REAL LEARNING FOR THE REAL WORLD

Q. Granted, the children are happy at RMS. But the hours in nature and the loving environment are just too idyllic. How will such children ever survive in the real world?

A.  Observing nature’s kingdoms, we see that the higher the intelligence quotient in the animal kingdom, the more likely the offspring enjoy prolonged maternal care and guidance. Elephants lavish tender, loving care on their young. The whole herd celebrates each new birth and greets the newborn. First year calves stay in constant touch with their mother, even walking under her in the traveling herd. A nine year old still spends half the time within a few yards of the mother, 5 or 6 years after weaning.

   Elephants are known for the lifelong bonds of affection that strengthen the herd. Even the group that splinters off to form the nucleus of a new herd retains the sense of kinship. Communicating with calls beyond our ability to hear, the herds approach from miles apart to gather at a familiar watering hole. At the destination, the matriarchs are the first to trumpet an exuberant greeting, and run for the tender trunk caress of a long lost relative.

   While the intelligent matriarch relies on the accuracy of her memory to lead the herd to watering holes, humans have new levels to consider in the guidance of our young. We have been gifted with intelligence that grasps abstract concepts; that includes an imagination capable of conceiving new possibilities; that ponders and reflects on one’s own existence and relationships.

   Human generative intelligence can design and redesign its own social systems. Understandably, the initial approach to schooling was in schoolhouses for learning the three ‘r’s, not otherwise covered in farming or subsistence living. Later two working parents necessitated a place to house and educate children during the day. A century later smartness is often judged by exercise of the memory, accompanied by pride in markers that mean little in the totality of life.  Like muscles that require flexing, invaluable traits that foster high intelligence, including a fertile imagination, enthusiasm for whole brain/body challenges, and the individual will to forge new pathways, atrophy in seated confinement.

   Like baby elephants our children learn best in the livingness of life, encouraged by the whole herd. A new challenge beckons: how to fold the learning of children into the warmth of community, the accessibility of wild nature, and the vitality of meaningful experiences and projects. The goal is to massage vitality into the soul, heart, brain, body intelligence in sync. Atop the graves of grades and scores for children, let new markers measure the system’s proficiency in finding the key to each child’s enthusiasm for a unique, fulfilling path. In this case independently derived goals drive the learning. Coupled with the richness of experiential imprints, the memory becomes a resource for real human brilliance to meet pressing social and ecological challenges.

   Graduates empowered by real learning can greatly impact the real world.

ECO-PSYCHOLOGY AND EMPATHY

Q. My concern is the sense of moral responsibility of children. If they are coddled by adults that don't hold them responsible for their behavior, won't they grow up to be selfish and irresponsible?

A. The innocence of the newborn babe remains indelibly in the depths of the individual through all the stages of childhood and into adulthood.

Eco-psychology harmonizes all aspects of the body/emotion/mind/spirit entity that is the totality of the child. This means that in every interaction with children we are most effective when we speak directly to the energetic heart, which is the interface between the physical being and the spiritual essence.

Recently, due to exclusion from a party, a child retaliated for wounded feelings, by destroying the costly property of another. The teacher requested a meeting with the perpetrator of the violation. Knowing that the only effective instrument of psychological healing is empathy, she proceeded to identify with the pain of exclusion that motivated the child. Sitting at eye level, the expression in the adult’s eyes and the tone of her voice communicated compassion, while her words relayed understanding – in other words, identification with the child’s painful emotions.

At the end of the meeting when gently probed about the incident the child denied culpability, as had been her habit in similar past circumstances. The meeting concluded with a warm hug. Half an hour later the child approached the teacher and admitted her vengeful action. Integrity was empathy’s first victory.

The teacher then requested a meeting between the child, two by-stander accomplices and the person whose property was damaged. The next stage of heart- to-heart dialogue ensued to discover the means for compensation. The meeting that began with quiet hesitancy concluded with enthusiastic planning. Brainstorming was empathy’s next victory.

A unified spirit steered the course until the four girls agreed to set up a cookies and hot chocolate booth to raise money. Mothers joined the collaboration to supply ingredients for baking at home, thermoses and cups for the hot chocolate, and a table for the booth. That Friday in happy camaraderie four eager participants hosted a hot chocolate booth supplied with cookies they had each baked. Unity was empathy’s third victory.

They raised $70.00. Heart-impelled Compensation was empathy’s crowning victory.

Adult admonitions and control measures would more likely have perpetuated hostile division, and grudging compensation. Instead, the healing waters of compassion dissolved disunity in the soil of joyful possibilities.

By feeling into the inner terrain of the child, and with heart-to-heart listening and dialogue, all participants, including the adults, enjoy a return to innocence. Furthermore, when we tune our relationships to beautiful harmonics, we set in motion resonances to reverberate through 7 X 7 generations of similar human challenges.

