The Bow Pulled Back

Elastic Potential Energy and the Child

It is another beautiful sunny day in Colorado today, and I am out walking, and electric bicycles keep passing me, and they look effortless. There is no effort observable. You can cycle and then turn the electric on when you get tired, and I suppose that is very comfortable. We get very used to our comforts, especially as we get older. When you are younger you might want the exercise, you might want to optimize your exercise, but later you might just want the ease. And I find myself looking at all the technologies that surround us and thinking that we are not just living with technology, we are being faced with it, confronted by it.

In the past there were massive technological shifts, the machine age, the printing press, the industrial revolution, airplanes, electricity. But most people were farming or living ordinary lives and these inventions were happening in pockets, isolated groups of thinkers and inventors. The Wright brothers, Edison, Tesla, all of these people working on inventions, and often many people working on the same invention at the same time. And then the question becomes not just who invented something, but who pushed it through, who monetized it, who controlled it, whose version made it into the world. Because invention and monetization seem to go hand in hand. There is always the invention and then there is the plan behind it, the control behind it, the push behind it, the advantage behind it.

You look at electricity and you wonder what would have happened if Tesla’s ideas had fully gone through, universal power, universal electricity, energy available everywhere. Maybe that will still come, maybe at some point people will suddenly discover universal energy and everyone will be excited, but it might have been possible a long time ago. History is not just the history of invention, it is the history of which inventions were allowed through and which were buried, shelved, purchased, hidden, or controlled. And that happens in cars, in mechanics, in medicine, in technology, in everything. There are always agendas, always people wanting to be faster, further, first, richer, more powerful.

So then I start wondering where that urge comes from. Where does that urge to be the best, the most, the fastest, the richest, the one in control come from. And I often think about the idea of pulling a bow back. When you pull a bow and arrow back, you stretch the string tighter and tighter and tighter you store elastic potential energy, and when you release it, the arrow goes far and fast in the opposite direction. So I wonder if human behavior is like that. If a child is controlled a lot, restricted a lot, limited a lot, hurt a lot, embarrassed a lot, then that energy is being pulled back like the bow, and eventually it releases in the opposite direction. The child who had no control wants control. The child who was powerless craves power. The child who was silenced wants to dominate. The child who was embarrassed wants to be embarrass. The energy goes somewhere.

And that makes me think about education and childhood and whether we are pulling the bow back on millions of children without realizing it. Because we say we want innovation and invention and leadership and creativity and responsibility, but we build systems where children are always on the back foot: You are late. Where is your homework. Why did you not do this. Who were you talking to. Put that away. Be quiet. Stop chewing gum. Sit down. Face forward. Why are you upset. Why did you say that. And so child learns to defend themselves, to be quiet, to not take risks, to not speak, to not volunteer ideas, to not step forward. And then later we say why do they not take responsibility, why are they quiet, why do they not lead, why do they not speak up.

We have created that environment. We have created a system where children are always in defense. Always waiting to be caught out. Always waiting for the bell. Always moving when told. Always sitting when told. Always speaking when told. Always being measured and graded and compared. And then we are surprised when they become adults who do not take responsibility or who only do the minimum or who try to game the system because they themselves have been pawns in the game of school.

School structure itself is made up. The bell is made up. The schedule is made up. The grading is made up. The idea that everyone must learn the same thing at the same time in the same way is made up. Even Montessori structure is made up, but the difference is that Montessori tries to give children time, choice, movement, responsibility, and ownership over their work. In a Montessori classroom, especially at elementary, the children know the curriculum, they can see the work on the shelves, they are given lessons, they can choose, they can plan, they can present, they can share their ideas, and homework is often not graded because the work is shared and discussed and presented and becomes part of the community knowledge rather than a private transaction between child and educator.

But even Montessori has been seduced in many places by grades and homework and conventional systems because the pressure of the larger system is so strong. And so we are in a very confusing moment right now because technology is accelerating faster than education can respond. AI is changing assessment completely because any take home assignment can be generated, any essay can be written, any answer can be produced. Assessment credibility is collapsing, and schools will react in predictable ways. They will remove phones. They will remove computers. They will go back to paper and pencil. Some will go completely Luddite for a period of time. Others will try gamified testing, Minecraft testing, subliminal testing through games, testing through play, testing through data collection without children even realizing they are being tested.

But children are clever. Children will always find the boundaries of the system they are in, and then learn how to beat it, defy it. I always call them smart rats, because I think I was one. You learn what you need to do, what you do not need to do, how little you can do and still succeed, how to optimize the system. And if we build systems based on control and measurement, we will produce system optimizers, not responsible human beings.

And so the question becomes not what technology will do to education, but what kind of human beings we need to develop in the age of SI. Where in education do we teach responsibility for your own life. Where in education do we teach that you are responsible for how you respond to the world, how you treat people, how you use your time, how you think, how you speak, how you act. Where is that in the curriculum. Because that might be the most important lesson of all.

I saw families outside today, cycling, playing racquetball, walking together, being together. That is responsibility too. Responsibility for connection, for health, for time together, for being human together. And for every family outside there are probably many inside on phones or screens, and it is hard for all of us because the world feels confusing and fast and uncertain and AI is moving quickly and we do not know what school should look like anymore and we do not know what assessment should look like anymore and we do not know what jobs will look like anymore.

But maybe the question is not what the world will look like, but what kind of people we want to be in that world. Because the monks who walked from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. did not control the world, but they controlled their intention and their discipline and their commitment. Everything around them could be chaotic, but they walked. They did what they said they would do. That level of responsibility and intention might be more important than any technology we invent.

From the Montessori lens, the child is not a future employee or a future test score or a future data point. The child is a human being constructing themselves, and the environment either helps that construction or damages it. The prepared environment is not about materials, it is about freedom with responsibility, choice with consequence, independence with community. It is about allowing the child to experience themselves as capable, responsible, thoughtful, and connected.

From the child’s lens, the world probably looks very confusing right now. Adults are worried about AI, worried about money, worried about the future, worried about jobs, worried about politics, worried about technology, worried about everything. And children are watching us and learning how to respond to uncertainty by watching us. They are learning whether we panic or whether we think. Whether we blame or whether we take responsibility. Whether we control or whether we collaborate. Whether we compete or whether we build community.

So maybe the real curriculum for the future is responsibility, attention, discipline, community, creativity, and ethical thinking. Maybe the real prepared environment is a world where children are not always on the back foot, not always in defense, not always waiting to be caught out, but instead are invited into partnership, into conversation, into responsibility, into building the future with us rather than being controlled into it.

Because if we keep pulling the bow back on children, the arrow will eventually fly, and it will fly far and fast, and we may not like the direction it goes. But if we instead teach responsibility, community, and common good early, then maybe the inventions of the future will not just be profitable or powerful, but beneficial to humanity as a whole.

And maybe that is the real question of education in the age of AI, not what machines can do, but what humans should become.

If you wish to follow the research and thinking that inform this work, the books Mapping Montessori Materials for AI Competency Development and Montessori & AI -Volume I are available through my website, katebroughton.com.