We are not a model to be emulated. We believe that every one has their own destiny and pathto travel and ‘unknown’ to unravel. We also do not claim that we know what to do. We know almost what we should not do. Schooling , controlling or conditioning are against the veryfoundation of living and that is what modern schools have been doing in the name of education. To educate is to draw out. Instead we have been filling in! We have come a long way and confused ourselves so badly that now to trace back and understand is a herculean task. In fact from human beings we have become human knowings! Knowing happens in the realm of unknown. Unknown is the condition for awe, humility, creativity, spontaneity, sensitivity and hence where living can happen. So we invite any one who wants explore afresh the whole question of being, learning, beauty, children etc. to be part of this journey.
Language is not a cognitive source, reasoning is not a cognitive tool as cognition happens in the realm of biology, in the concrete, experiential world, in silence and comprehension takes place as a result of self organization. So how do we stop reasoning and begin to comprehend. Explanations cannot replace experience
Children learn from the moment they are born. If school is where learning takes place, then the world, children are experiencing is their school and Sadhana school is only one part in the total learning journey/ space of children. All new born come into the world with knowledge of life/ nature and the specific location of its birth awakens the qualities required to respond aptly.
Knowing by being
Sadhana village school
Inline with the natural, biological process inchildren
knowledge to knowing
Memory to intelligence
Words to experience
Control to self-discipline
Planning to spontaneity
Directed to self-initiated
Secondhand knowledge to direct knowing
A space where children are free to BE, teachers learn to learn again, learn from children how to be, children are respected and acknowledged that they are born with capacity to make sense of the world. What we try to do is to create conditions for learning to happen.‘Space’ where knowing happens by being, where ‘Knower’ is the primary subject of enquiry and ‘awakening the knower’ is the objective of learning.
knowing by begin
Sadhana village school
Inline with the natural, biological process inchildren
Sadhana School is established in 2009 by Sadhana village, Pune , a Registered Charitable Trust working in this region since 1994. It is located at Kule,( Block Mulashi, Dist. Pune) a village about 40 km from Pune. Children of 3.5 to 10 years come from 12 villages with maximum distance of 20 km. There are about 100 children at present. The children come from traditionally paddy growing villages where milk is a household business and sugarcane is new way of earning hard cash. The grant parents were farmers but now some of the parents do small jobs in nearby industries, some are drivers or laborers.
With the advent of modern schooling contextual and existential knowledge creation in communities disappeared. People became mere recipients of de-contextualized readymade knowledge. This not only made thousands of years of culturally diverse, ecologically sensitive knowledge to disappear but also ensured that such knowledge will not be produced anymore. Schools rewired our cognitive ability to create knowledge to consume readymade knowledge of experts. Senses and experience are replaced by text and reasoning, humility and openness are replaced by pride and arrogance. Power made us blind to the nature’s process of knowing and being
Paradigm of modern schools
Schools, knowledge and teachers came in to being as a result of wanting to ‘teach’ children and seldom the question was asked ‘how children learn.’ ! How to teach children would put emphasis on pedagogy, knowledge, expert etc. and how children learn would emphasize on creating conditions for knowing to happen. As a result the present schools are creating uncreative, fragmented, anthropocentric, egoistic and selfish individuals who are spiritually, cognitively and culturally damaged.
Cognitive damages
Schools have destroyed knowing as a process by imparting knowledge as a product. This when done for 15 to 20 years completely rewires our brain and gets it accustomed to storing and processing information given by experts books rather than creating knowledge. All we do in schools is to memorize information and analyze information. Reasoning is not a cognitive tool nor is text a cognitive source. The ability to deal with unknown is absent. Even the quality of learning is killed as we become closed, rigid and mechanical. Pride and arrogance will not let us even doubt our mediocrity.
Cognitive dissonance
Non contextual and word/ language dependent schooling further alienates us from our true nature, disregards our participation, creating the mind body divide. Mind creates a conceptual world to be learned and understood with in the realm of language where as the body continues its cognitive process as per the biological process and imbibes what it experiences. Mind learns the text and Body learns the teacher
.In India
The genesis of present schooling in India is based on the conception of Mr. Macaulay which was meant to produce Indians with British culture. The modern Indians have continued and perfected this even after the British left some 60 years ago. This has resulted in change in our world view, created dependence on western universities and also created deep rooted inferiority complex. Destruction of indigenous ways of knowing and being has been another impact of modern schooling and its hegemonic knowledge system. We, the so called educated have eliminated knowledge of humanity which evolved naturally over thousands of years.
