‘The more something is meaningful, the easier it is to pay attention to it and learn’ – Stolen Focus, Chapter 14 Notes

Posted on: June 18, 2022

Last Updated on: June 19th, 2022

Post Category: Book Notes

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About #onepageonepoint

#onepageonepoint aims to summarise new ideas from books on personal and professional development – with (approximately) one point for each page. Read more about this project here.

Today for #onepageonepoint, we have summary notes for Stolen Focus – for chapter 14: ‘Cause Twelve: The Confinement of Our Children, Both Physically and Psychologically’.

If you are interested in getting yourself a copy or learn more about the book, click here.

Chapter 14: ‘Cause Twelve: The Confinement of Our Children, Both Physically and Psychologically’

• ‘By 2003, in the US only 10 percent of kids spent any time playing freely outdoors on a regular basis… In the US, only 73 percent of elementary schools now have any form of recess’ (Hari 2022, p. 234).

• In the 1960s, parents who kept their child indoors all the time, walked them to school, stood over them while they played, or intervened in their games would be regarded as crazy – and parents typically would only have a vague idea of where their kids were.

• In the 1990s, it was expectation that parents walked their kids to school, nobody let their kids out to play unsupervised, and children stayed in the home all the time.

• During the 1990s, Lenore, who was raised in the 1960s, allowed her son to be placed in an unfamiliar spot in New York and navigate his way home on his own – as an opportunity for him to have freedom and mature. She wrote an article about this event and it was met with horror – she was titled on many news shows as ‘America’s worst mom’ and she was invited to TV shows with other parents whose kid’s were murdered/kidnapped.

• ‘[Lenore] tried to explain to people that we live in one of the safest moments in human history. Violence against adults and children has dramatically plunged, and your children are now three times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed by a stranger. She asked: ‘Would you imprison your child to prevent them being hit by lightning? Statistically, that would make more sense’ (Hari 2022, p. 237).

• Lenore explains: ‘Kids have always played together, much of the time without direct adult supervision… That’s been the way for all humanity’ (Hari 2022, p. 237).

• The research supports this. When people run around or engage in any form of exercise, their ability to pay attention improves; for children, exercise offers an ‘exceptional boost’ to their attention.

• ‘For developing children, aerobic exercise expands the growth of brain connections, the frontal cortex, and the brain chemicals that support self regulation and executive functioning’ (Hari 2022, p. 238).

• Play also allows children to develop creativity and imagination, social bonds, aliveness (joy and pleasure) – and these are the core of a functioning human being and a solid personality. For a child, play provides a base for their development, and parents sitting down and explaining to them adds to this base.

• Now, free play has been replaced with more supervised play. Because of this, kids lack the opportunity to explore, and kids are not having the problems and the exhilaration of getting there on their own.

• US kids now spend a significantly larger time on homework and academics – with the school system squeezing out play time.

• Dr Isabel Behncke, the Chilean expert on play, explains that learning through play is important for adaptability, capacity to assess context and critical thinking.

• Professor Jonathan Haidt, leading social psychologist explains that ‘When a child plays, he learns the skills that make it possible to cope with the unexpected’, and depriving a child of play will lead them to have a more panicked response (e.g. anxiety; which causes our attention to suffer). Haidt argues that the big rise in anxiety among children and teenagers is partly because of play deprivation.

• Hence, the deprivation of play in children causes: (1) deprivation of exercise and regular movement, (2) missed opportunities to build problem solving skills, social bonds and aliveness, (3) increased anxiety, and (4) deprivation of opportunities to develop intrinsic motives. The fourth factor is explained in the next dot point.

• Ed Deci (professor of psychology in New York) and his colleague Richard Ryan found that ‘It is easier to focus on something, and stick to it, if your motives are intrinsic – if you are doing something because it’s meaningful to you – than if they are extrinsic’ (Hari 2022, p. 241). Children are deprived of the chance to develop intrinsic motives because they live all their life according to what adults tell them to do – so they do not have time to figure out what turns them on.

• On the first Global Play Day, at Roanoke Avenue Elementary at Long Island, lots of the kids were exposed to toys and boxes but they were inert – they didn’t know what to do. Donna Verbeck, a teacher at the school, commented that this was because they have never been set free to play before.

• Let Grow (led by Lenore) is a program that works in partnership with schools, where students are given regular homework to do something independently without adult supervision. Kids who have went through the program have done projects like setting up a lemonade stand, collecting the trash at the local river, and creating a life-sized boat-shaped wagon.

• One kid (named L.B.) was bored in school when he was forced to act on extrinsic motivations (e.g. doing assigned readings and homework), but his ability flourished once he found his interest in building boats and wagons, where he would focus for hours. Because of Let Grow, his trouble reading suddenly became a hobby – ‘nobody taught him. His mom and dad just let him do it… He just used his own head and really taught himself’ (Hari 2022, p. 246).

• The schooling system is very narrow and makes lots of kids feel they are not good at anything – and mastery is a very important psychological need for people to feel motivated and focus on something for extended periods of time. Parents also sometimes do not trust children to try things on their own – and so they become less confident.

• At school, you are expected to learn set content for the sake of sitting exams, and you are expected to attend classes at set times for set subjects – and there is now a swing towards a school system built around a narrow vision of efficiency. After Bush signed No Child Left Behind, there was a rise in standardised testing, and attention problems diagnosed in children increased by 22 percent over the following four years.

• ‘Our schools allow kids less exercise… [and] less play… create more anxiety, because of the frenzy of tests… [and there are lack of] conditions where kids can find intrinsic motivation and develop mastery’ (Hari 2022, p. 250).

• In Massachussetts, because of some parents’ dissatisfaction with their kids’ schooling, there was a school constructed that had no teachers, no classes, no tests and no curriculum – Sudbury Valley School. At the school, the kids are given autonomy to decide what they want to learn and how to spend their time. Kids age four to eleven spend most time with elaborate games where they ‘learn problem solving, conflict resolution, creativity’ while older students learn things of interest in groups. Hannah, one of the students at the time, explains that ‘I don’t feel as much pressure to learn every single fact’ (Hari 2022, p. 252).

• Studies on alumni from the school showed that 50 percent of them went onto higher education and found employment in a career they were interested in that earned them a living – including business, arts, science, medicine, and skilled trades. The likelihood of these kids going to higher education was higher than kids educated through the traditional system.

• The effectiveness of Sudbury lied in how it takes advantage of (and acknowledges) how children naturally learn. While the parents of these kids are richer (which may be attributable to their success), a study reinforces that learning through play helps kids be smarter – a study on rats showed that rats that had play time with other rats were more curious and stronger problem solvers.

• Research shows that ‘kids at more progressive schools are more likely to retain what they’ve learned in the long run, more likely to want to carry on learning, and more likely to be able to apply what they’ve learned to new problems’ (Hari 2022, p. 255).

• Finland has the most successful schools in the world and the most progressive school systems – kids start school at age 7, classes run between 9am to 2pm, there are no homework/tests, and there is free play during school hours by law. Only 0.1 percent of children in Finland have attention problems.

If you are interested in getting yourself a copy or learn more about the book, click here.

Interested in reading more? See my notes for the Conclusion.