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!
