The inherent desire for children to participate.

The inherent desire for children to participate.

One thing i noticed in working with children is their desire to participate. We all love to express ourselves, to interact with others, to be a part of the community. So, the impetus is inherent within ourselves to want to move and express ourselves.

For this reason, many of us like school because it is an opportunity to interact with our peers. We like sports and other activities because they enable us to be and to do. This is the real nature of each of us.

Given how much we learn the first seven years of our lives, where we learn to execute crawling, and walking and talking, picking things up and sensing the texture, density and quality of the material world around us, our bodies as what we are have incredible learning capacity. I mean, I have met children that are aware of every animal within my environment, this during the elementary and middle school years. Later, this same child had no more focus on this, as it is not something that leads to a job, yet shows an innate capacity to see and order this world. Today, this child has had problems with society, and is known to fabricate what he can and cannot do, so desperate is he to participate in the world around him, despite a lack in development in terms of processing information with the human code as language/vocabulary/words.

What happens to this incredible ability to learn? Why does this learning curve slow down?

How does such an insightful child become a person who is very limited in his expression as an adult?

Is our belief in building an imagination somewhat limited? If our imaginations have nothing to do with practical reality, then what are we actually teaching our children to be and to do?

In all common sense, if we are placing our children in a box, which the classroom is, and showing them pictures and creating all manner of graphs in separation from physical reality, then we are building cognitive maps that bear no witness to actual physical living reality. 

If we as parents are expecting this closed system to enlighten our children, then we really have to slow down and investigate what we are allowing for our children. 

We have to look at information much like we do food. What we feed our children influences their development. If we look at the information fed to our children, with let’s say nostalgia for what we learned in school, we are looking through colored glasses and remain in separation from practical reality, from practical real life development.

If we look at how our children are informed, we can see what a child comes to believe and thus the program that that child will direct themselves as, because what informs the child is what the child becomes.

This begs the question? Is what is conceptually developed from pictures in our schools, building children that over generations are becoming more aware of their world, or are we building a conceptual development that is becoming more in separation from a directive in-FORM conceptually that enables the child to become an adult who can solve problems?

If we look at the growing number of autistic and ADHD children, we are not moving forward, we are falling backwards. Who, in the end will pay the costs of this? The parent who did not take the time to really look at what it means to build a sound character?

Like what is happening with our food and our health care system, and the pollution in our environment, is there not as much as in terms of conceptual development a form of pollution happening within?  Is this mis-information a form of a lack that is a superficial noise of value touting  that has no real substance.? Imagination is really a tool to map the dimensions of reality in ways that build a program as the information of the child of their world around them.

Why do we spend so many years in school learning to THINK, and come out with an imagination that gives us no real practical ability to interact with our neighbors in ways that  create productive and stable communities?

The numbers of children that are cognitively dissonant from practical reality is growing. And, because this has happened over generations, and the adults are the same, overall we as a society have lost our common sense- that same common sense that enabled us to learn at a rapid rate when we were young. In separating into thinking only, we have abdicated from our natural learning ability to feed instead an imagination that moves like a train of ideas, and beliefs and opinions that have no touch with reality.

To change this we must rebuild through what directs us back into having an imagination that is a memory of practical reality, because this is where we as adults live our lives. So, what is the smallest unit that directs us to see clearly what is here in front of us?  Is this our vocabulary, our words. And  must these words have a clear meaning that has no value judgements attached to it.

I think of the word conceit here. One of the meanings of conceit is  ‘a farfetched comparison of very dissimilar things.’ The key here is that when a comparison within a value judgement is used- which is where the development of this word has come to mean having a false pride, the real meaning of the word in practical understanding is lost. Realizing that to compare two dissimilar things is to point out the qualities of these two things only, is to build an understanding of form and function of things in this world by the very nature inherent in the expression of the object. In other words, one is not more than the other, they are what they are by their design. Here, there is no value judgement, just a practical application within this word. If we learned our words to have practical meanings, and celebrated our differences, then would our cognition be clear and more self directive than spinning in a show of competing values about things that are really only different forms within existence? If we become what is a limitation as arguing values, are we not the root cause of our conceptual development being an imagination that has lost all ability to practically apply in ways that build a real confidence and self esteem?  This being the cognition of the child seeing directly reality because of a non-judgemental understanding?

If our children do not have a broad and clear vocabulary, which builds a stable and solid cognition, then they become lost, and that natural learning ability loses ground- the learning curve begins to slow down and the promise begins to fade, and so does the uniqueness of the  child. We see this happening and even compounding in our children and the inability of ourselves to communicate in our relationships causing friction and conflict and unresolved problems.  This is a mis-association into value judgements causing a chaos that loses connection to real living. 

We decide, the tools to build a sound mind are available, they are cost effective and self empowering for the child, the parent, and the community. All it takes is the desire to become a self responsible human being, which is what builds a happy human being. Instead of building a cognition that is lost in a polarity of value judgements, why not build a cognitive map that builds a child who is informed clearly, and can use their imagination to direct themselves  in superior ways. This is a human being that can be and become what ever they want, because they can choose where they want to go in practical ways, because they understand that they are the words they know and have no fear of communicating and learning what is necessary to participate in the world around them.

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_merzenich_on_the_elastic_brain?language=en Growing Evidence of Brain plasticity

https://www.zaner-bloser.com/news/research-behind-importance-teaching-vocabulary Importance of Vocabulary/word recognition skills