AUTHORITY AND EMPATHY

Q. You don't emphasize the obedience of children. Yet, how can children possibly learn to get along in the world as adults, if they haven’t learned to obey authority figures as children?

A. Two evenings ago an ex-student and beloved young friend, now about 10 yrs. old, called. She was weeping as I picked up the phone. Her intense dislike and avoidance of homework had resulted a failing grade on her report card. Was my most helpful role to empathize with her woeful dilemma or to authoritatively admonish her to bring up her grade?

Two contrasting examples offer clues as to how we can best support children.

Recently we discussed two heart cells beating in unison and keeping one another alive on slides. Along similar lines, Cleve Backster (Primary Perception), shares remarkable discoveries of the energetic exchanges between plants and other life forms in his lab. On a whim, he decided to connect a dracaena cane plant to the polygraph machine, of which he is the designer. Noting that the machine recorded a somewhat irregular and alive electrical pattern, he decided to test it for a human-like reaction. After only minor reactions when he dipped a leaf in hot coffee and tapped it with a pen, he sat back to contemplate the plant.

Several minutes later, Backster’s musings led to an unvoiced speculation. “What if I get a match and burn the plant’s electroded leaf?”

At this mere thought, he noted that the polygraph pattern moved to the extreme, recording dramatic excitation. The plant was 15 feet away.

 Backster continued his experiments, recording the plants’ sympathetic excitation in response to endangered creatures from other kingdoms, including brine shrimp, yogurt bacteria and chicken eggs. Meanwhile, the plants continued to track Backster’s thoughts and feelings.

Of interest here is the quantum level sympathetic responsiveness between living beings. If this is the natural state of all living entities, in line with heart-to-heart resonance, it bears close consideration—and nowhere more than in our relationships with children.

By way of contrast, Stanley Milgram (Obedience to Authority) designed an experiment carried out at several universities to explore obedience to authority figures. The purpose was to see to what extent adults, schooled in authoritarian institutions, would override an inherent sympathetic impulse, and continue to obey an authority figure while causing someone pain.

For the experiment Milgram hired two actors: The authority figure wearing a white lab coat, and the ‘learner’, to enact reactions to escalating levels of shock treatment for wrong answers to a test.

Over a 4-year period, more than a thousand people came to a psychological lab to participate in this experiment. Each was designated the ‘teacher’, whose job was to administer a ‘test’ to the ‘learner’ and punish him with increasing volts of painful shocks each time he answered wrongly. The following is the scenario:

The ‘teacher’ observes as the ‘learner’ is conducted into a room and seated in a chair, his arms strapped down with an electrode attached to his wrist. In the presence of the ‘teacher’ he is told to learn a list of word pairs for a test.

The authority figure in the white coat guides the ‘teacher’ to an adjoining room to be seated in front of a shock generator. In 15-volt increments, the horizontal line of switches ranges from 15 to 450 volts. Verbal designations range from Slight Shock, to Danger, to Severe Shock.

The authority figure directs the ‘teacher’ to push the switch to deliver intensifying shock punishment each time the ‘learner’ answers incorrectly. The ‘teacher’ experiences growing internal conflict as the ‘learner’ receiving the shock begins to grunt in discomfort, then moan, then cries out and finally screams in agony.

In the first experiment, of the 40 subjects, 14 ‘teachers’ refused at some point to proceed further, while 26 obeyed the orders of the authority to the end, proceeding to punish the victim to the most potent, 450- volt shock of the generator, accompanied by agonized screams.

Can it be that empathy for the plight of another, as in the resonant heart cells and plants, is an inborn trait, which authoritarian discipline tends to suppress in its participants? During the past 47 years, my child teachers have taught me there is a hardening of the spiritual arteries when, in obeisance to authoritarian hierarchies, we judge the suffering of others, including children strapped to academic strictures. Our imposed curricula and scores are equivalent to punishments to children who long to be free.

In the dialogue with my young friend, the heart indicated the highest path – to help her listen to her interior authority – the soul. “Spread a healing salve on her sense of failure induced by the report card score of ‘63’. Share her pain with your own recall of homework miseries. Help her access the interior voice that asserts, ‘I can overcome anything, even by degree, the ability of homework to make me miserable.’ Find the words for her to hang up and fall asleep comforted by the sense of ‘I am loved for who I am’.”

