My son started kindergarten last week, and wow I’m having all the feels. I’m excited to see him taking a big step into a new experience, and I’m so proud of him for embracing the challenge. I’m also having flashbacks to my time in kindergarten, and they’ve been super intense for me.
I remember having panic attacks in kindergarten, and having meltdowns as well. And I remember being physically restrained by two daycare workers while having a meltdown. They were moving me to another room since I’d aged out, but my best friend was a bit younger so he wasn’t moving yet. I have a vivid memory of the meltdown I had when they moved me. I was a wild animal in that moment. I was in fight or flight, and restraining me was definitely inducing me to fight.
I also remember one of those workers becoming an enemy to me. I had crossed her somehow — maybe during the meltdowns — and she made it clear to me I was under her control. It was surreal and nightmarish to be in a power struggle with an authority figure like that.
School soon became imbued with that sense of panic for me. It was a system designed to reward compliance, and I had to dissociate to quell the panic I experienced in order to comply. I didn’t have a release valve at home because my meltdowns weren’t welcome there either. So I was containing a lot of energy, and rarely if ever getting the chance to release it.
As soon as I realized I was PDA a couple years ago, the meltdowns and panic made sense. I was desperate for a sense of control, and I had very little agency to achieve it. The panic response was overwhelming, and I had to turn the volume way down on those panic sensations in my body. That also meant I turned the volume down on all sensations, and all emotions.
I learned to channel those emotions through art, and dance, and music, and theatre. When I was in high school, I had the lead role in a musical. I was a good leading man, but I struggled with singing on key, and on rhythm. I was teased mercilessly for it too. Now in retrospect I see a kid on the spectrum, doing everything he can to grow into the role, and running into limitations of his social understanding, and his body. It was incredibly hard to stay regulated in that environment. As soon as the musical was over i got sick and lost my voice. I held it together as long as I needed to, but as soon as the pressure was off, I kind of fell apart.
The school system wasn’t designed for my style of learning. I get activated by big questions, big problems. And I work systematically to solve them, and to build tools to help me solve them. I don’t retain arbitrary information very well, so learning things in class that aren’t needed for my current interests is a huge waste of time. I just forget it all quickly. I might as well be learning about something I actually need to understand better. it’s the process of learning and integrating that learning into my life that’s valuable. The specific information I’m ingesting is not as important as the process of discovery and problem solving.
Put another way, I have to engage a chase reflex inside me in order to get activated. I’m not a knowledge worker. I’m a knowledge hunter.
I’m not a knowledge worker. I’m a knowledge hunter.
If I were to design my ideal school system from the ground up, it would look very different from the schools of today. School wouldn’t be about accumulating knowledge. It would be about asking great questions, and being inspired to explore them.
I’m activated by a well-formed question. Questions don’t specify how to get the answer. They just exist as propositions, and it’s up to you to engage with it in the best way for you.
Questions are age-inclusive. Kids naturally ask questions as soon as they can use language. Their questions come from a genuine love for discovering the world. When my son asks me a question like “daddy how tall is that building?”, I don’t try to give him an answer. I celebrate the question, and I ask him more questions. “Huh ya I wonder! How many floors does the building have?”, “How tall each floor you think?” My counter-questions are illustrating to him that there’s a process you can use to figure out the answer. You can break it down into simpler pieces that might be more tractable.
When my son asks me a question … I ask him more questions
I would have loved it if my school system could follow me as I explored something I was intrinsically interested in. Offering me people I could contact for help and collaboration. Guidance on scoping that specific problem and breaking it down. Being a force multiplier for my natural, instinctive hunt for answers.
I would have loved it if my school system could follow me as I explored something I was intrinsically interested in.
The technology exists now to approach learning this way. We can have a video chat with people all over the world in an instant, and we have all the content we need on the internet. We have social media for quickly forming collaboration networks. And we have a world full of impossible problems to solve.
As soon as you reframe education as a real-time activity in this way, it becomes generally accessible to everyone. I have to learn constantly for my job in software, because the tools and techniques I use are constantly morphing into more modernized ones. I don’t need to get a PhD in computer science. I need practical, on the ground, in the trenches support for solving impossible problems. Problems that don’t have an obvious, clean solution. Real problems are unruly blobs of confusion until you apply a framework for solving them and using it systematically.
What if education is just a hashtag? I like “Q is for Qurious” … #qurious.
Someone can post a question to #qurious on Insta or SnapChat or TikTok or Facebook, and spark a discussion. Maybe the question inspires another question. Or maybe someone wants to show how to answer the question. Maybe they’re 5 years old and answer is hilarious, or maybe they’re 16 and it’s a serious attempt to answer it factually.
The internet is framed as a knowledge graph. I think modern education is rooted in the question graph: the open problems we need to solve.
I think modern education is rooted in the question graph: the open problems we need to solve.
