More than 50 students from the Escola Municipal Jose Calil Filho, an elementary school in Macae (about four hours north of Rio de Janerio) cram two-to-a-seat in a steamy classroom.  It is the day before summer (and Christmas) break in Brazil and the tiny classroom is about to burst with excitement.   These students, ranging in age from 8-11, are here to listen to a lady from the U.S. talk about something called “living systems”.

Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?

I would have thought so, but I was that lady and I couldn’t have been more impressed by the beautiful minds that greeted me that morning.

With students, teachers and SEED volunteers in Macae

I was there to pilot a workshop for SEED that integrated three “literacies”:  systems, science and self-knowledge.  Despite the steamy conditions, the students were curious, attentive and ready to learn.

Showing a straight line of causality (front row) and closed loops (second row)

Working in groups of three to four, the student-detectives were tasked with figuring out the connections, some obvious and some hidden, in a farm setting (using a systems playkit).  Many students were surprised to discover, for instance, the central role chickens can play in the health of the cows and the pasture.

There’s much to report from that December workshop (you can read more about it here) but for readers of this blog I have to report an observation that continues to fascinate and challenge me:

When asked to show the interconnections on a farm (what influenced what), some students, seemingly regardless of age and gender, laid out a straight line of cause and effect (see picture above), while others (see the second row) created twisty, curvy connections that, occasionally, looped back on themselves (what we would call a feedback loop).  (To learn about feedback loops in farm settings, see the Healthy Chickens, Healthy Pastures Curriculum Guide).

Badgered by Bateson

I remember being a little annoyed by Gregory Bateson’s claim that: “Adults have a chronic inability to understand cyclical, patterned phenomena such as interpersonal relationships and a variety of biological processes.”

“Chronic inability”.  Really?   After investigating children’s and adult’s intuitive understandings of complex systems for the past 15 years,  I’ve concluded that Bateson was on to something.   Deep misconceptions about the dynamics of complex systems — whether the focus is climate, food, energy, obesity, or the environment — do exist, even among highly educated adults (see my research with  John Sterman and colleagues, and Harvard’s Understanding of Consequence Project, for a multitude of examples). In my own research, I found that a significant number of students and adults used “open-loop” or one-way causal thinking when “closed-loop” causality or feedback was present, for instance, in situations involving predator-prey relationships  or savings accounts.

Caution:  Straight Line Thinking Can Be Dangerous

These deep misconceptions can be dangerous. In the natural world, we know that health and renewal occur through closed-loop cycles  – water, oxygen, nitrogen, even solar.  Yet when we disrupt these natural cycles*, we see big consequences — famine, flooding, and more.  And then there is policy resistance, when the solutions to problems often make the problem worse. Think road building programs meant to reduce congestion that end up increasing traffic, delays and pollution.  Or flood control efforts such as levees and dams that prevent the natural dispersion of excess water and so have led to more floods. John Sterman, who gives us these examples, argues that “policy resistance arises because we  do not understand the full range of feedbacks operating in the system.”

The costs of fixing any one these problems is high.  The cost of learning about cycles and feedback is low.

Back to the question of loop and lines.  What led some students to straight lines and others to loops?   I don’t have the answers yet but I’m hoping there are others out there who will think about this question with me.  In the meantime, I’m going back to George Richardson’s Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory for inspiration.

Please be in touch.  I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

Loops…

…vs. lines

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NOTES:  *For example, urban sprawl and the paving over of wetlands, grasslands and forests often disrupts nutrient, animal and water cycles.  Ground that is unpaved absorbs water and stores it for use by plants.  With more pavement, less water is absorbed by the ground which means there is less water for plants to absorb.

The big, black spider with the blinking eyes is still up on our front lawn and my Day of the Dead “witch” still hangs on my front door.
They’re already selling candy canes in the grocery store.  Isn’t Thanksgiving next?  When I pass  the egg nog and “Christmas Blend” coffee, instead of feeling cheery, I feel a rumble in my stomach.  It’s a mix between dread and fear that even if I start now,  I just won’t get it all done in time.

Then I remember last year’s holiday “experiment” and I relax.  There’s hope!