At Kolwan village
The specific context of the school being in the rural set up demands certain kind of interventions. The villages are situated very near to a big city. Hence, education becomes the passport for choosing the city life and kicking the rural life along with their non- literate parents and all the embedded wisdom knowledge and skills. The impact of schools in rural set up has been to increase migration to urban areas. An education that can make children respect rural life along with acquiring the wisdom knowledge of community would minimize migration to some extent.
Cultural fall out
Diversity in culture was retained when people created knowledge responding to their specific needs and environmental conditions. People no longer understand their own context they live in . This is also leading to homogenization of cultures and mechanization of human beings. All institutionalized knowledge is by default hierarchical and centralized such that the rural population will always feel inferior and who do not receive it are made to feel they are backward.
The modern, literate human being is fragmented in every way. As we get introduced to the world through non contextual, textual information, we get fragmented in all aspect of our being-ness- mind and body, male and female principles, knower and the knowledge etc. Integral and holistic knowledge is fragmented in to subjects, art and language. The universal and the particular in our being-ness disappears.
Context, content and pedagogy
In natural learning content, condition or context and pedagogy merge into one where as in the present schooling system all these are fragmented and hence distorted. The real context is replaced by the class room and a unified syllabus which becomes the content and various tricks the teacher uses to make the student to pass the tests becomes the pedagogy. In natural learning there is nothing to remember and nothing to forget.
What ever the child is experiencing is the content of the child’s learning. So everything the child is encountering is teaching the child. Children learn the moment they are born and may be from the time of conception. Mother, father, other people in the family, house, village, etc. are the first learning space and content. Value, beauty and knowledge are the contents and processes needed to be on the earth.
The focus is on the quality of being rather than quantity of information.
Learning is a wrongly used term as it only includes ‘tangible and codified knowledge’ leaving out values, emotions etc. Children imbibe/ learn what ever they experience. So if you regulate and structure children's experience, they imbibe that act of regulation as well as the result. Thus killing their spontaneity and natural being-ness. Everything that happens in the school is the content for the child. Teaching is an authoritarian act. Children imbibe both sides of the coin. To obey and to command. True learning is a democratic act because true learning is not regulated, structured, quantified or tested. Democracy is our natural condition, authorities such as text, expert and power instills anti democratic values.
This demands a total paradigm shift and the role of the adults as teachers, guides, facilitators needs questioning because what ever role the adults play will be imbibed and emulated by children. Then the best pedagogy could be to have adults given a free space for learning and doing what they are passionate about, and doing what we want children to learn.
Nature of learning
Learning happens. It is the basis of life. All living beings learn as per their needs. We are all wired to do so. To learn means to experience. To experience means to live. We can only experience the context in which we live. In living, knowing happens choicelessly. Real learning is transformative. In learning value, emotion, aesthetic sense and knowledge are integrated. Learning happens in the realm of experience and silence. Fundamental need of knowledge is to sustain life. Everything in nature is involved in this. Every living being is intelligently taking decisions to live.
Children
The child is biologically wired to learn. But this requires us to respect the autonomy of the child. Freedom is the primary condition for knowing to happen. This in way defines what children learn, how children learn. Children learn what they experience. Creative and imaginative imitation through play is the means by which they understand how the world functions. In this sense what schools have been teaching children is to be a teacher, to obey, to be afraid of authority, to depend on authority for knowledge etc. (Children play teacher games as they experience the school system and imbibe theses values)
Creativity
Most misunderstood act/ activity. Every child is born creative. But the external conditions created by the adult determines the future. The realm of unknown offers awakening of qualities required to be creative. Humility, openness, wonder. But instructed and conditioned behaviors inhibits it.- dependent, certain, closed. As schools are imparting readymade second hand knowledge it removes any possibility of awakening of creativity. Reasoning takes over as the mode to comprehend.
Perception and objectivity
Perception or the ability to SEE is the most important cognitive act and hence the ability of the knower is what needs attention. What is being looked at is the same for every one. Objectivity in knowledge can only be achieved by addressing the biases and selfish aspect of the knower and not by removing the knower totally in the name of subjectivity.
Paradox in research in Cognitive science
Modern understanding of cognition, creativity, learning process etc. comes from studying children and it is being used to make more and more intelligent machines which is being promoted to kill the creativity of the child. This research on children was taken up by the departments related to artificial intelligence and not in child psychology, or education etc. So it is not the love of children that prompted all these discoveries. which is clear from the fact that modernity refuses to change the way schooling is done and the so called child rights are not being re examined.