In obedience to the inner authority, she decided that a realistic goal that she could stick to was to raise her score by 5 points each six weeks. That way, by the end of the year her score would be a passing 78.

This blog is dedicated to all the weeping, suffering children who have come to my notice for the past 50 years.

THE HEART-BRAIN ALLIANCE

 Q. I accept that the heart communicates with other internal organs. Nonetheless, shouldn’t it take back seat, when compared to the significance of brain development?

A. In 1991 the work of Dr. J. Andrew Armour introduced the startling concept of the brain in the heart. His research revealed the heart has a nervous system that is a complex network of around 40,000 neurons and neurotransmitters just like those in the brain.

Even more intriguing, this ‘heart brain’ is in dialogue with the ‘head brain.’ The heart to head information flows by way of the vagus nerve, to the medulla, through the amygdala, to the cortical areas.

There’s still more. The heart produces hormones that travel through appropriate arteries to all the organs in the body, including the brain. These hormones include neopinephrine, dopamine, and the ‘bonding hormone’ oxytocin. Oxytocin, present in parents as they cuddle their babies, also significantly affects pair bonding, levels of tolerance and cognition.

Cognition? Yes, cognition, as in learning and thinking. The brain in the heart helps the brain in the head think better. There are many advantages of an open channel of communication between the heart and head.

Now imagine a child learning while enveloped in the heart fields (12 ft in diameter) of elders who listen to the voice of their hearts and, likewise, cherish the child’s open channel. This opens a tantalizing new way to look at learning.

When the parents/teachers listen to the voice of the heart brain (their own, as well as the child’s), the child feels cherished, trusted and stimulated by engaging curricula, caring relationships and inviting surroundings. The child’s gaze is clear, the intelligence switched on, the hands and feet productively engaged. In this fresh envisioning of education, communities of elders and children actively create, work toward meaningful goals and harvest the fruits of their labors together.

Does this mean throwing out academics? No. It means the academics ride more naturally and easily into receptacles for scintillating intelligence, ie. beneficiaries of an open, flowing heart/head dialogue.

By contrast, have you ever been in a conversation in which another speaks so loud and long that you can hardly get in a word? In humankind’s current experiment with education that’s how the rational voice speaks over the quiet voice of the heart. The loud voice of the intellect concerns itself with how much, how fast, how much more, and how much faster the child absorbs and stores data. Adults anxiously measure this progress against norms.

Many child brains freeze up and/or seek escape from such a barrage.

The voice of the heart quietly confers about the quality, ie. the joyful, meaningful, compelling and creative self-expression inherent in  the learning experience.

Einstein said, “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

In the past our society has not known that regimented schools, excessive paperwork and red X’s on papers obstruct the heart brain/head brain communication channel. Now we do. Now is the time to design systems that promote an open, healthful, intelligence-optimizing flow. In the wake of the rule of autocracy, let the reign of the heart/brain synchronicity begin.

GUARDIANSHIP

Q. I think you emphasize the importance of the feminine influence at the expense of the masculine. Don't you agree that children need the balance of both influences?

A. In the above photo, the clear, intelligent gaze of the child shines through a beautiful countenance.  Heart to heart, in the strong, protective arms of the loving father, the little one sits poised to take on the world. The Designer whispers to the child to explore endlessly; to touch and manipulate everything; to fearlessly connect with the surroundings. The child feels safe in the embrace of a valorous love that that would give its life for the child’s. This moving expression of masculine guardianship energizes the toddler’s full throttle venture into an inviting world. Who can effectively challenge such a formula for each child’s highest achievement of a unique destiny?

 Yet, for over a century, humankind has attempted to supersede this Design for childhood’s most brilliant expression.  At the beginning of the nineteenth century business tycoons and prominent persons in the U.S. sought a suitable model to educate the future workforce. A delegate to Prussia saw that the school children sat still and silent in rows, obediently tending to tasks assigned by the stern-faced teacher, speaking only when prodded by the militaristic presence at the front of the room. Once adopted, this authoritarian model severed academics from livingness in forced confinement. A systemic inversion of masculine power banished feminine influence at the expense of a child’s natural growth in intelligence. Future generations learned to distrust and authoritatively subdue childhood’s persistent drive to engage the world, to break through the walls of restraint.

