THE TRUE COMMON CORE (Part 2 of 6)

THE TRUE COMMON CORE: Part Two of Six

It was eight-year-old Renae’s second year at the Living Ethics School.  At the conclusion of the American History Teaching Story, it didn’t take her long to decide to build a model of a log cabin for Presentation Night. Fortunately the resources for her 12” by 12” cabin were all around her.  Sticks about ½ inch in diameter that could be sawed or broken to be about a foot long were strewn over the surrounding acreage.

The outdoors offer building materials for larger construction projects as well. Carter, along with other ‘home builders’, was seen for days dragging logs and branches to his ‘house’ among the trees and shrubs of Peace Town. Hay from the freshly mowed prairie provided bedding and filled in gaps between the branches that formed the walls of his house.

More recently the whole group of 17 plus kids raided a pile of just-cut long leafy branches to erect leafy green screens around tree houses, alcoves and newly erected teepees.

Some may ask, “Where’s the learning in all this? The answer comes clear when we shift our focus from slivers of intellect to arteries of intelligence. The construction projects exercise the creative/innovative imagination, an integral artery of whole brain intelligence. An added bonus in this 40-minute mid-morning break is that the physical exertion and creative collaborations actually re-energize minds and bodies for another 40 to 60 minutes of academic labors before lunch.

Another tremendous value during this outdoor play in wild nature concerns a second vital area of development. Like generative intelligence, social intelligence eclipses textbook learning. Co-habitation in Peace Town necessitates frequent negotiation and mediation of property disputes. A week’s worth of disagreements over ownership of household pinecone currency stashes, echoes the social and political disputes that plague humanity. Helping individuals peacefully resolve conflicts of interest has convinced LES teachers that there is no learning in the school that better prepares the children for successful adult life than this outdoor, living arena.

The ability to ‘see’ real learning requires an adjustment similar to exiting a dark cave to enter broad daylight.  Anxiety-driven academia currently screens out vital priorities for the full kaleidoscope of intelligence. The first step is to remove the cataracts of control that obscure the fullness of our humanity. To appreciate the accoutrements for real learning, necessitates opening mental apertures for sufficient light to enter the retina of the adult heart/brain system.

The Allegory of the Cave Culture – Part two

Au Coure

(To the Heart; To the Core)

The cave parents, while desiring the highest intelligence and best education for their offspring, were themselves graduates of Low Light Learning. It seldom occurred to most to factor into skills for intelligence expansion the faculty ensconced in the forebrain for Envisioning new Possibilities. Who knew to relegate this ability to the role of Illustrious Intelligence when it aligns with the heart as a coherent system?

No one living recalled that the ancestral heritage of cave dwelling humanity included many child protégées, graduates of sunlit meadows. The valued innovations of imaginations humming at full-tilt frequently earned them the esteemed title: Professor Emeritus of Enlightened Envisioning.

In time a lone adventurer, seeking primarily to escape the oppressive cave conditions, began the laborious task of digging through the entrance rubble. A tiny pinhole of light soon beckoned from a world beyond. A slight heart tremor startled the digger, as if in response to a familiar call.  

To be Continued in: The True Common Core - Part Three

THE TRUE COMMON CORE (Part 1 of 6)

At the Living Ethics School we glimpse the spiritual, shared core of humanity when children engage with sunlit nature; and when enthusiasm and initiative drive meaningful learning. 

Recently, the 5^th and 6^th grade geometry classes merged with plans to build a small cob (clay, sand & straw structure) on the property. With avid interest the students viewed building techniques as we watched You-Tube videos. In math class solving for the area and volume of rectangles and triangles included graph paper floor plans for individual cob house replicas. Eagerly the young architects drew up unique floor plans for miniature cob houses.

After about two weeks of preparation, on a crisp Indian summer day under clear blue skies, happy anticipation reigned as the architects filled small buckets with clay, sand and water, gathered handfuls of straw, and filled pitchers with water. Armed with the needed construction tools and materials, we headed for a large tarp spread out on the grass.

Soon mirth converged with focused concentration as the builders mixed the clay/sand/straw mud with bare feet (as seen in the videos) and formed diminutive cob bricks with their hands. 

What teachers and parents, who are devoted to the children in their care, don’t relish opportunities to sync learning with enthusiastic participation? By necessity this level of unforgettable learning must escape the confines of tightly controlled regimentation in order to soar on the wings of spontaneity.  

