I recently had the pleasure of finishing an intriguing book, What Sheep Think About the Weather: How to Listen to What Animals are Trying to Say, by journalist Amelia Thomas. It is in the spirit of Ed Yong’s book An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, but it is also a year-long account of her life among animals and humans on a farm, in the spirit of James Rebanks’s The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape, and many other chronicles of a year. Thomas digests a lot of scientific studies and puts them in conversation with her own experience, as well as consultation with various types of experts.
The whole book is thought-provoking, but here I want to mention only two chapters with profound implications for human learning: Chapter 8, “‘Happy Them Up’: How to Listen Through Humor, Fun, and the Biology of Joy,” and Chapter 9, “Training the Untrainable: How to Listen When Animals Say No.”
These two chapters also have implications for the crisis currently facing virtually every educator: what do we do about Generative AI?
I quote below at length from the book because I want you to hear “learner” every time you read “dog” or “horse” or “sheep” or “bumblebee.”
All these living beings enjoy and demonstrate positive effects when they have greater autonomy, as stated in Self-Determination Theory and affective neuroscience. Read on to learn more about this.
In “‘Happy them Up,’” we learn about the power of joy—biologically motivated and visible—to motivate animals such as goats and cows and sheep, who—like humans—experience “emotional contagion” such as yawning when they see others yawn. They express happiness through play.
Bumblebees play.
Rats like to be tickled. They laugh.
In “Training the Untrainable,” Thomas challenges the dominant paradigm of how to “train” (i.e. “control”) animals, such as but not only dogs.
Mostly the familiar method is to reward and punish: use harsh, dominating language, reward with praise and treats for desired behaviors, and the like. Anyone who has ever taken their dog to obedience training knows the drill.
But in a profoundly unlike paradigm, she learned to “be with” animals, such as abused horses. Rather than trying to show them who’s boss, she learned to let them choose. And what they often chose was play, joy, exploration, resulting in cooperation.
Thomas cites laboratory research showing that rats and bees will often choose the harder, but more challenging-and-interesting, method of procuring food, rather than just eating it even if it’s available.
As Alfie Kohn wrote more than a quarter-century ago, even “rewards” punish.
Self-determination theory argues that one of the primary dimensions of motivation is autonomy. (The other two are competence and relatedness.)
Neuroscientist Jaan Panksepp shows that SEEKING is a feature of the animal kingdom. His affective neuroscience has held up well as explaining emotional systems.
And yet we are so familiar with the notion of domination that it’s counterintuitive to do anything else.
“‘Generally…you get yeses by being fun and by building your relationship through training,’” animal trainer Shawna Karrash tells Thomas. “‘But the nos are where your human learning happens’” (p. 211).
When we listen to students’ resistance, we too learn.
Thomas goes to a display of birds of prey that uses a completely unconventional approach and permits the owls, falcons, and raptors to say no (p. 213). “‘Every action we ask of our birds,’” says Naomi Johns, manager of the Bird of Prey Project, “‘is voluntary; everything from stepping on a weighing scale to going out to lead a display’” (p. 214). They permit the birds to have daily time to fly without supervision.
“If the bird is out flying free, there’s absolutely nothing you can do if he decides ‘That’s it. Goodbye. I’m done here.’ The relationship has to be strong and built on trust. And trust starts with respecting their decision to say no.” (p. 216)
They have never lost a bird.
Thomas visits others, tries this constructivist approach with chickens, dogs, pigs, horses. It is all founded in what she calls, following Panksepp, “the biology of joy” (p. 230), the set of relationships, fun, and play, that all beings seek.
Okay, the implications for education write themselves, right?
Choices, the ability to say no, play, mutuality, activities done for their own sake—these motivate animals and insects.
Yet so much of education is essentially brute force: “Do this boring, meaningless activity because I am ordering you to, or else!”
Thomas hears the conclusion from Pilley Bianchi, who is a musician, author, and dog trainer.
“Play…whether it’s with your animals or your kids, is innately reinforcing and second to none at building your bond… ‘Dogs and other large species play in the wild, with big, elaborate movements that could attract predators and expend energy they might need to save. So why do they do it? Because it feels good, in the joy of the moment.’”(p. 195)
Often we ask dogs [and kids and other students!] to do things they’re not so fond of, but with play, your dog is doing something they like. So pay attention to what makes them tick, and build on that. If they come to find you, it’s like your kid pulling on your sleeve: Don’t ignore them. Ask what they want.’” (p. 195)
When educators say we need to “meet students where they are,” it doesn’t mean to remain there, to lower standards, to pander, but to build on their own desires—such as curiosity. (This is apparently a controversial view.)
Thomas has a traumatized Icelandic horse she’d been trying to work with. (“Trauma-informed teaching” recognizes that many students arrive with their own past trauma, not all disclosed to faculty.) Using the ideas of choice and play, she invents some playful interactions, and her horse Andvari responds.
“It’s not, I’m confident, just about the rewards. They aren’t impressive, simply, praise and scratches and plain old hay, all of which he gets anyway. Free from halters and lead ropes, he can leave our play sessions at any moment to munch from a bag of identical hay always hanging in the shelter.
“So why does he do it? For the feel-good factor, I believe: Panksepp’s ‘biology of joy.’ And perhaps due to contra-freeloading, a term coined in 1963 by psychologist Glen Jensen to describe how many animals prefer to make an effort to obtain food rather than simply receive that food ‘for free.’” (p. 199
Jensen “gave two hundred rats the choice between accessing food in a bowl or the same stuff from a pedal-operated dispenser that the rat had to push a random number of times—from forty to a whopping 1,280.
“The rats overwhelmingly chose the pedal.” (p. 200)
This has to do with Panksepp’s SEEKING system: urge for play, desire to hunt or forage.
“Birds, I conclude, sing for joy, just as baby goats bounce, bees play with balls, rats like tickling, cows watch sunsets, sheep enjoy company and big red horses fetch sticks.” (p. 206)
What do students do for joy?
How do we observe students to see what they enjoy, sit with them, meet them there, and build on this? How do we construct activities and settings where they feel free to choose, and find inherently rewarding work and effortful play?
I have been spending decades trying to figure this out for my own courses.
There is a network of schools, especially the Sudbury schools, founded on principles of autonomy and choice (“self-directed, democratic schools”), and there are forest kindergartens where young children direct their own learning through physical exploration.
“But won’t the kids just do nothing all day?”
It turns out, this is not what they choose to do.
It rats chose to work for their food rather than just going to get it, and if horses remain in playing-and-training sessions rather than going to get the freely available hay, can’t we believe that students will work for their learning?
In the world of transactional schoolishness where the goals are grades, points, and credentials, in a system of coercion and control, of course force and threats would lead many students to take the easy path and outsource artifacts to GenAI, if they can get away with it.
So our challenge, fellow educators, is this: How do we make the enjoyable, effortful learning itself the goal? How do we create settings that will provide opportunities for the biology of joy?
Many of us have about a month to ask this question, before we return to accompany our learners in their own adventures in exercising competence in their lives.
If animal “trainers” can back off a little, surely we human coaches can too?
