our young children who may prefer to use games as a tool for exploration or socialization rather than competition.

Explorers might enjoy playing with the pieces outside of the context of the game. They might want to make up their own games with them, or use them to tell stories. Sometimes they might become interested in a particular theme they were exposed to through a game and will want to read books or watch documentaries that tie in.

Socialisers will enjoy playing with other people in a friendly, non-competitive atmosphere. After all, from a child’s point of view, it’s wonderful to spend time playing a game with a parent or relative who gives them their undivided attention. Socialisers will also enjoy playing games ABOUT people. Games about famous people or made-up characters invite empathy, and a game centered precisely on making these game pieces happy will feel fun and satisfying Ina different kind of way.

A game with these ideas is still a game in the sense that there are rules and goals and these are important for children to deal with. Free play is necessary and wonderful in its own right, but it won’t usually incorporate the math curriculum our children need to master as part of their education.

Yet most games involving math, whether they are deliberately math-focussed such as Sum Swamp or Prime Climb, or whether they simply happen to include math as a by-product such as backgammon or Monopoly, are competitive.

I say we rethink what a game can be, and especially what a math game can be. Let’s consider children who are curious and empathic. Let’s consider parents who are, for whatever reason, math averse, yet want to play with their children. For these players, we can find a different definition of play.

In this blog, I define the parameters of the games in the following way: each game must involve math, it must arouse empathy through a theme, and it must consist of an interesting, yet easily made or purchased set of game pieces.

The math parameter involves teaching different concepts such as number reading (the difference between 24 and 42, for example), subitizing (that 3+4 is the same as 5+2), sequencing, adding, subtracting, geometry, and other basic math elements suitable for children aged 5-8. Each game will have a short explanation of the type of math required and why it is necessary.

Each game must arouse empathy by having a theme. The theme can involve fictional characters by having the players decide who should be on which football team, it can arouse historical empathy by exploring the world of real historical figures such as Sacajawea or Che Guevara, or it can simply be based on the relationships between players. In this book, each game will include a clear explanation of the theme, along with additional resources in case your child wants to know more.

Finally, the pieces must be both easy to make (or inexpensive to buy), and fun to play with. In fact, making them can be half the fun, as with some of the card games or the ones involving paper dolls. Again, a detailed explanation of the game pieces will be included, along with links to templates or ready-made sets if they exist.

Each game will include a clear set of instructions and rules. Within these, you and your child can feel free to explore the space of possibility as you wish. Once you’ve tried the games as they are described, you might have ideas for modifying them. You might play a game once and decide you’ve gotten all there is to be had out of it, while others can be played over and over.

The most important thing is to enjoy this precious time with your child whether you’re a full-time stay-at-home homeschooling parent, or whether you have just a few short hours a week to be together. Show your child that math is fun and not to be feared. Show her that a little empathy goes a long way. Teach her, bond with her, and above all, love her in the way that only you can.