This six-part discussion, calls our attention to the true Core (The Soul/Heart/Brain Complex) held in Common by our children as the Source of all true learning. The following Allegory of the Cave Culture, hints at the century-long, persistent slide into ever more rigid centralized, regimentation, driven by a Core of Control, which John Holt aptly designated ‘schooling’ in lieu of ‘education’. 

The Allegory of the Cave Culture – Part One

Entrapment 

There’s an ancient myth of dwellers of an earthly paradise, which due to a local catastrophe sought refuge in a nearby cave.  When falling rocks and boulders sealed the entrance, the people became hopelessly entrapped in a vast system of caverns. 

Through many generations families learned to survive in dimly lit subterranean vaults. Those who had once basked in sunlit meadows gradually died away, and new generations assumed that living in a shadowy cave matrix was normal. Tales of former days of freely exploring bright realms of beauty were relegated to fanciful myths. 

The serious education of the children came to consist primarily of traversing dark labyrinths, and committing to memory the twists and turns of narrow passageways. A Cave Culture grew up which included businesses that sprouted up to provide books, tests, and electronic devices for Labyrinth Learning. The corporate entities that invested heavily became heavily vested in the lucrative continuance and growth of Cave Culture Curricula. 

Children labored in dimly light passageways, allowed only limited, highly controlled access to a powerful interior source of light—the imagination. This faculty of potential exploration, invention, and creation lay dormant in dusty recesses of intellect.  The ability to imagine light-filled fields of freedom, not only distracted from Minutia Memory, it could lead to vigorous attempts to seek enlightenment.

To be continued in The True Common Core: Part two

Of Will and Wings

Part Two on the discussion of the development of the individual will

Leo Tolstoy, John Holt, Maria Montessori, John Dewey, and Rudolf Steiner are among the world’s great liberators of the will of the child. Each purported that given an appropriate and stimulating environment, an interior guide connects the child with the activities that best support the development of his unique potentials.

Montessori designed charming “Lilliput” environments for children for just such a purpose. Providing miniature furniture and tools for practical life activities, the Children’s Houses offer charming environments with beautifully finished wooden sensorial materials arranged on shelves. The teacher’s primary role is as a connector, demonstrating the thoughtful use of the material that is of immediate interest to a child.

Montessori’s close observation of the children when their hands were engaged in such work revealed that this self-initiated labor engaged the will of the individual and developed powers of concentration.

One day Montessori observed a little girl of three years old, as she carefully removed and replaced one by one a set of graduated knobbed cylinders in the corresponding sockets. Amazed at the singular absorption of the small child, Montessori decided to test the intensity of this concentration. She instructed the teacher to invite the children to promenade around her singing aloud. But the little one, remained oblivious as she repeated her self-appointed challenge.

E.M. Standing  (Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work) writes eloquently of this event:

“Then Montessori picked up the arm chair on which the child was sitting with her in it and placed it on a table. The child who had clung on to the precious cylinders during this interruption at once continued her task as if nothing had happened. With her scientific habit of measuring phenomena Montessori counted the number of times the child repeated the exercise; it was forty-two. Then quite suddenly she stopped ‘as though coming out of a dream.’ She smiled as if she was very happy; her eyes shone and she looked round about her. And strangely enough after all that long concentration she appeared to be rested rather than fatigued.”

The child could be seen as following a physiological, biological and spiritual imperative derived from the heart and soul. Few are aware that the very DNA of that individual holds the keys to the unlocking of unique and soul-satisfying potential.

A society that for generations has itself been force fed the social imperatives of institutions finds it difficult, if not unacceptable, to trust imperatives that arise from an unseen Source. And truly, the vast majority submissively falls in step with the societal drum and their parents beam with pride in their socially sanctioned accomplishments.

Yet, who is there to count the cost of over-speaking the voice of the interior will? The other night over dinner, a friend shared about a companion in his youth who was an outstanding saxophone player—one whose talent and love of the instrument rivaled the stars of the day. But his father, who was a prominent lawyer, insisted his son go to law school. And indeed his son became a respected lawyer, who today at seventy years old, declares he has disliked every day of his profession.

When I speak of ducks and swans it is to contrast the hollow rewards of socially and academically imposed expertise, with the heights of discovery and passionate self-expression in one’s chosen vocation/avocation.

Jesus, a great teacher is quoted as saying, “Seek you first the kingdom of heaven and all these things shall be added unto you.”