What school actually teaches
The experience we have in the school gets etched in our being. Hence the teaching teacher teaches us to ‘teach’. We imbibe the ‘teacher’ mind. We also learn that what schools gives us is ‘knowledge’. We also learn to obey authority, believe the expert. Existing schools condition the child to be self centered, competitive, non cooperative and individualistic.
Abstract knowledge
The existing notion is that schools are dealing with abstract knowledge. Schools are dealing with de contextualized, secondhand knowledge. Abstraction is a process that takes place with in the learner as a result of experiencing their contexts. The inputs are done by the senses as it experience the real world and the mind does the processing.
Cognitive condition/ space -As what and how children learn depends on the cognitive conditions we are attempting to create and provide space that will allow the natural learning to take place.
Creating conditions rather than conditioning- The idea is to enlarge the scope of school so as to include the whole community which enables the growth of the natural, biological process in children to lead a sustainable, contended and harmonious life - in harmony with nature, culture, society, family and self. Creating an environment of freedom and trust so that children can grow, blossom naturally. Not dividing their time in the school in to separate categories of play, learn or in to language, mathematics, science etc. Not forcing the child in to age wise class rooms and not making them sit in rows. The school then becomes a space for the awakening of intelligence, sensitivity, creativity, observation, self initiative, self discipline.
We are still exploring and being open to what should happen in the school. As of now as children come to the school we all sit together, some times singing, some times in silence and also discuss any matters related to the life. Informal groups of children sit with the adults and talk about what ever they wish to talk, giving importance to their experiences from the time they left school the day before. Roughly 60% of the time children play, 20% time for drawing and 20% for articulation and sharing.
As what ever the adults do will be emulated by children, adults are encouraged to do anything they are interested in. This includes farming, cooking, drawing, reading etc. When we use linguistic categories to learn, the natural process are distorted. So we are taking care not to make syllabus, periods etc.
Being in the realm of unknown- Awe - Being in the realm of unknown ensures awe, humility and deep respect for life and nature. The human being then begin the task of making the unknown known or uncover, reveal with total humility. Children need to get opportunity to figure out all by themselves and this brings out different set of cognitive abilities. When they are dealing with something unknown and not having the rational mind developed yet they naturally had to use another process to solve this. Thus a different cognitive process will be at work to solve this problem. Three conditions thus created are 1.children are autonomously dealing with the task, 2. they are doing something experientially and 3. What is innate in them gets drawn out . All knowledge is not result of trial and error but may be there is a way of knowing that it is instantaneous like the way all living beings in nature know.
Freedom- Self initiated activities- Autonomy- Freedom allows the child to respond to their own needs. Self initiated activities with self satisfaction as the motif enables the child to autonomously engage with the world. Minimum interference from the adult only can ensure this.
Experiencing the world- Play - Children understand the world through play. Any self initiated activity done for their own satisfaction is play. Child trying to bite its foot is play, making sound is play, bouncing on sofa is play, trying to slide on smooth surface is play and everything it does to re experience through imitation is play.
Enhancing observation/ reflection- Senses
As observation is the most important cognitive act conditions are created for the child to observe various natural phenomonon of life as it is. Once naming gets more important the cognitive processes related to senses die and thinking and reasoning takes over. As they get entrenched in the linguistic world the world of objects recede from their vision. They stop being present to the world around. From the realm of timelessness they also get caught up in the clutches of time. Hence children spend lot of time drawing what they see, experience, play etc
Enhancing articulation- Language- When the child learns to speak, it is actually learning to articulate its understanding of the world. The child’s language cannot be separated from the experience it is having of the world. The experience of the world integrates with the language or languages she uses to express or articulate. The school way of teaching language imposes all the artificial categories and divisions on the child . Whereas if the children is left alone to make sense of the world, they do it in the most scientific and appropriate manner retaining the primacy of experience
What we are attempting is to create a school or a space for rural children so that they truly learn what is necessary for them to be sensitive, independent, intelligent, creative, self-reliant and sustainable and at the same time be rooted in their cultural practices and wisdom knowledge. The objective is to rethink everything with which we have developed the present day schools. From why we need schools, what we do in schools to how we do schooling. The attempt is not to create an alternative but to challenge the very basis of modern schooling. Why this is necessary is that the old paradigm has been set up based on ‘how to teach children’ and the proposed paradigm is based on ‘how children learn’. There is a complete paradigm shift in every respect.
