L.I.F.T.

My good friend Kwame Brown recently posted an article from the Star Tribune’s “Your Voices” site, entitled “Stadiums versus our children’s future.” The article asks why $1 billion would go to a new Minnesota Vikings stadium, while funding for Early Childhood Development (ECD) seems impossible to get.

I posted a response to the article on Kwame’s site, which I am republishing in full here.  I’d love to know what you think about this.

Interesting article, for many reasons.

This argument is old as the hills.

What blew me away was his honesty, right up front.  The author says – “I’m not sure it was a realistic choice (in part because I love the Vikings).”

This is how he initially frames his review of different policies and reasons for ECD.  So the entire time, in the back of our minds, we’re thinking “it isn’t realistic.”

He sums up by serving another seemingly insurmountable blow to the whole concept, quoting the unnamed state legislator, who says – “It’s simple, at the Legislature it is about entrenched interest and power and children don’t have either.”

How are we supposed to feel when we read an article like that?  Does it lead us to come up with solutions, or merely to shrug our shoulders at the progress of the “inevitable?”

The question posed (which is never explicitly posed, or expanded upon) is “How do we get more funding for ECD?”

Priorities will always be priorities.  But priorities are shifted by action.  The Minnesotan’s love of the Vikings is a priority that is manufactured by media, social persuasion, and everything underlying that (desire for power?  money?).

The question is, how do we shift priorities, or at least make our priority (ECD) seem like a valuable partner-priority to already existing, dominant priorities?

Tax-breaks are one way.  Why do we always see those United Way campaign commercials from NFL footballers?  Well, teams/organizations and individuals get to write off charitable donations.  Maybe that’s one way.

Another way is one that Arne Naess recommended the “ecological” movement in the 1970’s take – to make an economic argument for “green.”  It took a lot of years for people to grasp his message, but now that it’s happened, you see it everywhere.  Everything is sold as “green,” and people come together under the “green banner” to get things done (even very opposite groups, like Exxon and Greenpeace).

Under the “green banner,” and all of the ideals and slogans that it stands for, corporations can see a way to continue to make profits while serving the people’s desire for efficiency and ecological-friendliness.

Many of the efforts for ECD, or childhood development in general (including play and physical education, arts education, and education generally), fail to recognize this important fact – their “customer” is the organization from which they’re seeking assistance.

That is, they need to market to the groups they want help from…

Instead, these groups often just talk about their own interests – like a selfish boyfriend or girlfriend.  “Blah blah blah, I want more money for the children…” is all the owners of the Minnesota Vikings hear.  They drink their wine, look around anxiously at the other tables in the restaurant, wondering how the Redskins owners got that good looking partner, and why they’re laughing and having so much fun…they excuse themselves to go to the bathroom and then make a break for their car, never looking back.
Consider this – how would you create a “product” out of Early Childhood Development?  What would that product look like.  What problem would it solve for the people who could buy it (who are not children, by the way…they are adults, and in the case of the article listed, corporations)?  What are the compelling fears and desires of your customer (those adults and corporations), and how can you appeal to those fears and desires in your marketing?  How do you solve their problem?  How do you put the risk of buying your product on yourself, and take the risk off of your prospective customer?  Finally, how do you sell it?  And once it is sold, what happens next?

My good friend Kwame Brown:

director of fitness at the Arlington, VA, Lee-District RecCenter; PhD. in neuroscience; founding member of the International Youth Conditioning Association; Exuberant Animal (par excellence):

and all-around good guy, needs your help.

He’s trying to get some insight into the factors affecting child development – from parents, educators, and policy-makers.  I’m sure that he’d even accept some ideas from folks who have an educated opinion, but don’t fit into any of those specific categories.

Please go over to his site and offer some ideas.

Dr. Peter Gray’s blog, “Freedom to Learn,” is a fantastic collection of thoughts, ideas, and great references regarding development, play, learning, and the effects of social structures on all of those.

I highly recommend it!

“Have you ever been the ‘fat kid’?”

I had a reader ask me this after my most recent blog post, and, coincidentally, had asked another blog writer whether or not they’d ever been the “fat kid” after reading an incendiary attack on fat people on their blog.

My reader sent this article – From Hunk to Chunk and Back Again.

