What is Meanness? Jumping into the Unknown with Emergent Social Curriculum

So for a while, my assistant teacher and I have been working with our class of 3 and 4 year olds to find ways to solve problems, and to be kind to each other. As is very typical for three and four year olds, however, many children have been experimenting with inclusion and exclusion and what it means to be friends. It seemed like we had been handling the incidents on a case by case basis, often stepping in as adults to resolve the problem. As the teachers thought about this, and how it was affecting the mood of the classroom, we decided to take a new and different approach. We decided to bring the problem to the children, and see if we could investigate the problem. We are calling it: The Meanness Problem. Like many of our projects, this undertaking is not one that we have done before, so we do not have a concrete map of where we are going. Rather we have guiding research questions that we have presented to the children:

What is meanness? How do you know if something is mean? Where is all the meanness coming from? 

We started the project today with a GIANT piece of paper, to symbolize how this was a big big problem. On this paper, we will write our observations about meanness. In our first discussion today, the children sat with rapt attention, and had many ideas about meanness. They clearly had experienced the meanness, and knew many many ways to say mean words. We studiously wrote down the children's ideas. "Meannes is liek when you say, 'You can't come to my birthday party,'" "When you say that you're not my best friend anymore," or "When somebody tells somebody that they are not gong to play cars anymore." They suggested drawing a mean face so we would know what the writing was about, and so we drew a mean face with slanted eyebrows and "mean teeth." We asked them to help us do the research together, and anytime somebody said or did something mean, we would write it on the paper to gather our data on meanness. In our next meeting, we will ask the children how we can learn more about the meanness.

This is a different approach to the social issues of three and four year olds than we as teachers typically take. My assistent and I have had discussions about the best way to talk about this problem with the children, and we have spoken with other educators as well. She is eager to do a corollary niceness project, while I am interested in following the thread of meanness to see if we can uncover more information about where this problem is coming from. We will find ways to pursue both avenues, finding ways to document both the problem, and how the children are thinking about solving it through teamwork, cooperation, and kindness. I want to figure out how they understand the meanness in the room, and how they think that we can dispell it. I want the children to own this problem. Only then can we start to figure out how to get it out. One child said, "Where is all this meanness coming from? It's a mystery!" And there is nothing that this class loves move than a mystery to solve!
As adults, it can feel uncomfortable to dwell on the negative emotions that exclusion in play can bring up for us, and it can be tempting to jump to the opposite of kindness. This exploration of exclusion is a fundemental part of child development, and it feels like we have a group of children with the social intelligence to tackle this problem head on, dealing directly with the "mean" and think about how it is affecting the individuals and the group. We are interested to see where this goes and how the class will figure out how to solve the problem. We also encouraged the families to have conversations with their child about the subject and to share any thoughts that they have with us so we can add it to our research.
What about you, dear reader? Do you remember being mean as a young child? Or someone being mean to you? Can you help us with our research on meanness?