If any one of you would be interested in spending some time in the school, you are welcome to do so. The challenge before us is to understand how to understand the grammar of life in such a manner that it is integrated and organically linked, like the way we acquire mother tongue. I would like to take the example of acquiring mother tongue to understand the process of learning. Before we learned the grammar and without ever asking the meaning of specific words. As we experience the world it is almost like language fell in place. The integrity of experience and language is worth noting and it is in this manner we make sense of the world too. Without losing this integral experience, how do we reflect so as to understand what we just lived. Can we set up experiments to get children to be aware of what they have just experienced. So our task would be to observe what children are experiencing. But here again there will be a problem as we will see only what we are looking for. When a child is doing something several things are happening emotionally, sensually, psychologically and intellectually and may be much more. Can we also explore day to day language as a means to make aware the mathematics and the sciences of life as a means to get children to reflect and notice consciously. It is of utmost importance that we approach this with total humility and care because we are still in the process of exploring. We ourselves are ignorant about the science of life and on top of that we are fragmented and cognitively damaged. Please take all this as suggestions. Can we stay in the realm of tentativeness and explore?
While, exploring how to get children to understand science and mathematics happening around us in a natural and integrated manner, the most important precaution is to ensure we don’t have fragmented subjects and periods. This categorization gets ingrained in children’s mind. So we don’t have language, art, science, mathematics etc as separate subjects. We don’t spend much time on writing as it is merely a communication skill. Instead we focus more on talking and sharing about what we are able to observe and experience. We focus on addressing ‘what’ of any phenomenon rather than ‘why’. ‘what’ enhances observation. As observation is the starting point of cognition/ understanding of phenomenon the task before us is to find ways to let children observe what is happening around us.
Care must be taken to retain the natural process of cognition as much as possible. For example, consciously including various mathematical and scientific terminologies in day to day conversations such as height, distance, area, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, quantity, quality, force, speed, resistance, friction, angle, growth, colour, smell, symmetry, seasons, wind, rain, insects, family, animals, plants, farming, food, house, house making etc.
Children are constantly challenging us to re examine everything we have taken for granted. Our school is becoming a space for the adults to unlearn. Children are making us understand the need to include their parents and the village in our enquiry. Children are challenging us to examine the importance of natural, spontaneous activities that they do. We are reexamining all our mind created understandings.
How children learn language. What is the natural content of the language as against the school imposed language. What is abstraction. What is reflection in the real world of children. What is the role of reasoning and memory in their natural learning.
Value: Nature centric mind with which children are born enables them to live in harmony with nature. Contentment, completeness and trust are the innate qualities in children’s nature. Cooperation, selflessness, sustainability are the values they acquire by living with sense literate people. Being in truth is our natural condition. Condition of fear makes us tell lies and instills unnatural fear.
Qualities: They are also humble, innocent, open, curious, daring, resilient. The condition of being in the realm of unknown ensures the flowering of these values.
Beauty & Aesthetics: Children are immersed in the beauty of the world and what ever they are doing has the element of beauty in that engagement. Art as a separate subject will destroy the totality of this quality in children. Allowing children to engage with the world freely would awaken the senses and the aesthetic sensibility. Perhaps what we can do is to broaden the awakening of the senses by participating with them in order to experience the world. Drawing probably would help children in keen observation by shifting the focus of drawing as self expression to drawing as observation.
Phenomenon: The children need to experience various phenomenon of the world and this enables the development of the nature centric cognitive structure and this in turn helps them to understand the processes of life. Things are happening around them all the time.
Language: The language needs to be re claimed as communication tool. So language is being taught to children as naturally as possible based on the natural way of acquiring language skills. The clues to teaching language are taken from how children naturally learn their mother tongue. English words will be introduced by observing and studying what children are doing. Language will not be broken up in to alphabets, unconnected words.
Science & math: Science and math is to be taught in an unalienated manner where learning results from doing & experiencing. The natural sense of number, direction, quantity, measurement etc. need to be understood by us in order to be explored with children.
Abstraction
Converting the three dimensional object into two dimensions is an very important cognitive act in the modern world. But it is necessary to also have the ability to reconvert the two dimensional world in to three to understand the real world. The abstraction that happens is quite remarkable and this is very difficult for an educated person to accomplish unless trained. the children are caught by the rational framework, they are able to draw what they see without the need for thought to interpret. They are able to just observe and draw. The educated goes through three steps. They see, think and draw and quite often they are not able to draw where as children are able to draw quite easily. So recording the world through drawing would help in abstracting as well as being rooted in the real world.
