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).

INTELLIGENCE AS INTERACTION

Q.  How can schools best promote enhanced intelligence growth in children?

We have spoken of the frontal lobes as being the most human part of the brain. The center for planning and design, these are also the seat of creative, innovative and abstract thinking. Additionally, this is the area where our self-reflective and empathic pondering takes place.

Importantly, this seat of high intelligence requires input from the heart and cerebrum. In fact, the more valid, and forthcoming the input, the greater the intelligence. It’s as if the frontal lobes are the president and the heart and cerebrum are the chief advisors. The heart has its finger on the interior pulse of the world, and the cerebrum is the liaison between President Frontal Lobes and the physical world.

The accuracy, the true value of the advice from this president’s chief advisors comes from first hand, ongoing contact with the living, dynamic, ever-changing planet, including its people, plants and animals by means of the body.

At no time is this first hand, ongoing contact with the surrounding, dynamic world more vital than in childhood. This time of growing, stretching intelligence requires hands-on interaction—the scintillating interplay of all the senses.

Receptors that line the sensory and motor cortices of the cerebrum receive input from all over the body, especially the hands.1

Carla Hannaford (Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not all In Your Head) writes, “With a huge part of the sensory and motor cortices in the brain involved with the hand, the hand shapes our cognitive, emotional, linguistic and psychological development.”2

Let’s imagine we could see the cerebrum as thousands of lights. Like tiny lightning bolts, dendrites form a connective web of shining streams of light. New experiences send new dendrites arching between synapses. The denser this web of connections, the greater the  intelligence source for President Frontal Lobes.

This is the question: How many light bulbs and links are likely to be shining if for 7 hours a day the child is confined to a chair in a rectangular room, holding a pencil, writing on rectangular sheets of paper, or interacting with rectangular computer screens or rectangular text books?

This is the next question: How much are those lights and the connecting web of light streams likely to be firing in the following scenario:

At 8:45 the arriving children are glad it’s spring and eager to play and interact with one another outdoors for the first 20 minutes. As they converse, run and climb, an array of textures, colors, forms, and sounds stimulate their senses. Amidst bird calls and songs, and other children’s voices, a variety of earthy scents assault their nostrils. They may touch the bark of trees and feel the dew-laden prairie grass brush again their ankles. Yellow dandelions beckon amid shades of green and brown. The children exercise their bodies as they walk, run, change directions, climb, and jump.

After circle time at 9:05, the indoor scene is another vibrant hive of activity as the children design independent projects. Some are seated at tables, while others sprawl on the floor surrounded by books and materials. Researchers are flipping through book pages or at computers. While some cut cardboard boxes or pieces of paper for dioramas, others design backdrops. As one concentrates on fancy lettering, another paints an animal, and still another molds a tiny clay person. While one writes on note cards, two friends converse as they co-design a project. Someone heads outside to retrieve sticks for a miniature teepee, while another raids the craft cabinet for beads or feathers.

Amidst the background hum of conversation, eyes are bright, the senses are engaged, and the hands are busy.

At 10:20 in response to rumbling stomachs, the group stops for a snack and an outdoor break before returning to projects.

In Magical Child Joseph Chilton Pearce explains in chapter 3 entitled  “Intelligence as Interaction”, that interaction is a two-way exchange of energy. Through interaction the brain grows new dendrites as well as its ability to interact.

When we see intelligence as a dynamic exchange of energy with the sights, sounds, smells and textures of LIFE, we see childhood learning in a new light.

In which case, instead of “sit still and be quiet,” we are more likely to echo Captain Jean Luc Piccard as we point toward the world and say, “Engage!”
1.Penfield and Jasper, Epilepsy; The Functioning Anatomy of the Human Brain. Boston: little Brown. 1954, P.58.
2.Wilson, Frank R. The Hand; How its Use Shapes the Brain, Language and Human Culture. N.Y: Pantheon Books. 1998, Introduction.

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.

OF SIGHT AND INSIGHT

Q. According to science, maximum brain growth occurs during early childhood. So, Isn’t this the time to begin teaching children to read and write?

Perhaps Nicholas’ mother knew, or intuited, a secret. Most parents of her generation dutifully sent their children to rectangular structures outfitted with chalkboards, books, paper and pencil. Meanwhile, Nicholas’s mother allowed him to escape outdoors each morning on their ten acres. While, others his age sat at desks to learn geography, Nicholas surveyed the world from his tree house.  While most glanced at textbook photos of nature, Nicholas became on intimate terms with the insects, animals, trees and plants of his domain. While teachers lectured about the world, Nicholas watched science and nature documentaries.

When Nicholas turned ten, he decided to come to our school. One of the kindest children to ever grace our little society, he patiently stooped to tie shoelaces and lent a hand to struggling tree climbers. There was an innocence about him, and yet a quiet confidence; a fascination with the world, and a voracious hunger to learn more about it.

However, Nicholas could neither read nor write. Normally, the learning journey from phonics to reading classical literature takes five or six years. I began teaching Nicholas to read in September. By May of that same year, he was daily engrossed in none other than the classic, Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.

The second year Nicholas wrote pages and pages in his journal.

Normally the journey from beginning math to algebra takes about six years. Nicholas progressed with ease through addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions to reach the 5^th grade level in one year.