It details the journey of Australian personal trainer P.J. James, who decided to gain 90 pounds (he actually put on 88) so he could better relate to his clients.

He noticed muscle pains, blood sugar spikes, and other physical maladies, but the most difficult ills were psychological.

“The transition back into training was the hardest moment for me because I just didn’t have any desire to train at all, and I was addicted to fat and sugar at the same time so my motivation was at an all-time low.”

He’s lost some of the weight now, and is planning on losing it all by January 1, 2010, which will give him six months of experience with being overweight.

The short answer to the question posed by my reader is “no.”

I’ve never been the “fat kid.”  In BMI terms, I’m currently “overweight,” at a BMI of 27.  However most of that overweight is muscle.  Science says that it doesn’t matter…that a certain height can only support a certain amount of mass (there’s a ratio they’ve worked out).  Only time will tell…

The reader’s comment was specifically in response to my saying that we need an “anti-fatness” campaign.

I just want to be clear – I’m not against people who are fat.

I am against people whose minds are “fat.” And by that, I mean, lazy.  Is it not PC to connect those two terms?  Am I contradicting myself?  Well…okay.

This is why, though, my Surgeon General’s Warning warns against laziness…not fatness.

For my money, being physically active takes precedence over bodyweight.  Though, again, science would disagree.  A few recent studies show that you need to do both.  There is definitely a “safe range” for overweight in the human animal.

However, our culture focuses on physical form to a large degree, so concerns over image often come first in people’s minds.

While it may seem that I’m one of those, for whatever reason – I’m not.

My concern is with function.  Initially, in organisms, function follows form (structure), and then, during the course of the organism’s life form follows function.

That is a restating of “nature and nurture.”  However, there has to be a “nature” there to “nurture” first.  Form/structure comes before and mediates function.

And no, I’m not going to do the P.J. James experiment.

But I will watch my use of language more closely in the future.  Thanks for the note!

There are a few other things to share from Alison Gopnik’s book “The Philosophical Baby.”

For one, her account of babies’ idea/ability to work with time is fascinating. On page 153, she says “babies and young children don’t yet have autobiographical memory and executive control. They don’t experience their lives as a single timeline stretching back into the past and forward into the future…”

Apparently, this is an ability that we acquire through practice. What does that mean?!

And, “those programs [the Perry Preschool Project, and the Carolina Abecedarian Project - preschool projects that resulted in adults who were significantly more prosperous, healthier, and less likely to be jailed than their peers] didn’t just influence the children, they influenced their parents, too. These progams gave poor parents, as well as poor children, a sense of autonomy and connection. The children in these programs didn’t just have different early experiences, they had different parents, and they had those different parents for life…” pg. 177.

There is a very real problem with the “do it yourself” attitude that is being espoused in our country recently.

No one does anything by themselves.  In case you haven’t noticed, everyone is intimately connected in this world, and everything is intimately connected in existence.

The funny thing about the “drive to personal responsibility” that we see in recent government programs, 401k, corporate doctrines, etc., is driving people closer and closer together.  The “entitlement generation” isn’t leaving home till they’re in their mid-twenties.  The family stays together longer.  Lack of medical care is forcing the elderly to live with their children.  The family becomes a unit again.

While on the one hand it’s sad that it takes a lack of general support to the individual from the government or larger organizations to drive this type of change, on the other hand, it’s change for the better!

First want to say thanks to all of the people who came out for my talk at Sports Basement in Potrero Hill tonight!

Secondly, I figured I’d post the PDF version of my handout from tonight here, so anyone who’s interested can download it and enjoy.

Thanks again!

Power Training

Here is another sequence of quotes from James Carse’s book, “Finite and Infinite Games.”

“We make use of machines to increase our power, and therefore our control, over natural phenomena”

“As the machine might be considered the extended arms and legs of the worker, the worker might be considered an extension of the machine.”

Who is in control?

“All machines, and especially very complicated machines, require operators to place themselves in a provided location and to perform functions mechanically adapted to the functions of the machine.”

You can't do this without me here.

“To use the machine for control is to be controlled by the machine.”

You may only move like this.

“To operate a machine, one must operate like a machine.  Using a machine to do what we cannot do, we find we must do what the machine does.”

You did not obey the machine.

