BORN GENIUSES

 

Q: Many of the children at your school spend one and a half hours per week knitting, crocheting or engaged in other handwork. Wouldn’t this time be better spent on academics?

A. The following example is from Magical Child, by Joseph Chilton Pearce, a beloved teacher about the birthing, nurturance and education of children. This is part one of our discussion of this study.

In 1956 Marcelle Geber was sent to Uganda under a United Nations Research Grant to study the infants of Uganda and Kenya. Geber made a momentous discovery. Raised naturally according to what we today would call “attachment parenting”, these were the most precocious, brilliant and advanced infants ever observed anywhere. These babies smiled rapturously and continuously from soon after birth. The sensorimotor learning and general development were phenomenal, indeed miraculous.

These infants were born in the home and generally delivered by the mother herself. The child was never separated from the mother, who massaged, sang to, caressed, and fondled her infant continually. The mother carried her unswaddled infant in a sling, next to her bare breasts continually. She slept with her infant. The infant fed continuously according to its own schedule. These infants were wide awake a surprising amount of the time—alert, happy, watchful, calm. They virtually never cried. The mothers were bonded to them …  and sensed their every need. … At two days of age these infants sat bolt upright, held only by the forearms, with a beautifully straight back and perfect head balance, their finely focused eyes staring intently intelligently at their mothers. And they smiled and smiled.

 Observations by others (Jean Leidloff, Carla Hanaford, Charles Eastman) of tribal life on various continents have confirmed the benefits of the continuity of the afore mentioned natural processes. From a young age these children participate in the dynamic life of the village, including the handwork (jewelry-making, weaving, pottage, cooking, tool-making). In healthy tribes bright and happy children enjoy this natural continuum of interwoven living, working, playing, creating from birth to childhood.

In notable contrast, modern children birthed in hospitals, exhibit increasing numbers of syndromes, with growing numbers diagnosed with learning disabilities. Hospital practices that override nature’s timing and protocols often birth babies in whom the two hemispheres of the brain are not communicating across the corpus callosum.  Yet continuous dialogue between the two hemispheres is a fundamental and essential element of high intelligence.

In 1987 Brain Gym® International developed therapeutic exercises designed to help children think better, and be more fully and joyfully engaged with learning. The founders, Paul and Gail Dennison, discovered that movements that cross the midline help switch on the left-right hemispheric dialogue, which is essential for focus, concentration and memorization.

What does this have to do with handwork such as knitting, weaving or jewelry-making?  It turns out that many life-skills are actually “mini-brain gym”, facilitating the same cross-hemispheric exchange. Our children often sit and knit for half an hour happily engaged in a pleasurable activity that simultaneously stimulates neurological pathways between the hemispheres of the corpus callosum.  We do not have official studies of these children to prove that we are encouraging a beneficial process. We simply enjoy their general state of relaxed, friendly happiness as they work. We marvel at the cross-hemispheric play of intelligence as the happy,  focused 7 to 12 year olds engage in handwork.

It is difficult for modern parents and educators to appreciate knitting as forging pathways for high intelligence. Many are more impressed when a child accomplishes borrowing in a four-digit subtraction equation. Yet, this is generally only the monkey mind mimicking procedures that the child does not yet fully grasp. In societies many generations removed from natural processes, this premature forcing of intellect is frequently mistaken for evidence of real intelligence. (Math for intelligent comprehension includes manipulatives for the hands, imagination, art and happy engagement synced with the brain maturity of the child.)

 Now back to the Ungandans and Kenyans. Marcelle Geber noted that the adults conspicuously lacked the precocious spark of their infants and toddlers. But why? This leads us to the clincher of today’s blog. In an echo of some unknown calamity, perhaps in a superstitious response to it, there was an unquestioned tribal taboo. The four-year-old suddenly and traumatically found himself bereft of his mother’s love. All four-year-olds were taken from their mothers and switched to another woman. Each mother immediately withdrew all acknowledgement and affection from her shocked and grief-stricken child. From this point on, the prodigious brain development ceased, as the number one goal of the depressed child was bonding with the tribe and unquestioning observance of tribal taboos, so as not to risk abandonment again.

This is an extreme example of severing the child from a process designed to promote optimal intelligence and joy in living. Yet, some see echoes of this abrupt severance in modern civilization. At ever-earlier ages, modern society is severing children from maternal tenderness and hands-on work/play, as we thrust them into authoritarian academic settings. Training of the ‘monkey mind’ to memorize formulas for abstractions the child hardly grasps has replaced the ‘play of intelligence’.

According to Buckminster Fuller, “Every child is born a genius, “ The question is, is this merely a nice saying? Or, for the astute reader and observer, is there is a trail of clues in this blog regarding either the preservation of brilliance or its suppression? According to Dr. Lim Kok Wing, the Founding President of Limkokwing University of Creative Technology:

Children start life as geniuses, until schools make them average. http://founder.limkokwing.net/blog/

I quote Dr. Lim Kok Wing’s blog below, because of his exquisite eloquence and deep wisdom:

Every child is born brilliant. If we just figure out how to create an education system that recognizes that as the start point, we won’t have to worry about innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.

If we figure this out, we won’t have to worry about war because peace will be the default solution.

If we figure this out, I have every faith that the future of the world will be in great hands.