THE TRUE COMMON CORE - Part 5 of 6

The first decade of the 21^st century has brought with it an explosion of science that casts new light on the dimensions of our humanness that dance out of range of our eyesight.

We humans can see only narrow band of the light spectrum between infra red and ultra violet. And so it is with our cameras. At least most of our cameras.  However, a few years back the Russian Scientist Konstantin Korotkov invented a camera that captures, the unseen, at least to our eyes, interactions between living beings. The GMV camera captures the fields of plants, animals and people, the reaching out, co-mingling, and even repelling of individual energy fields.

At the same time in America, the Institute of HeartMath proved that our heart radiates and energy field extending in the shape of a torus around the body. We can’t see it, but it’s there affecting and being affected by every one that it contacts.

During the same decade the Japanese scientist Masuro Emoto discovered that thoughts and intentions affect molecules of water—such as the molecules of water that comprise over 70% our body. While dark, negative emotions create muddy blobs, happy, peaceful beautiful thoughts, like love and gratitude form beautiful crystals.

What if we were able to see the energy fields of our children in school and in nature? What if we could see them shrink into a dismal state of self-protection when the child feels bored? Not understood? Under pressure? What if we could see the water crystals in the child’s blood turn to muddy blobs at these times?

On the other hand, imagine seeing the dance of energy when children play; when they engage in work of their own initiative; when they are enjoying nature; when they are in a loving environment. What if we had this ability to peer closer to the core of our humanity? To the Core of the Child? How would we design their days? Their Education? Their environment?

Epilogue to the Allegory:

 Potential enlightenment so threatened the power and pocketbooks of the corporate promoters of the Cave Dweller Curricula and accoutrements that they stepped up their campaign to laud the ‘core’ learning needs of cave-bound humanity. Many confused parents anxiously clung to the familiar slogans “Into the Light” and “For The Common Good”.  Accordingly they prevailed upon their children to submit to shadow-bound academics in the interest of bright futures. So conditioned were the cave dwellers by corporate/government-driven slogans that even the knowledge of the light blinded them.

Nonetheless, the rays of light proved so irresistible that increasingly the children of coming generations stepped through the cave portal to repopulate meadows and forests. The common reservoir of Living Connections stimulated brilliance through imagination, exploration, creativity and ingenuity, and love. Corporate cave interests were forced to seek new sources of revenue as, one by one, families, relocated in Ecological Edens, and child protégées enjoyed Enlightened Education and Elucidation.

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.

THE TRUE COMMON CORE - Part 3 of 6

The petite three year old entered the play yard through the awning and underneath the expansive limbs of the mulberry tree. Glints of sunlight played with her gleaming black hair. Momentarily, Aramesh stood still in her spotlessly clean pink dress and shining black shoes. Shyly, she hung back next to her grandmother as her large dark eyes surveyed early arrivals already populating the swings and slide. A couple of ‘cooks’ were in a sand box filling stainless steel muffin tins and bowls with a soil/sand mixture.

As soon as Aramesh oriented herself to her surroundings, off came the shoes and with equal decisiveness the socks.

Then she headed to an unoccupied sandbox and lay down. Shining hair, pink dress, arms and legs, fingers and toes commingled with the cool grains of quartz. After first creating a ‘sand-angel’ with her arms, this tiny person became motionless. As if in response to an ancient call to radiant health, she became absolutely still as she allowed the earth to caress her back, while the sun lent its radiance to her serenely innocent countenance. I watched in awe, silent witness to the meditation of a young child.

I didn’t have my camera at that moment, although the image is indelibly etched in my brain—A momentary flash, to echo through the years as confirmation that the outdoor spaces, offering contact with natural elements, are an essential link in childhood passages from infancy to adulthood.

Penetrating insight into the natural stimulators of whole person, whole heart/brain intelligence helps us discern the “core” that our children rightfully hold in common. We recognize this endowment as the synthesis of Living/Learning/Loving in the above sandbox collaboration, including the twelve-year old who volunteered to pour the sand. Compelling life experiences offer a living curriculum that integrates whole person individuality with wisdom and knowledge.

The fundamental Common Core entrusted to our children is a Living Endowment. The Source of this Trust held in the interest of Human Genius insures the centrality of the heart and the full range of joyous expressions of the spirit/mind/heart/body complex that is a child.

The Allegory of the Cave Culture – Part Three

The Common Trust

The frightened people chastised the adventurer as he peered through the tiny opening. Authoritatively prodded by Cave Curricula specialists, his elders bade him to stop wasting time and return to cave labyrinth studies.

The possible ‘enlightenment’ of the people threatened the entrenched specialists, hierarchies of authority, and captains of commerce, which had chiseled a secure niche in Cave Culture Curricula. Alliance with the government propped the lobbyists’ push for the broadest scope of their agenda. With slogans like “Into The Light”, text and test lobbyists zealously promoted the need for further penetration of dark tunnels to memorize stone cold minutia.  The power that investors wielded was singularly self-serving, but they promoted their cause vigorously as being ”For the Common Good”. 

Nonetheless, through the generations, adventurers and dreamers were so drawn to the beckoning light at the cave entrance that one by one they labored to enlarge the rock bound aperture.

Continued in The True Common Core: Part Four

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.