“Machines do not, of course, make us into machines when we operate them; we make ourselves into machinery in order to operate them.  Machinery does not steal our spontaneity from us; we set it aside ourselves, we deny our originality.”

Screw those machines! Let's have fun!

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Just finished reading James Carse’s book “Finite and Infinite Games.”

Finite and Infinite Games

I can’t recommend it highly enough.  It’s incredibly dense for such a short paperback book (177 pages).  It might take a while to get through, but it’s worth the consideration and effort!

The  book isn’t strictly about “games” in the sense that we usually consider them, but applies the concept of play to human life in general – one of the things I like most about it!

Regarding fitness and health, here’s a nice quote for you:

Physicians who cure must abstract persons into functions.  They treat the illness, not the person.  And persons willfully present themselves as functions.  Indeed, what sustains the enormous size and cost of the curing professions is the widespread desire to see oneself as a function, or a collection of functions.  To be ill is to be dysfunctional; to be dysfunctional is to be unable to compete in one’s preferred contests.  It is a kind of death, an inability to acquire titles.  The ill become invisible.  Illness always has the smell of death about it: Either it may lead to death, or it leads to the death of a person as competitor.  The dread of illness is the dread of losing.
One is never ill in general.  One is always ill with relation to some bounded activity.  It is not cancer that makes me ill.  It is because I cannot work, or run, or swallow that I am ill with cancer.  The loss of function, the obstruction of an activity, cannot in itself destroy my health.  I am too heavy to fly by flapping my arms, but I do not for that reason complain of being sick with weight.  However if I desired to be a fashion model, a dancer, or a jockey, I would consider excessive weight to be a  kind of disease and would be likely to consult a doctor, a nutritionist, or another specialist to be cured of it.
When I am healed I am restored to my center in a way that my freedom as a person is not compromised by my loss of functions.  This means that the illness need not be eliminated before I can be healed.  I am not free to the degree that I can overcome my infirmities, but only to the degree that I can put my infirmities into play.  I am cured of my illness; I am healed with my illness.

(pp. 91-92)

The crux of this book is critical for those of us who want to change the way fitness is approached – by ourselves or by the “industry.”  “Functional” fitness, all the rage nowadays, is part of a larger outlook on life that confines individuals to boundaries, and attempts to confine Nature similarly.

In order to create change, we have to change the way we speak about things.  We need perspective.  This book will help.  Get it!

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I went to the field where I lead a play-based fitness group the other day, and saw this at the baseball diamond:

HOME! NO! BACK! NO! WAIT! RUN!

If you can see it, someone got creative with the chalk lines the day before, and basically scribbled all over the field!

Immediately I imagined two teams coming to the field that day, ready for battle, finding the rules slightly changed…

Then I thought of how much fun it would be to play on a field like this, especially after weeks or years of the same old straight lines connecting first, second, third, and home.

My friend Charlie Reid was at this park with me a few days prior to the development of the new baseball rules, and we watched a little league team playing.

“How boring,” I said.  All of the kids stood in the outfield and waited in line for their coach to pop fly balls out to them.  I presume it was for practice, but it could’ve been some kind of weeding process as well.

“Yeah,” Charlie said.  “It would be so much better if you rotated positions every play, like you do in volleyball in high school.  If no one had a set position, everyone would have to adapt to the demands of new positions.  No one would get stuck in the outfield, or on the bench.”

“Wow!  That’s a great idea!” I said.

We watched the kids in the outfield, standing in line, waiting for fly-balls…

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I’m a big fan of barefooting whenever possible. However, in the city, I almost always wear either my Vibram’s, my Vivo Barefoots, or my Brooks Cross Country Flats.

A recent news piece by the San Diego News Network explains why – some asshole(s) buried razor blades in the ground in a children’s park. Not only that, but it’s happened before.

I’m always very cautious in the parks around SF, and try to be very cautious when I’m in the streets as well. As the old saying goes – an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

That goes for things like – using good form when lifting weights; making overt agreements with play partners when you’re playing games; going slowly at first, then speeding things up; warming up; and now – playing in the park!

Scout your area first, look around for broken glass or other hazards. Wear shoes. If you’ve looked around, and feel safe, you can go barefoot, but I guess you do so at your own risk.

Oh yeah, and if you see or hear of some idiot planting razor blades in a public space – call the police and report them.