NATURE INTELLIGENCE

Nature intelligence is the Eighth of the Multiple Intelligences, which Howard Gardner added a few years after his book Multiple Intelligence was published.

Still a few years after that the book Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv was published.

I loved that book, which confirmed what we were already seeing by providing children wild spaces to play here at the Living Ethics School. If you’ve been reading my blog since last year, you know that I have returned to this topic and quoted Richard Louv repeatedly.

Nature is the Great Teacher of children. Her wild spaces are their Natural Habitat. She offers an optimal space for the cultivation of imagination, multiple intelligence, conflict resolution, collaborative construction projects, optimal emotional/mental/mind/body health. Every day as the staff of the Living Ethics School watches our children happily engaged in nature, we know that this time, outside the classroom, away from phonics and multiplication tables, is optimal time for the children fullest development.

The Children’s Village is a place to haul logs, tires, planks, freshly cut branches, ply wood, rope, etc. for construction purposes.

It’s also a place for disagreements that require conflict resolution, sometimes mediation and other times group meetings to brainstorm to reach a consensus on property rights, and rules and regulations – just like in the real world.

For over thirty years I’ve observed the morphing populations. In the years we had mostly boys, the tree houses and cleared out spaces under trees enclosed by vines and shrubs became mostly forts. The would-be warriors stored itchy bombs (Sycamore seed balls) and spear grass from the prairie to attack hapless passerbys.

Those are the same years the kids dug a hole enlarging it month by month until it would fit several children waist deep. The added value of the big hole was that it would fill with water and several were sure to ‘accidently’ fall in during a heavy rain.

In the years we had a balance of girls and boys, the Children’s village became towns with banks, hotels, a post office, shops for selling knitted crafts and beaded jewelry, clay or paper money, a newsletter, police, and election campaigns for mayors.

More recently with a mostly female population, along with household construction, miscellaneous pans, small bowls and other containers along with utensils have been  spirited outside for baking purposes. Nearby teachers are rounded up to sit in their kitchens or resturants and sample their dishes.

We watch them strolling in pairs around the fields, chasing each other, climbing trees, hammering, sawing, stomping in low lying muddy areas and know that each child’s emotional/mind/body/spirit complex is being exercised for vibrant health and stimulation of the Mutltiple Intelligences. Sometimes hidden tree limbs comfort wounded feelings until someone comes to offer empathy.

We see all this and its tremendous value to children and grieve about a society that has lost sight of childhood – especially the importance of children playing daily in wild spaces.

The fact is all the intelligences count. The consideration of these various keys to uniquely individual children; of what types of activities they initiate on their own in a dynamic environment; of what activities bring them joy; of what type of environment makes them want to come to school; of empathic respectful treatment under the guidance of caring adults; of time for them to create, to invent, to play and be children – this is not fluff. This fullness of childhood is the foundation for the full stature of adulthood.

There are no effective make-up exercises in adulthood for childhood lost. To postpone consideration for these humane considerations, the appreciation for the whole being while still a child, until adulthood, is often too late. And it’s costly for the thousands who have to spend time in therapy because of childhoods lost and miserable adult live stuck in soulless jobs that make good money.

The current mania for driving children faster and faster, harder and harder, for longer hours a day (homework), testing them more and more, judging, grading their efforts is not making them more intelligent. The only way to do that is to tap the nature-endowed intelligence in the attractive, vibrant ways that engage a child’s attention naturally. In dynamic, child friendly environments children are interiorly motivated to learn, without exterior motivators like rewards and grades.

I realize you are not likely to read the hundreds of books I have read on the more humane and enlightened guidance and education of children all the way through high school. That is why I write this blog. To share bits of Tolstoy, Steiner, Montessori, Holt, Gardner and others with you, so that you collectively will take charge and urge others to do the same – to restore childhood to children.

Some of you have opted out of the system by home schooling. You have the precious freedom to recognize and respond to the interests and proclivities of your children each a unique individual even in the same family. However, many of you have no choice but to send your children to a pressure and competition driven school – public or private. Yet, you pay the taxes or tuition for a system that is caught up in a corporate clone escalator that is as mindless as the curriculums it’s pressing on children. Ironically, the system would probably say that much of the pressure comes from the parents themselves!

Your voice matters. If it will not be heard individually, it will be collectively. Let us speak up to defend the right of children to childhood – to play daily in wild nature, to question, to initiate their own explorations, to learn as encouraged, cherished individuals. Think how much such on-fire graduates on intimate terms with their passionate interests could do for humanity!

Think of a world in which the dollar is not the bottom line; in which passion to contribute one’s unique labor and talents for the benefit of the world is the measure of success!