Long before I had kids, I was together with a wonderful man from Denmark.

We met in grad school in the Midwest.   He was getting a master’s in P.E., and helped out with the university’s men’s and women’s swim teams.  He once accompanied a busload of swimmers on their way to spring training.

“The trip was dreary,” he later explained.  “The whole way down to Florida and back, all the swimmers did was watch videos, one right after another.”

“So?” I said.  “I would, too, on such a long bus ride.”

“They were consuming the films like drive-thru cheeseburgers.”

It was a funny remark at the time, but it stayed with me.  Consuming media like drive-thru cheeseburgers. How American is that?  But he was right.   A good film always has an impact on the viewer.  A good film warrants time for reflection.  A good film leads to discussion.  But how can there be those things on a trip like that?

What stayed with me, too, was that nobody except him had a problem with the demand for that endless sequence of unrelated films.

Why do we consume movies like cheeseburgers?

He and I went overseas together for a couple of years, and then returned to the U.S.   I got a teaching job at a university, but he was in a bit of limbo because his Danish teaching credentials needed to be converted to ones that would satisfy the state.  In the interim, he got a job as assistant to the kindergarten teacher at a commercial daycare center.

We had cats, not kids.

He often returned from the daycare center with stories about the kids and their parents. Moms and Dads needed to get to work, and so being firm at morning dropoff was a necessary evil.   But some of the dropoffs were no big deal—most kids there actually spent more waking hours each week with the daycare staff than with either of their parents.  Was the world of the daycare center more of a home than their parents could imagine?

After a couple of months working there, he came home and said, “I don’t understand why these people even have children.  They never see them all week.   They just give them dinner and put them to bed.”

“That’s harsh,” I said.

“And all day, we’re supposed to shepherd them from one activity to the next.  I swear, nothing lasts more than twelve minutes.   Right as they’re getting into a game—starting some imaginative play—it’s  Time to line up, kids! Put away whatever you’re playing with and let’s see who can be the quietest. Their day is broken up like that, in little segments—we don’t let them relax.”

“What about the kids who are there from 6 in the morning till 6 at night?”

“That’s exactly my point.”

In Denmark, where he and I lived for one year, I had a temporary cook’s job at a private kindergarten.   Starting at eight, I had to prep homemade muesli and then get going on making lunch from scratch for 75 kids.  My shift ended once I’d served the lunch and done the kitchen cleanup.

The school had a wide hallway with many tall, narrow lockers.  I eventually saw what they were for:   the children, dressed in their nice clothes, would step out of their indoor shoes and into thin snowsuit-type coveralls made of cotton.  They’d zip them up then step into rubber boots.  It was recess, but much more than that:  Kids played outside for an hour and a half to two hours, even in most versions of the Danish rain.   They’d then come in, get out of their suits, and wash hands for lunch.

An hour and a half straight where kids could play in and around trees, study the sky, and figure their world out for themselves.

I want a world where stories are shared, not consumed.  Where a child having time with his family is a plus, not a thing “holding my career back.”   I sent my two boys to daycare, not knowing what else to do.  Wish I’d been more creative.  Because what the Danish guy taught me is:   Why did I have them, anyway, if I choose to warehouse their childhoods in institutions, as my society’s norms seem to dictate that I do?

I question myself now.  My motives.  My goals.  The limits of my imagination.

I question authority.  I especially question it in the schools, even the expensive ones.   I want children who can relax, be outside for their learning in all kinds of weather, and have enough time in the week to pursue independent interests. Understanding the Danish world view led me to these insights.