World on the Weekend: Ancient Egypt

Normal 0 21 false false false ES-EC X-NONE X-NONE Modern Egypt may not be a superpower, but ancient Egypt certainly was. Why is it important to teach children about this period? It is widely believed that The Fertile Crescent around the Nile and Euphrates rivers was the birthplace of domesticated agriculture. In other places and earlier times, nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes may have occasionally planted small temporary gardens, but the deliberate cultivation on a large scale of grains and grasses could only happen in a region with permanent access to water. In fact the real revolution was the development of techniques to use this water by deliberately allowing the river overflow to flood the fields at certain times of the year. Yuval Harari suggests that the agricultural revolution may, in many ways, have been more curse than blessing, as it had the effect of greatly narrowing our dietary choices and putting us in the precarious position of being at the mercy of crop blights and droughts leading to famine. Additionally, viral and bacterial diseases had many more vectors in smaller settled communities, particularly with domesticated animals sharing the living space. However, one could just as easily argue that human history as we know it simply would not have happened were it not for the settlers who would eventually become the ancestors of the vast majority of humans alive today. As with many kingdoms and empires, ancient Egypt was made up of several tribes along the upper and lower Nile which eventually banded together under two kingdoms, one at either end, before finally becoming united under one pharaoh. Ancient Egypt had a fascinating pantheon with gods and goddesses equally playing a vital role in the mythology. Activities Math: the pyramids at Giza are perhaps the most iconic feature of Egypt. The Old Testament states that they were built by Jewish slaves and there is much discussion in mathematical and architectural circles regarding the absolute perfection of these structures. A simple template for a square bottomed pyramid can be found online and printed off for your child to cut out and tape or glue together. Different sized pyramids can nest inside one another, while flat topped pyramids can be stacked as high as they can go. Measure a doll and build a pyramid big enough to entomb it. Be sure to «bury» the doll in the style of the pharaohs: surrounded by beloved objects such as food and jewelry (pharaohs were often entombed with live slaves as well, but that should probably not be part of your play). Language arts: Egyptologists have deciphered much of the hieroglyphics in Egyptian writing and you can find a simplified alphabet based chart here (link). If you make a number of pyramids and hide jewelry in some of them, you can write clues in hieroglyphics to lead each other to find them. Art: Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of Egypt, is perhaps the most iconic of them all and a delightfully feminist one to boot. By all accounts, she was not only gifted with ravishing beauty, but also with a superb intellect, both of which she used to preserve her kingdom and protect it from Roman incursion by making the two most powerful Roman rulers, Julius Caesar and mark Antony fall in love with her. During her lifetime she also kept her country from breaking up from within by redistributing food from the royal granaries during a time of famine, as well as by making a point of speaking the nine or so languages prevalent among her people. She allowed her subjects complete freedom of religion, even going so far as to build temples for the worship of Greek and Egyptian deities and the Jewish God, as well as a shrine to the cult of Julius Caesar. Her likeness has been depicted in numerous paintings, sculptures and theatrical plays, most notably Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Elizabeth Taylor also dramatically played the title role in the 1963 Hollywood film “Cleopatra”. As a fun art project, I printed off a few copies of a cleopatra coloring page, and we had a wonderful time going at it with glitter and paint and glue-on sequins and jewels. I should warn you that there is still glitter in the cracks between the floorboards that I suspect will be there until the end of time. Math and dance: In the mid eighties, the all-girl band The Bangles released a hit ditty called “Walk like an Egyptian”. For the video, they filmed people on city streets dancing with limbs at right angles in the style of Egyptian paintings. In reality, the paintings were drawn this way because of a lack of understanding of perspective and the human form, a failure which would be later remedied by the Renaissance masters including Leonardo da Vinci. However, it makes for a fun dance and an excellent introduction or reinforcement of the concept of right angles. Food: The Mediterranean diet has not changed appreciably in the two thousand years since the time of the pharaohs, so consider anything involving chickpeas (such as the now ubiquitous hummus), bulgur wheat, lamb, eggplant and olive oil as the prime ingredients: kibbe, falafel, baba ghanoush etc. Books and videos: Mummies in the Morning by Mary Pope Osborne A Day in The Life of an Egyptian Doctor on Ted ed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rvLEJrQm7g Nobody Nose Cleopatra, a short film you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tc7PMuHTJQ Discussion Ancient Egypt was our first attempt at learning thematically. In retrospect, I believe there was too much emphasis on the historical and political aspects: how many pharaohs there were, in what succession, how the upper and lower Nile delta were brought under a single kingdom, the political details of the union between Cleopatra and the Roman Empire…none of this is strictly necessary at this stage. What Child most enjoyed was painting Cleopatra and dancing the «right angle dance» and was later heard to proudly spot right angles between walls and floors and on window frames. She enjoyed preparing a burial for her doll and surrounding her with beloved objects. She enjoyed making the pyramids, but not too many of them. She saw right through the attempt to use hieroglyphics as a code to teach spelling but she played along because she liked the idea that I’d hidden treasures (different color play jewels) in the pyramids and wanted to find them. She enjoyed preparing the food, especially mixing the ingredients for the hummus and baba ghanoush in the blender, but she didn’t particularly like the taste. As a first experience in blended, thematic learning of this style and as a way to have quality mother-daughter time on a Sunday afternoon, this lesson set the stage for future rewarding experiences we could both look forward to.

World on the Weekend: Introduction

This blog is the story of one child’s education into a very specific set of values. It is well to outline these values before beginning so that you as a reader are on the same, pardon the pun, page as I the writer

We begin with idea that every human being is a valuable individual, unique and never to be repeated. We do belong to families, communities, cultures, nations, religions and other groups both small and large because we are fundamentally social creatures, but none of these should exclusively define, label or limit us in any way. As human beings we all have fundamental rights, not only those outlined in the United Nations declaration, but the right to be the best version of ourselves we can be. In order to achieve that, we need to educate ourselves and our children to exercise our minds in three ways: freedom of thought, scientific and logical reasoning, and creativity.

The first is freedom of thought. Children are not required to think as their parents do. This is important. They are required to respect their parents as more experienced and knowledgeable people who have their best interests at heart, but this is not the same as being obliged to agree on every point. This cannot be emphasized enough: how many adults are estranged from their parents because they felt ridiculed or repressed? Children have the right to respect their own bodies and minds: their likes and dislikes, their feelings of hunger, tiredness and satisfaction, their sadness and their joy, their need for companionship or solitude, their sexuality. As they grow up and learn more about themselves, they have the right to choose their own path, and though it pains us, to make their own mistakes, suffer the consequences and learn from them.

This leads us to the second concept: logic and scientific reasoning. Children have a right to a clear comprehensive education that will allow them to make appropriate decisions. They deserve to know how their bodies work and how to take care of themselves. They deserve to be taught basic logic and the dangers of logical fallacies so that they can make decisions based on real possibilities. They need to understand basic science and scientific reasoning so they will understand how the world works. Ignorance, in a word, kills, and it is our duty as parents to ensure our children are taught truth, morality and ethics.