We are in a position to offer support to teachers, parents and any others interested in being part of the journey. We are planning to offer regular residential programs.
The focus of the program is to initiate an inner journey so as to make one capable of seeing the real child. We are constantly coming in the way of children. Good intentions are not enough.
Teacher re orientation This program is to help teachers to rediscover the inherent qualities in the child and initiate a journey to discover what is learning, how does it happen, how does we assist, how do we become learners etc. Being with children offers the possibility of recovering many of our lost and numbed qualities. So sensitive engagement with children is the focus of the re orientation.
Spiritual parenting Being with children can be the most spiritual experience provided the parents have the eye to see what is a true child. This program is to help parents rediscover the inherent qualities in the child and initiate a journey to discover their own authenticity.
DE schooling, unlearning , rediscovering authenticity This program is to help anyone to rediscover the inherent qualities in them lost in the process of getting ‘educated’ and initiate a journey to discover their own creativity, originality and authenticity.
A child was asked what he wants to become when he grows up and his answer was ‘ I want to become me. Why should I become some one else.’. Till you condition children they would have no doubt what to answer to this stupid question. What is the colour of sky. Adult question and adult answer is Blue. Guess what would the answer of the child.
‘What is the smallest thing’ teacher asks to a 11 year old child. ‘Which subject are you referring to- chemistry, biology.’ when you mix red and yellow paint what is happening.
Ask any non schooled child/ adult. They might surprise you.
Exploring the potential of digital tools to enhance natural learning and retaining and developing local knowledge system Context
The way future of education is predicted and is likely to follow is along the digital technology path which will be a mere extension of the existing paradigm. All the struggles are merely to change from text mode to digital mode. It seems to change everything at the surface level but in essence the process is same and this illusion of change will be far more harmful. The change that will happen is that the student will have access to never ending flow of information masked as knowledge.
External authority of knowledge remains and only the process of accessing it changes. The middleman is replaced. It really doesn’t challenge some basic fundamental truths about our being-ness. It will only further increase the distance between man and nature and cause further alienation and fragmentation. In the modern educational paradigm there is no out of the box scenario. It can only move from one box to the other. Text codification is being replaced by digital codification. Knowledge still is kept outside the experiential verification of our being.
It is in context that the experiment is being conducted to see whether we can use digital technologies in helping us to understand, reflect what we are learning subconsciously.
Why
Documentation is meant to study what children learn naturally, what is their natural content and how they are making sense of the world around them. In other words to understand the content, process and conditions required for learning. To encourage the teachers to develop interest in things that is happening around their life every day. Or for that matter at least to make them explore and understand the connect between what they supposed to have learned and their context and relevance in everyday lives.
What we did was to get the teachers to observe children and nature closely to give them firsthand experience of how children learn and also to awaken them to the possibilities in their immediate nature to use that as the content for ‘teaching’. So almost every day teachers document a video, few stills and an audio of children. This is organized, edited, made in to various types of documents- written, power-point, and movie and viewed by the whole teachers to discuss and reflect on children as well as the content. Most of the teachers are from village and their knowledge of English and computer was very poor. But with this activity both have improved. But more importantly they began to value their own being and the knowledge system of their village etc. From regular ‘teachers’ they became real learners with lot of enthusiasm and interest.
As we were exploring the natural content of what children learn/ imbibe we realized the need to document children while they are at their village also. So the teachers could do this while they are in the village. Sadhana village is also running activity centers in all the 10 villages with the help of 16/17 year olds and we are thinking of making use of this to extend the experiment to these places also.
Conclusion
Making the subconscious knowledge conscious is required for two reasons. One is to create self-respect and feeling of self-worth among the holders of this knowledge as the over importance given to literacy is undermining the natural process of knowing and second reason is for the people who now belong to the quantified and conscious knowledge paradigm to value the process of knowing based on experience, senses and authenticity.
We are planning series of events to collaboratively question the existing educational system . Do check with us.
Samvaad on learning
We are planning a series of samvaads to invite more people to engage in deep research on various aspects of learning ecology- why learn. What is being learned. How learning takes place. And where learning takes place. And also a deeper enquiry to understand what exactly is ‘learning’, ‘knowing’ and ‘being’.
The first one in the series was on ‘what children learn naturally’
1.Samvaad on ‘What Children (we) Learn naturally’
The event was held in Pune on 13, 14, 15 th of April 2011 and went off very well with about 40 people from various parts of India attending. There were teachers, designers, trainers, parents, home schoolers etc. Samvaad was also meant to let people know what we are doing and offering space for people to be part of the team.