Was Nicholas a genius? As far a I could tell, no more so than other children are geniuses. He was emotionally ready to learn. He was highly motivated to augment his considerable knowledge of the world with academics. His level of physiological development supported his quest and made learning easy.

Did Nicholas’ mother intuit that when children are ready, when they have been allowed their full childhood, they can accomplish five or six years of learning in one year?

The collective story, passed from generation to generation, asserts that our success as adults is because of childhoods imprisoned in hierarchical systems. Fearfully, the current, seventh generation graduates of these institutions subject our children ever earlier to rote learning and left-brain minutia.

But, according to science, this practice holds hostage natural physiology, including the development of sight. In this first in a series on physiology and learning, let’s focus on the eyes.

Carla Hannaford, Ph.D (Smart Moves – Why Learning Is Not All In Your Head) writes, “In a three dimensional environment, such as outdoors, the eye is in constant motion, gathering sensory information to build intricate image packages necessary for learning. The brain integrates these image packages and other sensory information like touch and proprioception (the sense of how our bodies are positioned) to build a visual perception system. The eyes are equipped with different kinds of visual focus, of which three dimensional focus is vital for learning, yet we emphasize two dimensional focus in learning situations with books, worksheets, computers and video games.”

Have you ever observed a four-year old hunker down to intently follow the path of a roly-poly for several seconds? He’s exercising his foveal focus. Next, if he’s lucky, he’s running through an open field developing his peripheral vision. Sure, he’s having fun, but improving his vision?

In both the U.S. and Singapore the forcing of 3 and 4 yr. olds to sit still and do seatwork (reading and writing) has stunted the vision. In Singapore, this led to 85% having myopia as 5 year olds. Similarly, in the U.S. children tend to become myopic when they start to do school work. (G. Kobata, What Causes Nearsightedness? Science, 1985, vol. 229, pp. 1249-1250.)

Can there be a correlation between free and happy childhoods and excellent vision?

A New York longitudinal study* followed 133 subjects from infancy into adulthood. In the early learning environment three major factors emerged as vital contributors to competency in adulthood:

First, sensory-rich indoor and out door environments;

Secondly, freedom to explore the environment with few restrictions; and

Thirdly, available parents that acted as consultants when the child asked a question.

Nicholas’ mother must have intuited that nature designed full support of the child’s physiology, to fully support adult competency.

* Thomas Alexander and Stella Chess, Genesis and Evolution of Behavioral Disorders From Infancy to Early Adult Life. American Journal of Psychiatry, 141, pp. 1-9.

OF EAGLETS AND CHILDREN

Q. How is a child’s sense of fantasy related to inventiveness? Isn't technological savvy grounded in thorough scientific knowledge and rigorous study?

A. Similar to any other human muscle or capacity, the imagination atrophies if it’s not exercised. For this reason sixteen years of plodding through unimaginative academics fosters memory, analysis and parroting at the expense of the capacity to envision new possibilities.

Suppression of the sense of fantasy is analogous to clipping the wings of pet parakeets. It’s a good way to insure that a tame bird stays in the confines of a familiar dwelling. If the pet does escape through the door, it’s not likely to make it past a nearby tree.

The generative potentials of our children are more akin to freely soaring eagles than caged birds. Within months, eaglets begin to flap their wings. Importantly, the parent eagles encourage their offspring through their own daily flights. Very soon the eaglet’s food will no longer be brought to him. He must soar with strong wings at breathtaking heights to survey vast terrains.

Soon out of toddlerhood, fledgling humans begin exercising their imaginations. Once awakened, this persistent urge can turn anything from a bit of fluff, to a stone, stick or fabric square into the three year old’s pretend play.

Among the important reasons for cultivating the wings of the imagination, is the sense of meaningful connection and contribution to one's society. The heart of Nature impels the first flights of fantasy with joyful abandon. A dynamic community further infuses the sense of fantasy with a sense of purpose--the urge to create new designs and inventions for the betterment of one's people.

The hands that hold the doll or build structures of blocks become instruments of the heart that embraces humanity, taps limitless resources, and invents in harmony with nature. The lessons encoded in fairytales, parables and legends endow the generative genius with ethical precision.

At six, seven, eight and nine years old the imagination is still expanding with growing complexity. The chapter book series, Wolves of the Beyond (Lasky) inspired one group of 7 to 11 year olds to become wolf packs extrapolating new adventures from the books’ plots during recess. For weeks on end the wolf packs built structures on the prairie and pursued one another through Thorn Forest, which forms a green belt perimeter for the prairie. The participants even figured out how to card the school’s knitting yarn to make magnificent wolf tales, which they attached to their belts.

These past weeks, it's been moving to see the children’s total absorption in their co-created dramas. And how wonderful to know that by behaving as nature designed them, the children are exercising an artery of superior intelligence—the imagination!

While intellectual gymnastics in cold institutions produce pedantic plodders, the restored Mother essence incubates the heart/soul complex of human hatchlings. This heart/soul brilliance announces its presence through individual talents and preferences. The child, a receptive conduit for the soul’s nudging, invites academic forays and flights of imagination as complementary aspects of his work/play.

The imagination, synchronously developed with the absorption of new knowledge, expands exponentially. From childhoods satiated this integration of science and creativity, emerge  fulfilling vocation opportunities for graduates.

Far removed from the perching of caged fowl, Nature’s children try their wings for a future of soaring like eagles. But their best learning opportunities come from attentive elders, who likewise extend their own wings and soar skyward.