This is another way of saying young swans can be taught and related to as swans, and still achieve all the competencies lauded by ducks—the difference being that adult swans swim with extraordinary elegance; and in flight far outdistance their short-winged cousins.

OF DUCKS AND UGLY DUCKLINGS

Q.  Why do you differentiate between the training and the education of human will?

This is part one of a two-part discussion of the training and education of the will.

In the tale of the Ugly Duckling, the mother is concerned about the largest egg in her nest. All the other ducklings have already hatched and are developing according to schedule. Anxiously, she broods, until finally, an ungainly brown-feathered creature hatches – one that, compared the rest of the brood, can only be thought of as ugly.

To her relief when she takes her ducklings for their first swim, her youngest hatchling, while clumsy on land, distinguishes himself as a competent and graceful swimmer, far surpassing the abilities of his older nest mates.

However, the ugly duckling’s subsequent enculturation into “duckness” demotes his status to that of ugly and clumsy once again. By his very nature, he is ill-equipped for bowing to superiors, waddling on land and conforming to barnyard etiquette.

Sadly, the ugly duckling absorbs the attitudes and labels of the surrounding duck society, believing in his inferiority among his peers.

The cygnet endures a series of humiliations until as a young adult he sees his stunning reflection in the water, and recognizes himself to be a swan. When, at last, he meets others of his kind, he sees that they too glide elegantly through the water. And when he takes flight with fellow swans he experiences the ecstasy of flight to greater heights than ducks are capable. Beyond the ken of the duck society, he soars over and beyond the far away mountains.

How does this story relate to humans? One way is to view every human as ultimately “an ugly duckling”. However, whatever the historical precedent and reason, the society at large has come to be governed by duckness.

A powerful tenet of the society of duckness is the training of the individual will, to be forcefully carried out if necessary. According to the tenets of duckness, the primary role of parents and institutional authority figures is the training and even subduing of the individual will to promote compliance with the societal will. Thus all wild tendencies atrophy, and the child learns obedience to authorities that impose habits for success in academic minutia first, and the societal status quo, secondly.

The priorities of duckness are so entrenched, so touted as the only route to success, that most parents fear the slightest deviation. And the system has detentions, fines and drugs to firmly entrain ugly ducklings that indulge in unscheduled swims and flights.

Yet, there are some who have glimpsed their elegant reflection and dream of systems for the development of the heart, will and mind that have little in common with the duck society’s institutional confinement.

In this future system, cygnets will know themselves to be swans. These awakened guides of the next generation of young swans know it is neither desirable nor necessary to control and subdue the wills of beings destined to soar beyond the limitations of duckness.

When we learn to guide swans as swans, self-discipline furthers the path to self-mastery. Rather than forcing the entrained submission of millions, we seek to encourage the activated individual will. Rather than requiring obedience, we facilitate an engaged sense of purpose. As the strictures of enculturation fade away, a society flourishes in a culture of activated and unlimited potential.

OF GARDENS AND GARDENERS

Planting and Communion

In the third week of March, according to our yearly ritual, the teachers at The Living Ethics School brought wheelbarrows of soil, bags of worm castings and bean and squash seeds to the children’s play yard. The teachers readied stacks of planting pots, trowels and seed packages, and lined up trays to house the pots close by. The children gathered around eager to plant the first seeds for the spring garden.

As the adults explained about the earthworm casting nutrients for the baby plants, the children helped stir it into the soil. Then each filled a pot with the prepared soil to welcome the seed.

Our rule of gardener’s thumb is that the sensitive gardener establishes a relationship of tender appreciation and reverence for the nature and the gifts of each seed he plants.

Aware that energy exchanges connect all living beings, the adults modeled tenderly holding and speaking to each seed. Knowing the power of gratitude, the planters thanked each seed for the fruit it would produce before placing it in the little hole in the pot. Knowing the value of a sense of wonder to enrich life, the adult planters expressed their amazement that from each tiny seed would come nourishing food and many more seeds.

Cultivating the Soil

Gardeners know the foundational importance of feeding the soil. While the seeds sprout in the greenhouse, the gardener ascertains that the garden soil is rich in macronutrients and micronutrients –compost, potash, minerals, etc. to feed the micro-organisms that will help feed the tender seedlings. Biodynamic and organic gardeners appreciate the differences between living soil and lab-concocted soils filled with vermiculite and requiring chemical fertilizers. A handful of living soil in one hand and lifeless soil in the other tells all.

