CURRENTS OF EMOTION

 Q. Which is more important to a child’s successful navigation through life: due attention to signals from the individual body/emotions/mind complex; or pushing step by step through a lengthy highway of standardized curricula?

A sensitive teacher, who is allowed the luxury of tuning into the individual emotional and physiological states of children, can tell when the brain is open to learning and when it shuts down. S(he) reads children like a detective reads clues. With, either bright-eyed focus, or a glazed, far away look, the eyes clue-in the astute observer. The observant teacher notes that the child body turns away, the hands seek something to touch or another child, when the lesson fails to trigger high-interest. Children, who are free to do so, communicate very clearly their physical/emotional state.

School systems have a choice: to either invite the teacher to modify his/her curriculum in response to these child signals; or to demand the teachers override these signals in order to force-feed officially designated curricula.

The question is: Which of the above is the most direct route to the citadel of human brilliance?

In the 1600’s the French philosopher and mathematician Descartes proposed the mechanistic view of the universe and human body. Since the inception of institutions called schools, this established view has separated emotions from rationality, i.e. feeling from intelligence. Being mainly concerned with building intellect, the mechanistic view overlooks the pivotal role of emotions in learning. Hence, the suppression of the physical and emotional needs of children in schooling. Hence, the escalating push for gains in academics at the exclusion of the joys of childhood.

The discoveries of a growing number of scientists, including physicists and physiologists, have shaken this view at its foundations.  Candace Pert (Molecules of Emotion) discovered an “information highway” that biochemically unifies the mind/body system. In this communication system, neuropeptides and receptors serve as messengers between the organs and systems of the body. This neural network literally informs the brain of the physical and emotional state of the human being. Pert compares it to music:

“Every moment a massive information exchange is taking place in your body. Imagine each of these messenger systems possessing a specific tone … rising and falling … waxing and waning … , and if we could hear this body music with our ears, the sum of these tones would be the music that we call emotions.”

We either trust, or we don’t, that nature provided young children with this communication system for good reasons. We either respond to, ignore, or suppress the child’s facial, verbal, emotional, physical and physiological clues that we are stressing his system and, thereby, inhibiting his unique nature-designated intelligence.

On the Colorado River my own experience with white-water rafting (beginner level) has since served as an analogy for working with children. Like the river, these emotional beings are sometimes placid, but always exuberance is just around the bend. At the bend, where the river narrows, are bumps and boulders. A life jacket is required and skilled navigation prevents capsizing.

A teacher’s life jacket is intimate knowledge of the emotive currents of the individuals in her care. The skilled navigation is the guardian’s loving repertoire of nuanced glances, facial expressions, verbal communications, curricula offerings and inviting actions. Experienced, free and caring teachers know that skilled navigation through the shoals of boredom and resistance leads to shared exhilaration on the river of learning.

Teachers, who have the freedom to paddle through white-water learning with and for free children, capsize at times. Child laughter erupts when we emerge wet and sputtering. But I’ve noticed the best way to turn the raft upright and climb back on as a unified team is to laugh with them.

The important goal is to keep the molecules of positive emotion, the discrete and vital drops of living waters, flowing toward whole body/emotion/mind brilliance.