And one of those problems is how to make education inclusive, including for kids like me.
Q is for #Qurious
Q is for #Qurious
Q is for #Qurious
My son started kindergarten last week, and wow I’m having all the feels. I’m excited to see him taking a big step into a new experience, and I’m so proud of him for embracing the challenge. I’m also having flashbacks to my time in kindergarten, and they’ve been super intense for me.
I remember having panic attacks in kindergarten, and having meltdowns as well. And I remember being physically restrained by two daycare workers while having a meltdown. They were moving me to another room since I’d aged out, but my best friend was a bit younger so he wasn’t moving yet. I have a vivid memory of the meltdown I had when they moved me. I was a wild animal in that moment. I was in fight or flight, and restraining me was definitely inducing me to fight.
I also remember one of those workers becoming an enemy to me. I had crossed her somehow — maybe during the meltdowns — and she made it clear to me I was under her control. It was surreal and nightmarish to be in a power struggle with an authority figure like that.
School soon became imbued with that sense of panic for me. It was a system designed to reward compliance, and I had to dissociate to quell the panic I experienced in order to comply. I didn’t have a release valve at home because my meltdowns weren’t welcome there either. So I was containing a lot of energy, and rarely if ever getting the chance to release it.
As soon as I realized I was PDA a couple years ago, the meltdowns and panic made sense. I was desperate for a sense of control, and I had very little agency to achieve it. The panic response was overwhelming, and I had to turn the volume way down on those panic sensations in my body. That also meant I turned the volume down on all sensations, and all emotions.
I learned to channel those emotions through art, and dance, and music, and theatre. When I was in high school, I had the lead role in a musical. I was a good leading man, but I struggled with singing on key, and on rhythm. I was teased mercilessly for it too. Now in retrospect I see a kid on the spectrum, doing everything he can to grow into the role, and running into limitations of his social understanding, and his body. It was incredibly hard to stay regulated in that environment. As soon as the musical was over i got sick and lost my voice. I held it together as long as I needed to, but as soon as the pressure was off, I kind of fell apart.
The school system wasn’t designed for my style of learning. I get activated by big questions, big problems. And I work systematically to solve them, and to build tools to help me solve them. I don’t retain arbitrary information very well, so learning things in class that aren’t needed for my current interests is a huge waste of time. I just forget it all quickly. I might as well be learning about something I actually need to understand better. it’s the process of learning and integrating that learning into my life that’s valuable. The specific information I’m ingesting is not as important as the process of discovery and problem solving.
Put another way, I have to engage a chase reflex inside me in order to get activated. I’m not a knowledge worker. I’m a knowledge hunter.
If I were to design my ideal school system from the ground up, it would look very different from the schools of today. School wouldn’t be about accumulating knowledge. It would be about asking great questions, and being inspired to explore them.
I’m activated by a well-formed question. Questions don’t specify how to get the answer. They just exist as propositions, and it’s up to you to engage with it in the best way for you.
Questions are age-inclusive. Kids naturally ask questions as soon as they can use language. Their questions come from a genuine love for discovering the world. When my son asks me a question like “daddy how tall is that building?”, I don’t try to give him an answer. I celebrate the question, and I ask him more questions. “Huh ya I wonder! How many floors does the building have?”, “How tall each floor you think?” My counter-questions are illustrating to him that there’s a process you can use to figure out the answer. You can break it down into simpler pieces that might be more tractable.
I would have loved it if my school system could follow me as I explored something I was intrinsically interested in. Offering me people I could contact for help and collaboration. Guidance on scoping that specific problem and breaking it down. Being a force multiplier for my natural, instinctive hunt for answers.
The technology exists now to approach learning this way. We can have a video chat with people all over the world in an instant, and we have all the content we need on the internet. We have social media for quickly forming collaboration networks. And we have a world full of impossible problems to solve.
As soon as you reframe education as a real-time activity in this way, it becomes generally accessible to everyone. I have to learn constantly for my job in software, because the tools and techniques I use are constantly morphing into more modernized ones. I don’t need to get a PhD in computer science. I need practical, on the ground, in the trenches support for solving impossible problems. Problems that don’t have an obvious, clean solution. Real problems are unruly blobs of confusion until you apply a framework for solving them and using it systematically.
What if education is just a hashtag? I like “Q is for Qurious” … #qurious.
Someone can post a question to #qurious on Insta or SnapChat or TikTok or Facebook, and spark a discussion. Maybe the question inspires another question. Or maybe someone wants to show how to answer the question. Maybe they’re 5 years old and answer is hilarious, or maybe they’re 16 and it’s a serious attempt to answer it factually.
The internet is framed as a knowledge graph. I think modern education is rooted in the question graph: the open problems we need to solve.
And one of those problems is how to make education inclusive, including for kids like me.