I’m betting you’re a bit puzzled by that title. How can there be “order” in a Nursery School with two classrooms full of 3, 4, 5, and 6-year-olds (and in the case of the Grandson, the latter two ages)? Complete chaos, yes.
Semi-chaos, sure. But “Ordered”? Yes, because of that phrase that Socialists hate: self-interest.
TMEW and I were talking about it after we dropped the Grandson off today for his second to last Friday session of the year. The second to last Friday of being a “pre-schooler” – it’s off to kindergarten next year, and he’ll be on the bus that he’s been excited to watch go by the house in the mornings and afternoons. TMEW and I just look at each other again in the car – just like when the Eldest and Youngest did the same thing 30 odd years ago, the Grandson will be waiting at the end of the driveway, sitting on the railroad tie wall, waiting for the bus to stop and open its doors. But I digress…
Sidenote: “At the end of the Driveway.” My words above brought back memories and a few tears; that was one of my first posts at GraniteGrok after opening our doors. Given that this is Memorial Day weekend, it brought home the Eldest’s, and then the Youngest’s, time in serving our country in uniform. God bless’em all and the families back home, waiting and supporting, and always fearful that they might hear a strange car pull into their driveway with uniformed men slowly getting out of it – a most fearsome Club to be a part of.
So we’ll do it once again – see another child off to the next chapter of their life. But this really isn’t the post I started to write.
Spontaneous Order – the Free Market, where people all act in their own self-interest, communicating and cooperating WITHOUT necessarily knowing the others. Government Order – where decisions are made from afar, and we are just cogs in someone’s idea of a social machine.
Socialists like Berni-Bro Bruce Currie not just HATE the idea of Spontaneous Order. They cannot wrap their heads around the idea that ordinary folks can establish social, financial, and governance models spontaneously.
They believe that SOMEONE (preferably someone like them) be in charge. That the rest of us are like children and have to be led by the nose. How else would “good decisions” be made?
Back to the Nursery School.
BOTH of those, Spontaneous Order and Top-Down Control, were evident all year long for the two different classrooms. Not IN the classroom, FOR the classrooms full of 5 and 6-year-olds with the WuFlu pandemic and its protocols as background.
We had noticed almost all year long that “our” classroom folks were faster at drop-off than “their” classroom. Today was probably the fastest ever: all the cars lined up in the driveway, 10 kids out of their cars with their backpacks on and the go wait with their classmates under the portico as well as the parents got back in the cars and drove away.
Our side: the process started at 9:00 sharp, and the last car (us) was gone at 9:05. And we noted today, just like almost every other day, that the Top-Downers still had 5 or 6 cars waiting to unload as we passed by (different sides of the building).
THEIR process? The teacher would come down the steps from the classroom, approach each car, and THEN get the child out of the vehicle, get parents to sign in the child while remaining in their vehicle, then walk the child up a couple of stairs while the parent drove away. Rinse, repeat. Slow as molasses in January.
Top-down – the teacher HAD to be in charge and HAD to Follow The Plan that was laid down. Status Quo, all year long without variation. One COULD say that it was all about COVID – minimizing infection rates. Or that the teacher didn’t want any amount of chaos from the kids. So, long dismount times at the front end and long re-mounting times at the end of the day.
Back to our side. Our dismounts/remounts started off the same way. And then parents, especially those that had to get to work, started to Spontaneously put their own Order into place. Over time:
- Everyone still parked their cars in a line, but instead of waiting, they got their kids out of the car and stood beside it, waiting for the teacher to come and get the child and then walk them back to the portico.
- Same as #1, but some parents started to walk their kids closer to the portico so as to minimize the teacher walking time going back and forth. It also lessened the time that parents had to wait. But in a spontaneously ordered fashion, one parent/child at a time was at-bat, nobody “on deck.”
- Seeing that this new process was more efficient, parents started that “on deck” process – the next parent/child was moving while the previous one was still signing in.
- Then it became an orderly line while still holding separation.
- Next was the starting of the “car move up” – parents started to move their cars up in line as the early arrivers drove away. The teacher figured this out and got a twofer-signed the moved up child in as she walked the current child to the portico.
- The teacher adapted as well – by now, the kids knew where to stand, so she sent them on their way to stay with the other children while signed in, and any communications with the parent were completed.
And ALL of this happened without any Parent talking to each other, without asking permission from the Teacher; it all happened spontaneously because of self-interest:
I want to get my kid safely there and, once done, get the heck fastest way possible to get on to whatever else I have to do.
Bernie-Bros (and some SJWs) would call that “SELFISH” because not everyone got there at the same time – some folks had an “advantage” and were discriminated FOR and others against.
But the times dropped by about 2/3rds – from 15 minutes to 5 minutes (weather permitting). There were some other changes that happened as well, but the above were the most game-changing.
“Our” Teacher? Sure, she could have stayed pat with The Protocol, but HER self-interest was also served well by this little exercise of freedom and Spontaneous Order: getting the kids checked in and getting them into the classroom. And the side benefits that these now 5 and 6-year-olds, starting the year as 4s and 5s, learned to cooperate with each other and to learn to obey the teachers during the process. And this helped her in the classroom as well.
One By The Plan and the other by maximizing freedom (as much as you can with that aged children) and efficiency by letting people unconsciously cooperate to maximize THEIR self-interests.
Oh, too, the remounts. Most of these kids were still in car seats, and many parents, listening to the latest guidance, were taking their kids’ coats off (even in the cold weather), then putting them into the car and their car seats, and then driving off. That changed as well.
Well, not ALL the parents but about half changed – again, with the kids outside, walked up, sign out, stuffed the kids in the car – and then drove to a part of the parking lot a dozen feet away, parked, and then got the kid into the car or booster seats.
Again, all spontaneous in nature. After we saw one person did it (actually, the wife of the OTHER Co-Founder of GraniteGrok doing bus duty for THEIR Grandson!), we started doing it as well – especially taking off the wet and cold winter gear from playing the snow just before pickup time: into the car, park a bit aways, get dry clothes on, seated safely, and then drove off.
But by moving, it made things faster for EVERYONE – a nursery school version of Fast and Furious for the in and out process.
And on the Top-Downer side, we all noticed that by the time we were all gone, there were more and more cars in their line.
Spontaneous Order – faster because of visual cues, more flexible because of self-interest, and unspoken communications because people can think for themselves.
