Nature, Play, and Awe

Learning is also a natural wonder, one that we possess in our being but do not have full mental possession of...

There is something in nature's magnificence that inspires awe in us: a blazing sunset, star-studded sky, or giant redwood grove. Our body is also part of this natural world. It has evolved so wondrously in balance with its environment, and developed powerful abilities to heal and self-regulate. Our own human nature—as physical as it is mental, emotional, social, spiritual, and creative—is part of the natural world as well. Yet our rational human mind seems to seek less awe than a complacent sense of mastery over any field we explore. We want to say smugly, “Oh yes, I know all about that galaxy—I took an astronomy class in college.” In many ways, the body's intelligence is far greater than that of the cerebral mind, which can so easily become small or even delusional, congratulating itself on its own greatness.

My mother's nursing friend long ago told me how, when taking classes in anatomy, she would wonder at how the teacher did not seem to feel a sense of awe at what she was presenting about the body. Human knowledge about just about everything is growing faster than we can mentally process it. There are some things too mysterious for the rational mind to get a solid grip on. Our maps of the world, body, mind, and universe are evolving all the time, and going through radical transformations in the process. We can possess great knowledge of parts and mechanisms, and we can name everything we see. But still much remains that is beyond our understanding—both in the inner workings and in the bigger picture. Scientific study has proven the foolishness of believing that the boundaries of the maps we draw reflect the edge of reality, that nothing exists until we have discovered its existence.

Learning is also a natural wonder, one that we possess in our being but do not have full mental possession of. It is both a miracle and a birthright, like the healing and creative processes. (Indeed, these three processes are deeply intertwined.) Brain science has revealed truths as revolutionary to our ideas about our physical nature as the theory of quantum physics is to our assumptions about the natural laws of the universe. The line separating body and mind—the basis of Western, and especially Puritan culture—has basically disappeared. The brain, for all practical purposes, is now considered to be located in every cell of the body.

But it is almost easier to believe that everything we are and know is a hologram than to view the body and mind as expressions of each other. The post-No Child Left Behind twenty-first century educational system offers a more entrenched view than we have ever had before of mind as separate and independent from body. Learning is taken to be something that happens alone at a desk looking at material that has been marked as acceptable test prep. Principals wring their hands over the “lost instructional minutes” of music, art and P.E. classes as well as recess and bathroom breaks. Play, the thing most extolled by brain scientists for developing learning, problem-solving, healing, emotional resilience, and Higher Level Thinking Skills, is no longer part of the picture. In the world of public education, in which control and numbers trump everything else, it has long since become verboten even to utter the word. Like endangered animals facing multiple threats, children are more and more losing access to opportunities to develop their minds, imagination, and mental health through play.

What is it that children learn when they do those things which they have done across the world—until now—since time immemorial? Things like running loose, rhymes and finger play, role-playing, building and creating together with whatever materials are at their disposal?  We would have to ask a brain scientist in order to get something resembling a full rundown of skills that play develops, probably filling several volumes. But this rundown would not so much serve to help us put play in its proper box as to inspire respect and awe in us in the natural process of growth and maturation which is, when it comes right down to it, mysterious. We do know that being engaged and having fun (with the associated release of endorphins) is not only the best medicine, but also the best balm for learning. The most sagacious advice from child development experts (who are, one could argue, a kind of brain scientist) is to allow children at least an hour of play each day, preferably social play—the reason being that it takes them about the first forty-five minutes to develop a groove. What exactly is the groove they are going to settle into? Well, it might look something like, “You are this, and I am that, and then this happens...” But the whole point is that we don't know—that's why they need time to develop it! Free play is almost by definition beyond our control and understanding, which is the reason why it inspires either, in appreciative onlookers, awe and delight, or, in those seeking to micromanage, terror.

I think it is critically important in these troubled times for us to think deliberately and out loud about play: why children do it, and what part we want play to play, not only in our own children's development but also in the public schools, for the sake of the future of society. Along these lines, we need to reflect on what sort of attitude we want to teach our children to cultivate towards Nature, both in terms of what is left of the natural world and in terms of the nature within us as well: the inclination children have to swing and climb, wrestle and run, make up stories, and play with colors and building blocks. Do we want to teach the Old School lesson of Man's dominion over all of Nature, the old story of hierarchy and subjugation, as though that has all worked out just fine for everyone? Do we really want to continue to think we can punish children into learning, and to use collective punishment on schools over their below-average test scores? Or do we need to speak up and call out this denial of real learning for what it is: a denial of science, and a heavy-handed return to dangerous, outdated thinking during perilous times?