Last year,  I realized that vacations helped to calm the jangly nerves of my family and give a boost to my over-worked husband, but they weren’t enough.  We needed a good dose of what my friend  Sara Schley calls Radical Renewal (and what Joe Lieberman calls “The Gift of Rest).*  Other than through sleep, how did I and my family renew ourselves? It was a good question.  So, I decided to try an experiment:  I’d go “merrily unplugged” — no computer, no e-mails — between December 23^rd, my husband’s birthday and my birthday, December 31st.

Before I logged off, I quickly answered the most important e-mails, cleaned off my desk, mailed out the bills.  I had fun thinking up and “Out of Office” message (which I found out later was source of a lot of interest, imitation and consternation).  When I finally turned the computer OFF (not on SLEEP), I felt like I was closing up a summer home for the winter, turning off the pipes so they wouldn’t burst in my absence.

I quickly concluded that this was a big,  adventure.  The last time I went unplugged like this was when my babies were born.   I’ll always remember and cherish that cocoon-like state that emerged as each baby came home:  the noise of the outside world kept at bay, the magic of this new human being our only focus.

Would I be able to reclaim some of the insulated feeling?

Could I actually resist logging in?  Could I step off that well-worn path to my computer and back, the one I probably walk 10-20 times a day “to check”?

The good news is, I did resist.  But it wasn’t easy.  For the first 48 hours, I felt twitchy, my own version of EAW, e-mail addiction withdrawal.  In the end, I found it easiest to stay out of my office.  As my nervous system began to settle, I watched what was happening around me.  I sat down on the sofa one after to write Christmas cards, and stayed there. There was no “just a second, I’ll be write back” to check my e-mail.  I just sat.  I noticed my three children, ages 5, 9 and 12, gravitate to the sofa, and stayed, orbiting in and out of my bit of celestial space.  My typical restless, chattering, list-making mind – what the Buddhists call “Monkey Mind”–  began to settle.  By the third day, I was giddy with a sense of presence, as if my whole center of gravity shifted my head to heart and belly.

Just as I was beginning to feel the loud silence from the outside world, and I began to have a sinking feeling that my “system” wasn’t working, I started to receive a trickle of phone calls:

“Is Ted available for a birthday party tomorrow?  I saw your message so thought I’d better call.”

“There’s an illustrator I want you to meet.  When you get back on-line, check out his website.”

The folks who needed to get in touch with me, did.  The e-mails that weren’t urgent, just accumulated, like letters in my mailbox. At first I dreaded thinking about the number of accumulated e-mails, but then I reminded myself that if there was anything urgent, they’d call me.  This unplugged idea was working!

Six days in a flaw in my system showed up:  my husband took my two boys skiing in a low-cell coverage area in Vermont.  Essentially, we were both off the electronic highway — me intentionally, him unintentionally – for two days.  Anyone with kids’ sports schedules knows, that the schedules can change on a moments notice, and the way you learn about those changes is through e-mail.  So, neither one of us got the coach’s e-mail until it was too late.

So that one fell through the cracks (although the coach could have called).

When the New Year began, my patience level was way up, my anxiety level was way down and my capacity for deep thought was back again.  Did going unplugged work for me?  You bet.  Getting some good sleep helped too.

Now we’re headed into the holidays again, and it feels good to know I’ll be going unplugged again soon.   But I also realize, that just as Sara and her family unplug for Shabbat on Friday night, there are more frequent ways I can my family can unhook, unplug, and just relax and renew.

As we head toward the holidays, the kids are pushing to get Mom an iPhone.

I’ll become more efficient, yes, but…I’ll let you know how that one goes.

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*I could write a whole  blog about Edith Cobb, (b. 1895), another inspiration for building renewal into our every day lives.

In her book, The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, Cobb writes of the body’s natural “homeostatic wisdom”. I learned about homeostasis in school, but never thought to look for the wisdom in it.  Cobb referred to those cyclical “behavioral patterns of regulation and integration.” (P. 43), such as respiration, that allows us to maintain equilibrium. It was this state of equilibrium that allows species survive and thrive.  Maintaining equilibrium means a constant set of adjustments.  We know this well when we think about how a thermostat works.  
If the temperature in a house is too cold, the thermostat will turn on the furnace, seeking to reach the desired temperature (or goal) as set on the thermostat.  The furnace raises the temperature until the goal is reached and eventually the furnace shuts off.