Similarly, gardeners of human seedlings know the foundational importance of optimal nutrition for children. Fresh produce grown in nutrient-rich living soil feeds them best, while processed food products laden with coloring, nitrates, 4-5 syllable chemicals and/or sugar feed them least. A year in the life of each child through flu, cold, and allergy seasons reveals much.

 Planting Seedlings

By mid April the adult and child planters marveled at the earthworms in the garden while digging planting holes. Again tender care, expressions of appreciation and a sense of wonder blessed the planting of each seedling.

Experienced gardeners note that the baby plants respond exuberantly to leaving the hothouse pots to be placed in the garden. Quickly, the seedlings rooted in the garden out-distance same-age counterparts remaining in the greenhouse.

Because of temperature sensitivities different members of the Plant Kingdom sprout earlier or later in spring. Radishes, peas and potatoes require earlier planting than beans, squash, tomatoes and corn.

Experienced gardeners of child gardens know the same is true for the human seedlings. For example, distinct individual proclivities determine readiness for academics. One child may learn to read at 4, and another at 8. By the time they are 12, given that each loves to read, their intelligence cultivated in a biodynamic, child-responsive environment, they are likely to both be reading at the same level with ease.

Rainclouds of Potential

Gardeners observe that garden plants respond differently to water from rainstorms than hose water. While water from hoses promotes measurable growth, dynamically charged rainwater induces profuse growth.

Similarly, rainclouds of ideas charged with attractive potentials water child gardens with novelty, meaning and creativity for a profusion of growth.

The future date approaches when schooling hot houses are only historical accounts of a failed experiment; and the proliferation of two-dimensional tests is only a relic of early 21^st century ignorance.

When the world’s children are thriving in organic child gardens; when generations take root in curricular soil that feeds the soul, watered by rainclouds of adult creativity, insight, and responsiveness—then will rainbow hues of bright-eyed enthusiasm, joy, and passionate, self-driven learning bless human seedlings. At last, the gardeners of human potentials will cultivate and celebrate bountiful harvests of multi-dimensional genius.

OF MOLECULES AND MEN

Q: Why do you favor replacing an emphasis on boundaries with more inclusive terminology for conflict-resolution. Clear boundaries are important to most people.

Recent revelations in science challenge the scientific dogma that many of us have heard all our lives. For example one truism has been that survival of the fittest is the main driver of a strong evolving species. In the survival of the fittest scenario, a singular species expands its borders at the expense of another. According to this view when humans behave this way we are following a biological imperative established in nature for billions of years.

This dominant view permeates our lives, even to the point of emphasizing personal boundaries when faced with conflict.

Likewise we have been told that the DNA we are born with remains unchanged for life. This view that change must be imposed from an external source, such as a system, parent or teacher, has profoundly affected our relationships with one another - especially children.

Yet modern research has shown that DNA intelligently reorganizes in response to challenges facing the organism.  And this reorganization consistently favors inclusiveness and wholeness for lasting and far-reaching solutions.

In Earth Dance: Living Systems in Evolution Elisabet Sahtouris brings to light a new and more complete view of living relationships. Yes, competition and survival of the fittest has played an important role in the evolvement of life, including the earliest bacteria. But in time, these life forms competing for resources have invariably created a life-threatening environment for themselves.

The first protein molecules multiplied in the early chemical soup that was the young earth. Eventually, they joined in partnerships to facilitate enzymatic activity.  Grouping together in the form of a cell generated a mutual support system for the molecules and the cell that housed them.

At one point the competition for nitrogen of the monera (one-celled organisms) that formed the organic soup in Gaia’s waters caused a crisis. Faced with possible extinction, Life instead reorganized the DNA to accommodate a new solution from a new resource - solar energy. 

A couple of billion years later still another crises arose. The gas excreted by Gaia’s bacteria filled the atmosphere. Life was again in danger of extinction from the poisonous gas, oxygen, and the accompanying stronger sunlight!

But again the DNA of these organisms responded with inventive solutions. Some learned to produce enzymes to render oxygen nonpoisonous to themselves. Others learned to make ultraviolet sunscreens. Still others learned to live together in colonies housed by an protective skin of dead cells.

So, what does this have to do with human relationships and in particular adult/child relationships?

A competitive worldview, emphasizing exclusive rights and boundaries between human beings, has triggered an epidemic of self-interest at the expense of the whole. We see this all the way from huge corporations that use up both Earth resources and human beings by desecrating and enslaving life; to human relationships ruled by self-interest and competition.