CANINE COMMUNICATIONS

Q. You advocate relationships that forgo punishments and rewards to choose empathy (compassion + understanding). But isn’t it our duty to teach our children moral values through deserved consequences?

A. At this time of human awakening, science reveals that we collectively participate in quantum communications. Brain-derived coercive manipulations engender power over another’s actions. Yet, the quantum exchanges of the heart empower relationships with the potential to flow together. While the first is dominating and even adversarial, the second engages heart to heart dialogue. This is a life-changing discovery if our intent is to reach beyond behaviors to motives.

Contrived consequences and rewards elicit socially acceptable behaviors motivated by emotions such as fear or greed. Yet, the child’s soul and its conduit the heart are deaf/mute to such compulsions. If the goal is soul-impelled ethics, the greatest need for discipline is the adult’s. This is the penultimate opportunity to practice union, yoga, or spiritual attunement. Penetrating self-reflection, insight, patience, trust and an ear to the heart’s voice assist the co-generation of a mutually beneficial flow. Heartfelt perceptions trigger telepathic rapport and intuited solutions. As we dismantle learned barriers to harmonious relationships, soul-satisfying powers bring conflict resolution and dissolve divisions between elder and child.

Animal behavior hints at the psychic attunement that is our natural state. The naturalist William J. Long observed this sixth sense to be even more useful to many animal species than their physical senses. Among wolves an awareness of pack members miles away repeatedly led a lone wounded wolf straight to the remains of their kill. Long frequently observed the power of telepathy in mother/offspring relationships. So mutually attuned is the canine mother and her pups that the lift of her head and a silent stare brings a wandering pup to her side. Without ever uttering a warning growl, a vixen manages her pups, which romp for hours near their mother. At the time of her evening hunt she simply stands motionless without a sound. The pups cease their play and gather around her, before retreating to the den for safety. Similar instances of silent, instant communications, unimpeded by distance, abound among species from felines, to birds, to elephants and whales.

The human child’s agitated behavior is a cry for respect for his feelings and needs in a world that persistently calls our attention elsewhere. By including the child’s world in our own, even as chores, schedules and meetings beckon, we can develop an intuitive, heart to heart, rapport. The brain, as the telepathic receptor, decodes what the heart intuits. This heart/brain insight helps us anticipate potential upsets. With intuitive grace we replace knee-jerk reactions with mindful responses to promote harmonious flow. 

The self-discipline of forgoing emotionally charged reactions to choose heart-infused responses reverberates beyond the lives of current participants. Thanks to our efforts to achieve this Living Union, future generations will more easily master the heart/mind’s intuitive/telepathic rapport. This has astounding implications for gathering momentum to reach beyond individuals and empower Nations as well.

ECOLOGY AND ECO-PSYCHOLOGY

Q. Why do you emphasize the term eco-psychology? Is this more of your emphasis on placing children in nature? What about their human relationships?

A. Eco-psychology is a powerful term for this generation because of our appreciation for ecology in reference to planetary biomes. However, the term eco-psychology, coined about a decade ago, reaches deep into the inner terrains of children to include psychological, physiological and spiritual realities. The term “Deep Ecology”, offers a complementary reference to the power of Nature’s energetic blueprints—to this psychology that reaches deep into the hearts and minds of children.

We, as conscious guardians of childhood, have the power to squelch or free the energetic substrata that that births and sustains human life. When we work with nature, we can replicate the remarkable restorative powers of Nature’s energetic blueprint.

In 1986, 60,000 people in the Soviet Union were evacuated from the area surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant after a catastrophic explosion released large quantities of radioactivity into the atmosphere. Prior to this the society had leveled thousands of acres of forest to install farms, roads and buildings around this reactor.  Yet, less than three decades later a team of scientists has discovered a remarkable rebirth, a primeval forest teaming with life.  Wildlife including wolves, moose, bears, beavers and bison are thriving in the self-restoring ecosystem. Nature, freed from mankind’s controlling, leveling tendencies and destructive potentials, has restored a living profusion in realms of breathtaking beauty.

That same burgeoning life force seeks expression in the human family. Nature’s energetic substrata as expressed in our children reaches by way of emotional domains to the very heart and soul of the child. Systems that suppress exuberant self-expression tend to override innate potentials to produce tame, subdued versions of ourselves. Schools that promote thriving populations are more like eco-systems than institutions.

In the wild the individual flora and fauna thrive according to Nature’s energetic blueprints. Similarly, the nurtured human imagination envisions unique expressions of the prolific life-force within. The imagination, which tends to atrophy in homogenous regimes, is meant to flow from an unseen Source on currents of joy. Its purpose?—the creation of Beauty.

Eco-psychology bespeaks academic knowledge that rides on Nature’s currents of joy and blueprints for generativity (creativity/innovation). Our inviting challenge is to design organic, LIFE-affirming systems for learning. Once freed, restorative powers inherent in the human family, will reveal astonishing generative potentials, enabling future generations to flourish.