A human being grows based
on experiences in his or her environment.
Brain development and learning are based on an individual’s interaction
with sensory information. Even in
utero, our brains react, change and grow according to stimuli.
Human
beings are born to connect positively to the people and objects in their
immediate surroundings. We
naturally connect with our mothers and fathers, the toys in our crib, the
blankets that cover us, the music and sounds that soothe us.
Conversely,
newborns are preconditioned to protect themselves from loud noises, changes in
temperature, physical harm, as well as a lack of food or attention. A built in alarm system—a baby’s wail
and will—is part of the human package.
Depending
on events in an infant’s environment, brain development and learning follow
paths of positive interaction and seek to create and repeat similar situations;
or create routes of avoidance in the case of stimuli that do not lead to
positive interaction and growth.
Many
opportunities to aid our children’s optimum development are diminished or lost
because of parents’ and society’s ignorance of the importance of the first six
years of life as the foundational platform on which each child builds an
adult. “The child is the father to
the man.” It is the child’s blood,
sweat and tears that build an adult human being.
Movement, language,
social relationships, a sense of order and refinement of sensory perception are
critical or sensitive periods of development from birth through age six years.
Our being aware of these periods assist a help to a child’s growth.
Movement and brain development are intricately interrelated
in the young child and movement continues to be important to learning for all
of our lives. Opportunities to
explore, orient, and repeat self-selected activities create optimum conditions
for the neural pathways of the young brain to become substantial and diverse.
Language development in the young child is fully formed by
the age of 30 months and relies on subtle and almost constant interaction of
the child with the people in his or her environment. A place rich in language affords the child a wealth of
spoken and receptive language that leads to the acquisition of written
language. This period of learning
language will never be as effortless as in this first six years of life.
Foundational
social
skills and personal relationships are established during a child’s
first six years. Compared to a
ten-year old, it’s relatively easy for a three-year-old to learn how to say “please
and thank you.” Trust and other foundational skills for human relationships are
established during this first six years.
Childhood issues of distrust and abandonment leave holes and scars that
deeply affect future adult relationship building.
The
developing sense of order in the young child creates foundational learning
as experiences in the child’s environment define the essential structure—who,
what, when where, why and how––of day-to-day living. What does a home look life? A family? When
are dinner, breakfast, lunch and snacks?
How do you take a bath, eat, go to school, clean the house, and on and
on?
The
child’s continued interactions with people and objects refine sensory perception. Tastes,
sounds, touching, smells, and vision become fine tuned as input is graduated
from dichotomies of good/bad, yes/no, like/dislike.
Apple
or apricot? Flavors are defined
and named. Sounds are
distinguished. A bird or a plane? A sense of touch learns to
differentiate velvet from burlap. The nose figures out skunk and steak. The
eyes recognize thousands of objects and discern subtleties of size and
color. Small, bigger, biggest.
Magenta, violet, lavender.
Learning
success has its roots in these first six years of life. From birth our children’s minds are
absorbing and coordinating foundational information as children experience
their immediate world. When a
child’s early environment is not rich in experiences with people, objects,
concepts and nature, many, if not most, learning difficulties take root in
these deficiencies.
Children
under the age of six learn very differently than any other time in our lives.
The work of the child under the age of six requires adequate societal support
and understanding.
When will our
children become our #1 priority?
From
birth our children must become the focus in our new system of education. Our society and our systems must back
the work of our families, for it is our families who nurture the emerging
individual and nourish vital foundational learning.
Educating the Whole Person
As we look towards
the new education we see that our constant testing for facts and measuring
academic skills has robbed our children of rich and meaningful learning
experiences. For deep learning, we
need to involve the whole person—mind, body, heart, and spirit.
Human
potential cannot be quantified. As
we study history and explore human achievements––as well as our disgraces––we
begin to see a limitless ability to experience and change our lives and world—for
better or for worse.
As
we guide our children, and nourish and protect their complete beings, we must
model the self-discipline, vision, passion and conscience that form the core of
true learning and self-discovery.
To
determine if our children are following paths of optimum development we must
observe our children involved in self-chosen meaningful activities. As our children follow a path of
authentic learning and self-awareness four attributes emerge:
1. the child’s love of being involved in
purposeful activity;
2. the child’s ability to concentrate
profoundly on tasks, with children as young as three-years-old consistently
focusing on self-selected activities for an hour or more, and older children
concentrating upwards of three hours;
3. the child’s inner discipline to choose
one behavior over another; and
4. the child’s enjoyment of being around
others seen in joyful work, mutual aid, and cooperation.
The
main signs of healthy human development for all of our lives can perhaps be
summed up in these four observable behaviors. We need to watch our children, while becoming self-aware of
our own behavior.