Can it be that this crisis facing the latest dominant species on Planet Earth, offers yet another momentous challenge?

Based on historical precedent on our planet, to the extent that we learn to re-pattern our relationships with one another and children to facilitate unity and wholeness we can affect positive changes down to the level of our DNA.

Indeed, avant-garde science ascertains that we work, play and relate in a unified field. We will know the forerunners of this latest expansion into unity and wholeness by its by-products – inclusive language and mutually supportive behaviors. To the extent we learn the language of encouragement and inspiration, and engagement through example and invitation, we help secure an Atmosphere of Love and Understanding in a momentous planetary grouping – the Human Family.

A SENSE OF WONDER

 Q. To provide lasting value for the child, which deserves first and foremost emphasis: rules, skills & formulas; or self-expression that flows from the very soul of the child?

In the book Quantum Creativity, the philosopher/physicist Amit Goswami relates the following story:

Two boys in France were given the task of taking a short trip and then coming back and reporting on it. When they came back, the first boy was asked, “So, what did you see?” The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing much.” … But the second boy, in answer to the same question, said with luminous eyes, “I have seen so much.” Then he proceeded to describe it all in glowing detail. … The second boy grew up to be renowned novelist, Victor Hugo.

By way of contrast, I recently listened to a concerned mother speaking to her child’s tutor about long e word spellings. The concern over, and discussion of, this small detail of spelling continued for 20 minutes. Meanwhile her child escaped to play on nearby swings.

Does it seem heretical to care far more that children want to say something, i.e., that they desire to write their own stories on paper, regardless of misspellings? Written articulation is a return, at a higher level, to the toddler stage of learning to speak. The little one self-refines his speech and self-develops an amazing complexity of speech patterns because he is immersed in oral communication. Also, importantly, it is because he wants to want to communicate with those around him. Similarly, the child gradually learns to see and self-correct misspellings organically through immersion in compelling literature, and a triggered desire for self-expression. After writing, children are amenable to a degree of editing by an appreciative mentor, because the spelling is in the context of their creativity, and they like for their spelling to be correct.

Like windows closed to the soul, the emphasis on correct spelling first and foremost deflects the breezes of self-expression. The greater danger is for closed doors and windows to continue to deflect the urge to written articulation of one’s discoveries, ponderings and stories throughout life.

Fearfully, modern society confines its offspring to a speeding train of minutia for 12+ years of schooling. Compelling panoramas pass by unnoticed, in the belief that this is the track to the destination—successful adulthood. But is it?

In the 1950’s Donald Mckinnon conducted a study of the traits of 40 of the most distinguished architects in the United States. The two control groups included (1) a group of architects chosen randomly from a directory, and (2) architects who had worked with the 40 most creative architects above.

In a series of multidimensional tests, the 40 architects, who were the most sought after for their brilliant designs, scored significantly higher in two traits: sensitivity to feelings and a strong sense of aesthetics.*

How did schooling come to mean forcing the child’s brain to fixate on rule-driven bits of data, rather than awakening a sense of wonder at the world we live in? Far from being drones to perform programmed tasks, human beings are multidimensional beings, with the potential become eager explorers and purposeful creators. The task of the teachers of such beings is to stimulate a sense of adventure, anticipation and eagerness to learn more about the world. A child must FEEL something if his learning is to be meaningful and lasting.

Modern psychology now recognizes that feelings and sensory associations anchor meaningful and lasting learning. The place for academics is within the context of bringing the world to the child, i.e. triggered by the textures, colors, scents, sounds, tastes and aliveness of inviting surroundings. In this case, the honing of academic skill is a secondary impulse. The primary source is an awakened quest for increasing knowledge and self-expression as the child, regardless of age, relates to living kingdoms. Equally inspiring are evocative renderings of his ancestral heritage of great quests, discoveries, inventions, and masterpieces.

As the child reaches adulthood, knowledge of academic minutia may be vital for a successful vocation. However, overarching accustomed ordinariness, the skill of passionate self-expression vitalizes a fulfilling, beyond ordinary, avocation.

*D.W. Mckinnon, “The Personality Correlates of Creativity: A Study of American Architects,” in Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Applied Psychology, Volume 2, edited by G.S. Nielsen, 11-39 (Copenhagen: Munskgaard, 1962).