This will allow them to exercise the most fundamental element of our humanity: our creativity. Creativity is not simply splashing paint about or telling fairy tales though it may manifest that way. Creativity is the ability to take everything we know about the world and combine it into something unique, something no-one else can. Children are not actually born creative because creativity is the highest end point of knowledge as you can see in any Blooms taxonomy pyramid; you cannot write a bestselling novel without understanding the fundamentals of grammar and storytelling, you cannot be a top chef without knowing basic kitchen chemistry, and you cannot see that mathematics is itself an incredibly beautiful art form if you don’t have a clear sense of numeracy. What most children are good at is combining the limited knowledge they have in unexpected ways, and this process should be celebrated and encouraged as they gain in academic competence.

This blog does not purport to endorse any particular teaching method and certainly does not aim to suggest any type of schooling is necessarily better than any other. However, that being said, the values above cannot be drilled and tested as one would the multiplication tables or state capitals. They can only be taught through exposure to people who live and embody them. If you want your child to love learning, you must be curious; if you want them to think freely while respecting the rules of science and logic, you must model this with the types of questions you choose to ask and the means you use to seek and evaluate answers; finally, if you want them to be creative, you must show them what creativity looks like in your own life whether you are an artist, a farmer, a computer programmer or anything else.

This project is intended to be applied to and certainly expanded upon by families of all types.

Homeschoolers: Those who follow a curriculum will be able to use this «weekends around the world» project as a way to review and introduce concepts found in the textbooks. It will also help homeschooling parents unite themes that otherwise appear as separate entities accross the curriculum.

Unschoolers will find the games, activities and projects a helpful way to spark interests that can later be developed according to the child’s own interests. Since the activities in this book can be done in a single afternoon or spread out over one week or several, there is ample opportunity for the parent to «strew» related books, games and materials.

Schooled children and working parents: Sunday is often one of the few days families spend together. This book is designed so that you can pick only the activities you like,whether one or several, enough to ensure that you really get quality time with your kids without overwhelming exhausted parents

About us

This blog is based on an honest assessment of what I have done with my own child. A bit of background is therefore in order.

I am a Canadian married to an Ecuadorian. We live in a rural suburb of Quito and we homeschool our only daughter who was 6 years old when this project began. My husband is a tour guide in the Amazon rainforest which means that he is often away for weeks at a time, though a devoted househusband and father when he is in town. I am a full time university professor. We are mainly unschoolers in the sense that our daughter spends much of her time helping her father or babysitter with ordinary chores such as gardening, cooking, mechanics and maintenance of the car and the house, and looking after our animals. I spend an hour every weekday as well as Saturday reading with her and playing math games. She does ballet, swimming and gymnastics and we make sure to spend time with friends. Sundays, however, are, as often as possible, special time for me to spend with my daughter (and husband as well if he’s around) and this blog was born from the idea that I wanted to share my love of world history, geography, culture, literature, science, art, dance, music and food with her. I consider myself well-read and well-traveled and I am a great believer in world citizenship and the values we associate with it such as tolerance, respect and empathy. I also believe that education should inspire creativity and curiosity and encourage us to follow our own path in whatever we choose to do in life.

This blog represents an experiment in progress, one that I wanted to share with all like-minded parents in the hopes that we may combine ideas and increase the wealth of options from which we can select in order to make our own global journey with our children from the comfort and safety of our very own living room.

The Quality Time Project

A different way of thinking

In the 21st century, global values include different kinds of thinking.

Science involves asking a lot of «why» and «how» questions. Why does it rain? Why can’t animals speak English? How does a cat jump? How do airplanes stay up?

Technology and engineering are all about «what if» thinking. What if I take out this Jenga piece? What if I connect these two wires? What if I make this ramp steeper? What if…

Mathematical thinking focuses on patterns. 21,22,23…31,32,33… Parallel lines never cross. Fibonnacci sequences make perfect spirals. Triangles have angles that always add up to 180 degrees.

Literature and film encourage thoughts about causality, particularly in relation to human emotions. Professor Snape was mean to Harry Potter because he’d been bullied by Harry’s father. Elsa, unlike most Disney characters, is a surprisingly complex mix of guilt and goodness; it may be interesting to consider possible motivations for the more two dimensional characters and discuss why, for instance, Cinderella’s stepmother is so unequivocally evil.

Logical thinking, whether as a branch of philosophy, in the form of detective fiction or simply as mathematical truths involves reasoning. If A is taller than B and B is taller than C, then logically A is the tallest. If all the evidence points to someone who had the means, motive and opportunity to commit the crime, then you can prove guilt.

Artistic thinking is about esthetics. To a certain extent, it involves math because patterns are often beautiful. Music is about harmony and how sounds and rhythms go together. Dance is a way of showing how the human body follows lines and curves in movement. Painting, drawing, collage and other fine arts help develop an eye for combininations of form and color.

Global citizenship is essentially related to questions regarding ways of being and doing. Religion, law and politics govern human interactions, economics and culture regulate how humans share resources. Geography, climate and history all determine the paths of different civilizations and help explain why they are the way they are.

As parents and educators, we can foster these different ways of thinking in our children.