Saturday, March 7, 2015

Common Core, attention within a narrow focus, diminishing the natural learning ability of the child.

Soft skills moving into the measure of our environment, or the measure of knowledge and information?
We understand that children must have a common sense ability as the nature of their presence because they learn to execute their physical bodies enough to crawl, to walk, to talk and to build an experiential map of the exposure as the opportunity that they have as they enter and interact with this world within which they will grow to live their lives.
This presence has so much potential when young as we see our children and our grandchildren and our nieces and nephews absorb and make insightful statements about the world that astound many parents and adults who wonder how a child can have such insight. We end up talking of the brilliance. And then something happens and somehow that brilliance begins to fade and the behaviors that we as parents so hoped to thwart manifest.
Do we understand how this happens? And yet the answer is right in front of us. That child that has that insight, that ability to measure and see the form and the function of something, becomes the limitations we accepted and tried to correct. Could it be that the child absorbs the very measure of the adult in their world that carries beliefs that lead to the limitation, and the shame and worry, the exact measure of what the adult is focused upon as their presence, as their substance that enabled them to walk, to talk etc.? If one has not corrected or structured a lack developed from previous parents that was absorbed, and only in pointing out what not to do without having corrected the measure within or forgiven it and removed emotional values, then how is the child that absorbs their world going to NOT absorb that same measure when the nature of the presence of the child absorbs everything!?
And, how can the very design of the classroom ‘ correct’ this in all its variations ? They can’t. Use your presence to realize this, any hope, any wish is not going to make this magically disappear because it is an active living measurable thing that must in awareness be corrected in space and time, physically. A desire to have it change is only a desire, it is not the practical action of making the change. And, punishment is not change, the directive done with patience and clarity, in detail is what creates the change. This is what any adult would have wanted for themselves, this patient careful direction- and done with the understanding of how all this works and what it means to change an already raging river of uncertainty from not having a structure that is sound and grounded. In the end there is only one way, and punishment or reprimand is not the action of correction, it only builds that reprimand in the child as a self definition because this is what the child is informed as.
Our classrooms also move to limit the movement of this absorbent presence. If we look at some of the math in Common Core, we can see that taking an equation in 4th grade and writing out long involved picto-graphs is a busy work within a narrow focus, which is what the child becomes, busy within a narrow focus, lost up in their minds only, without the opportunity to stand in practical physical time and live the measure taught. And so, the separation from one’s rapid spatial ability to learn, is slowed down through a busywork in a narrow focus in separation from practical reality. And then we wonder why our children struggle to find a place in the world; this wonder being in the form of worry.  And, we must ask ourselves why there is a growing dis-ease in our children that names the crime, as all our attention deficit dis-orders. They seem to grow in tandem with the length and duration of  the advent of our public school system, where children were placed in a direct instruction model ( sounds nice) with one teacher and many children using abstract symbols on pieces of paper in separation from that physical world the child used their presence to absorb the space and measure of enough to become the multi functioning executive function of learning to crawl and to walk and to speak. It should be obvious, especially within how well one on one instruction works, and how quickly the child basically self teachers themselves to crawl and walk etc. that the design of our schools is to separate us from our natural abilities as human beings.  And, I am not saying that direct instruction is a bad, but when it is a constant practice for hours on end every day, the measure of its limitation becomes the measure of the child, because we become what is placed and practiced in front of us through spaced repetition.
In essence we grow into thinking abstractly as mind only, and no longer knowing the score of reality. Then as we become adults we slowly learn the hard way to pay attention to the real world. And meanwhile it is touted that we cannot get a job unless we walk through this limiting by design system. And, conceptually, we lose our natural ability to flow in what is an innate ability to flow and take in form and function. So, in reality, we come back to ourselves slowly through our lives ( and not all) when this presence that was directly aware of the world around us to begin with, should have been where we remained in our development, instead of getting caught in thinking ONLY. 
What would it be worth to retain that presence in the child enough to allow that potential to expand and remain? What would that be worth to any parent and to any adult who wants to find that presence again?
What would it be worth to prevent the separation and be self empowered to build a child who retained their presence of such potential and not have to suffer a life rediscovering that initial potential?  In the present system that would be priceless. Priceless. You decide.


Techno Tutor : Covering all the language and communication skills to build a sound mind, self empowering parents to self empower children. We are the words we know, and I mean really know.






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