In
our new education we must create special environments for our children to
exercise their free will. Human
beings self-construct by working with the materials—tools, people, ideas and
nature—that are in our environments.
The adult’s job is to create conditions to assure the child’s success in
finding personally meaningful activities.
These special adult prepared environments should engage the whole child,
as well as be attractive and purposeful to the adults working with the child.
For
the body, this special environment should have physical and self-discipline
challenges. For the mind,
perception and mental puzzles. For
the heart, passionate interaction with life, and for the spirit or social
being, a struggle with matters of reason and free will.
In
our new education we must model the qualities that are at the center of
self-discovery and deep learning.
How can we expect our children to develop self-discipline if we lack it
ourselves? How can we expect our
children to have a vision of a better world if we aren’t looking and growing in
a positive direction? How can we
expect our children to be passionate about their lives if we don’t embrace our
own? How can we expect our
children to develop a conscience of the spirit if we lack a commitment to
reasoning, choice and action?
Our
new education creates a situation that engages the whole person––child and
adult, parent and teacher. This is
not a particularly easy place to create, but it can be done with the
intersection of vision, passion, self-discipline and conscience.
Creating Fluidity Between Real Life
and School
Mark
Twain in his adventures of Tom Sawyer tells of Tom playing hooky from school,
usually fishing or roaming in the woods.
On a beautiful spring or fall day, life in a classroom was disconnected
from a young boy’s need to get out and explore, and perhaps do something
meaningful, such as catch a fish or rabbit for dinner.
In
our new education there exists fluidity between real life and school. Life in school and life outside of
school appear similar in many ways, as one merges into the other. Self-directed
meaningful activity connects to all aspects of life as mastery is accomplished.
As
we prepare environments for meaningful independent mastery for the entire
person—body, mind, heart, and spirit—the outdoor flows into the classroom. Work extends into the garden. The garden highlights the biology and
rhythms of life to the child. As
the child works outdoors, life connects to all the sciences. This discovery of science allows the
child to explore nature, ideas, people and tools. With this self-selected meaningful work that has deep time
to create deep connections, real life resides in every moment.
Real
life is not defined as something that happens later––when you go to high
school, graduate from college, get a job, get married, have children, retire,
and on and on. Real life in our
new education is defined as right now.
School,
home and work meld into satisfying and creative human experiences as
relationships among ideas, people, tools and nature are explored, discovered,
and developed with an autonomous spirit of learning and self-discovery.
This
fluidity doesn’t mean though that our students can do anything they like. It means that they’ll like what they do
as they explore and work on appropriate life-affirming skills in specially prepared
environments that offer freedom within limits of responsibility.
The
ability to do something freely comes with the idea that when we are called upon
to act for the greater good, we will “respond with ability”, i.e.
responsibility. In this dynamic process we continually enlarge the limits of
our freedoms.
What
might this look like for a six-year old?
In our new education, Charlie has been nourished, protected and
strengthened from birth by his parents and teachers to make independent choices
and complete tasks with concentrated effort. In his classroom of six-to-nine year-olds, Charlie begins
one day by choosing to make banana bread for his classmates’ snack. He invites an experienced nine-year-old
friend, Priscilla, to help him gather ingredients and prepare the bread. As Charlie sees his community enjoy the
bread at lunch, he is encouraged and motivated to make bread the next day. As he meets with success Charlie
explores other recipes and asks to cook at home. When Charlie forgets to add baking powder to a batch of
bread, he reflects on his cooking “disaster”. From his failure he becomes curious about the chemistry of
cooking and the reactions that must occur for tasty treats.
Charlie's
curiosity about cooking increases and he asks his teacher if he can “go out”
and visit a bakery to see how different baked goods are made. Charlie works with the teacher to
contact a local baker and arrange a visit. Charles makes the phone call
himself, after the teacher has quietly “prepared” a partnership with the baker
for Charlie’s request to visit.
In
Charlie’s classroom there is a list of parents who can take students on
outings. Charlie makes
arrangements for transportation and supervision for his outing. He extends an invitation to Priscilla
to join him on this outing. The
two spend a couple of hours at the bakery and the baker is impressed with their
interest and understanding of bread making.
Charlie’s
successful outing and deep learning experience forms a launch pad for other
learning that will follow this basic cycle: discovery, experience through
meaningful activity, desire to learn more, exploration of other learning
opportunities, and on and on to complete cycle after cycle of personal learning
and self-discovery.
In
our new education the lines between school and real life are invisible, because
in our new education learning is real and personal, emerging from the interests
and choices of each individual as he or she engages in self-selected purposeful
tasks with time for mastery. Next