Some of us remember special teachers that did tear down the walls. My 7^th grade teacher, Mrs. Trader, shines as a sterling model and mentor.  During world history I remember the joy of designing a Greek house with scrounged tiles from a construction site. What fun it was to divide into groups for lively discussions of the stories in the basal reader. To this day, I recall well the Civil War period, because the Abraham Lincoln Play served as our review and ‘test’. Writing the play, memorizing lines and making props and costumes required hard work directed by collaborative enthusiasm. In Mrs. Trader’s class I discovered I loved to write.

The contrast between the lusterless eyes of the cowed children across the hall, that moved about in straight, silent lines—and the bright, intelligent expressions of the children in Mrs. Trader’s class made a lasting impression. As the audience for the Abe Lincoln play, was the other group’s enjoyment tinged with yearning?

At the end of the day, the teacher across the hall stood sedately by the door as her subdued group filed out. Yet, I often noted that as our lively group exited, Mrs. Trader wearily cradled her head in her arms folded on the desk.

I now appreciate that the success of each day pivoted on Mrs. Trader’s exhaustive creative expression that sparked our own. She offered her whole heart to orchestrate, rather than subdue, our exuberance.

Mrs. Trader, I am deeply grateful to have flourished that year in a heart field charged with such intelligent, compassionate, valorous love. May the Spirit that expanded your heart, energize education today, and free the brilliance of childhood.

May the balanced presence of Feminine Intuition and Masculine Guardianship revere the deep pools of intelligence that shine through each child’s eyes. May the example of a single teacher’s bold departure from the norm in the ‘50’s become the norm of today. In school and out, may the Valorous Masculine empower the endlessly, restlessly exploring hands and feet – the Designer’s Tools of Potential gifted to children for the stimulation of genius – imminent and transcendent.

HEART TO HEART

Q. Why do you emphasize the heart so much in children's learning? Shouldn't this aspect of childhood be focused more on their brains?

A. We are accustomed to the heart’s power being referred to metaphorically in poetry and song.  On the other hand, science has designated the heart as merely a mechanical pump. Yet, recent research led by the Institute of HeartMath has revealed the astounding power of the heart to impact physical and emotional health as well as intuitive and rational intelligence.

In his book Biology of Transcendence Joseph Chilton Pearce describes an experiment with live rodent heart cells in biology lab. After some time on a slide, the pulsing cells would fibrillate until death. Pearce recalls the next stage of the experiment:

“We could take two live heart cells, keep them separated on the slide, and, when fibrillation began, bring them closer together. At some magical point of spatial proximity they would stop fibrillating and resume their regular pulsing in synchrony with each other—a microscopic heart … The two cells didn’t have to touch for this magical bonding to occur, and could in fact be separated by a tiny barrier.”

But the question was, how did those cells communicate across a spatial and even physical barrier?

 Science has confirmed that all living cells produce an electrical field, but a heart cell’s output is exceptionally strong. In the words of Pearce, “ That congregation within us, billions of little generators working in unison, produces two and a half watts of electrical energy with each heartbeat at an amplitude forty to sixty times greater than that of brain waves—enough to light a small electric bulb.”

There’s more to the story. This electromagnetic heart field radiates some 12 to 15 feet from the body.

This and a series of blogs to follow concerning the role of the heart suggest deep reflection on such a powerful organism. Consider this question: If two heart cells can save each other’s lives, what are the implications for two hearts beating in close proximity?

Can it be coincidental that the same entrainment that occurs between heart cells on a slide occurs between mother and infant as the baby nurses? The brilliant Architect of Love has placed the mother’s breasts at the level of the heart. Heart to heart, as the infant nurses, the mother’s heart strengthens her baby’s. As the hormones of bonding secrete, and the hearts pulse with synchronous beats, the two become as one unified field of love. Logic is not sufficient to capture the beauty of such attention to design. Only the sense of awe and wonder that arises from the heart can capture such magnificence.

The deeper we peer into the powerful energetics of the heart, the more wonderful the discoveries. That is why even a thousand blogs would barely lift the veil on this organ, this conduit of the soul for empowered love and intelligence in each human being.

But let us touch the hem of truth’s garment as we continue to discuss the centrality of the heart, for this has profound implications, not only for our relationships with children, but the learning institutions where we place them several hours a day.

We are at a crossroads in history, in which nothing could be more important than expanded realization of the power and intelligence of the heart to bring healing, peace, and Whole Being Intelligence to our children and the world.