THE TRUE COMMON CORE - Part Four of Six

  

The deepest core of humanity is one of connections—connections to one another, to nature, to the earth, to one’s spiritual essence, to the Source of all Life.

What does this have to do with the education of children? Everything. It means learning that is of real value is contextual. This Context is in terms of Living Connections.  Imagine looking at your face in a mirror. If you contemplate your image you can best learn about your eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, etc. by appreciating the way these facial parts all work together—by looking at the reflection of your face as a whole. Beyond this comprehension of useful connections between visible attributes, this mirror has its greatest value when you gaze even deeper – into the unseen – into the wholeness, the essence of the being that is YOU.

Now, imagine you drop the mirror and it splinters into a dozen or so shards. How satisfying, or true to your image is it to view your features through scattered slivers of glass? How accurately do the disconnected splinters reflect your face, the room, or your encompassing world?

Similarly, how accurately do splintered courses of study reflect a world of co-mingling realities in and around each child—let alone mirror unique potentials for constructive flow in this world?

Contextual Learning requires engrossing experience to appreciate the connections between the whole and its parts, and the parts to one another. Like gazing into the whole mirror, and reflecting on both the seen and the unseen, a wholistic education, mirroring the wholeness of childhood, enlivens the sleeping giant of connective intelligence. And the new revelation for this generation is that this connective intelligence always, yes, always includes the heart.

Enlightened Connections

The bright light blinded the first to briefly step through the portal, momentarily obscuring the world beyond the cave.  But soon enough scintillating colors and myriad forms beckoned one after another to free and endless exploration in light-filled meadows. Each heart recovered a long obscured language of connections, and communed with one another, plants and fellow creatures.

The cave dwellers assumed the worst, until returning pioneers shared exuberant accounts of expanded knowledge and insight. Their freely obtained common experience revealed enlightened living/learning/loving to be the core inheritance of humanity.

For the freed children every stick, pinecone, stone and alcove held new possibilities. The interior genius enjoyed calisthenics of the freed imaginations. They begin to invent, and design with gusto. Alert adults supported the core curriculum of genius with needed physics, geometry, and mathematics.

 Guides related childhood experiences to Humanity’s Story. Animated storytellers narrated as a rich heritage filled with inspiring histories, tales of countless generations of adventurers, and generative thinkers presenting new possibilities for the benefit of all life. The fire in the heart ignited ideas that grew from carrying fire, to designing fire pits in the elements, to building fireplaces in homes; from animal skin clothing to woven garments; from scavenging for berries and bulbs, to cultivating gardens, and on and on.

Enlightened Lessons ensconced in compelling stories conveyed Enlightened Connections. These fed the imaginations so that in their pretend play children emulated Heroes of the Heart.