2. Samvaad on play
The Samvaad on ‘Why children play and what children play’ was held on 21, 22, 23 December 2012 in Pune We, the adult members of the Sadhana village school have been documenting children from June 2011 and have about 5 thousand clips of 2 to5 minutes duration. Apart from videos, we have also been documenting their conversations and images on what children make.
Both the documentation process and the viewing of the clips have given us deep insight in to what is happening with children. This became the basis for our Samvaad.
The challenge for the participants was to empty what is known, and begin the inquiry from ground of unknown. So we spend time drawing out the known, challenging the certainty of this and allowing us to be in doubt and suspense.
Wisdom knowledge of non literate peopleThis event was held with people who have been working with non literate people in various parts of the country. The focus was to understand the knowledge system. We hope to hold more so as to explore the role of language in these cultures and also on children. This took place in Pune on 23, 24, 25 September 2011.
This page is being made. Will be updated soon
We are group of people who are interested in exploring natural learning processes. We believe that children can help us to find the way to our own true selves. So we are trying to create situations where children can retain their natural processes and which might in turn help us also. In the journey like minded persons are invited to join with us
Even though we are inspired by children we are also inspired by many people . Primarily among them are the illiterate people (in true sense, ‘the sense literate people’) who live as integral part of the nature. Many friends are supporting us intellectually and links to their work is as follows. There are also many friends with out net presence.
There are many people around the world questioning the present educational process at various angles- political, cultural, social and even biological.
We are inspired by many sages, philosophers, educationists. We will quote some of them here. Gandhi, Tagore, J.Krishnamurti, Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, John Holt , Ivan Illich, Paolo Freire, Leo Tolstoy.
Against method
Support us
We are looking for support at all levels- financial, materials and intellectual
Contact us
If you are interested in working with us
To learn from us as to how to observe children
To explore deeper questions about cognition, knowledge, play, children
If you want us to collaborate with you to set up similar explorations
Ranjana Baji
Sadhana village,1, priyankit,
lokmanya colony, Paud road,
pune-411038.
Phone number:0091 -20- 25380792,0091 -20- 25381112. Sadhana English School, At Kule, Taluka Mulshi, Dist. Pune, Maharashtra.
E mail: sadhanavillageschool@gmail.com
This page is being made. Will be updated soon
BLOGS
reimaginingschools.wordpess.com
designeducationasia.blogspot.com
my.opera.com/jinankb/blog/sensing-nature
awakeningtheaestheticawareness.blogspot.com
awakeningaestheticawareness.wordpress.com
awakeningaesticawareness.blogspot.com
VIDEOS
youtube.com/user/sadhanavillagepune
Biology of knowing links
The Dark Side of Literacy
Most of us assume that LITERACY is a good thing. But have we ever thought about what exactly literacy means and what its harmful effects may be. The following articles are offered to provoke deeper thinking around the campaign of Eradicating Illiteracy (or Literacy for All). Introduction to The Dark Side of Literacy
www.usu.edu/anthro/davidlancyspages/RW_Powerpoints/when_nurture_becomes_nature/index.html
www.usu.edu/anthro/davidlancyspages/RW_Powerpoints/Unmasking%20Children's%20Agency.pdf
From the cognitive sciences research
Everything the brain does, from the linking of neurons into networks, to the categorizing of perceptions, to the formation of consciousness as a whole, it does on an entirely self-organizing basis, rather than a master program or control center telling it what to do. Gerald Edelman, Second Nature. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006, Pg. 27-33
‘The underlying neurological, physiological, and psychological activity that supports learning occurs on a self-organizing basis; and likewise, that learning’s behavioral components—intention, interest, emotion, perception, categorization, generalization, memory, and action—all self-organize too’ Thelen and Smith, A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action, pg. 327
Children, on their own, can discover both the skills to be learned and how to master them through experimentation - trial and error problem solving. Children are capable of directing their own learning. Linda Smith and Michael Gasser, 2005, “The Development of Embodied Cognition: Six Lessons from Babies." Artificial Life, Vol. 11, pg. 13-30.
Explore with us once again what children are all about. See them directly with out the help of experts and theories. See them as they are. Not as a teacher, not as a mother, father, just as a human being, a living being Children are the most misunderstood and the most ill treated in the modern world. Human child is the most fragile and vulnerable. But this fragility demands us to be totally sensitive.
What children require is free and trustworthy space to evolve, to blossom. Will there be a space or condition of trust in modernity where profit is the ultimate goal.