This “self-regulating” or balancing system maintains a goal, in this case, a steady temperature in a room.  If we look at ourselves, the process of maintaining our temperature is also a self-regulating system.   We shiver when we’re cold to warm up our muscles and sweat when we’re hot to cool them down, all the while trying to achieve a steady temperature.  So, self-regulating or balancing feedback loops are goal-seeking but they also bring renewal.  Think about the dynamics of stress and exercise.  For many people, exercise is a helpful way to manage stress.  As stress levels kick in, we exercise, with exercise, stress goes down (of course, there are many folks who exercise regularly whether they’re feeling stressed or not).

Now my question is:  Where are the built-in adjustments that help me and my family to maintain equilibrium? Where are the cycles of renewal in my own life?

How do we nurture children’s capacity to “think about systems” through everyday conversations and activities?

Many of you know I’ve been asking this question for a long time.

These days, I’m thrilled to be part of a movement to help children develop “systems literacy“, “systems thinking dispositions“, and other systems thinking “habits of mind” (and here).   Today, children and the adults who teach them can learn to think about and work with systems through camps like Camp Snowball and Design Camp, through innovative learning programs from SEED, the Institute of Play (see related blog) and Lego Serious Play and from systems educators at The Waters Foundation, the Creative Learning Exchange and The Cloud Institute, by reading blogs by Beth Sawin, Tim Joy, Tom Fiddaman (especially when he talks about his kids), Pegasus and many more (tell me who I’ve missed!)

I now have to add my most recent book – Connected Wisdom: Living Stories about Living Systems (SEED/Chelsea Green)*–  to the list of good things that encourage systems literacy.

I found out today that the book and children’s CD won at the New York Book Festival. (The CD won last month at the San Francisco book festival).

That’s good news!

What may be even better news is that we now get to put those little gold “winner” stickers on the book and the CD.

Sure, it’s good to get the recognition (who couldn’t use a pat on the back), but mostly, it’s good because people will be pick up the book or CD, and share it with their children.

Now that’s the really good news! As our children come to appreciate and see living systems in their everyday lives, we can confirm for them what they already know:  that their world is interconnected and dynamic, a tightly woven web of interrelated elements involving people, places, events and nature and, as such, is indeed purposeful and meaningful.

My deepest gratitude goes to Simone Amber, who listened to (and acted on!) my crazy idea to use folk tales as as a way to learn about the principles of living systems.  And to all who have been on this journey with me for past fifteen years, thank you for your continued encouragement.  It has made a world of difference to me.  For those of you who are new, welcome!

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*The Connected Wisdom book and CD is a collaborative effort with three first-class artists - Milton Glaser, recipient of the National Medal of Arts is the book designer, Guy Billout is the award-winning illustrator and Courtney Campbell is the wildly talented children’s singer/songwriter.   Funding for Connected Wisdom was provided by SEED. It is currently translated into nine languages including English, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish,  Russian, Dutch and Hungarian.

This is what the poet Judy Sorum Brown has to say about the book:

“Artfully, beautifully, playfully, seriously, clearly Linda Booth Sweeney invites us to join her in a deeper understanding of the profound principles of living systems. Tapping wisdom connected to many cultures and many times, Linda weaves memorable simple stories into a tapestry holding enormous complexity.   A book that is at once a work of art, a representation of science, and an invitation to think more deeply and playfully, Connected Wisdom is a gift. Whether the reader is six or sixty, it matters not.  These pages open us more fully to the world around us.”

Ok. Just one more, from the children’s troubadour and author, Raffi:

“The moment you touch and open this book, its wisdom is evident. This is the wisdom of wholes, of belonging, and connecting the dots to see the richer tapestry of life.”

To hear a preview of the Connected Wisdom CD, click here.  Also for the academic-types among you (I’m one of them), my endnotes for Connected Wisdom can be found here.

For teachers:

Earth science and other educators looking to effectively engage young people while meeting state and national standards will find the Connected Wisdom book and CD invaluable resource that is easily linked to curriculum standards. For example, National Science Education Standards call for students in grades five through eight to study earth and life systems, including natural cycles, natural cycles, nature awareness, habitats and community (specifically, dependency of plants and animals on their habitat and each other) and, human influence on habitats (and in Canada, standards 4s1 and 4s3).