Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts

Wonder, no wonder...

Here's a few recent thoughts uncluttered with world affairs and ongoing resistance and recovery...

Honesty is Science. When Scientific data is wilfully mis-interpreted, it ceases to be Science. You can quote me on that.

Here is Charity debunked, gracefully yet with such gorgeous vehemence!

          "True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that an     edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
           -- Martin Luther King Jr.

What an elegant use of words, nothing wasted, each word full of meaning, of maturity and empathy.

I
think of the amount of work, care, commitment, 'sacrifice' and energy the 'average' Mum and or single Mum's life; all that they do, to nurture, to stick with and submit to the reality of the child, to consistently assist a healthy child to grow up into a healthy human being, to pursue his or her own life in turn.  That ain't charity!
 
I often think on the un-natural poverty of Societal support for this most vital of human activities, this work of love, and of the willingness of some ideologists to isolate and identify 'single mums' as a 'problem', all too ready to dehumanise them by stereotyping certain lone parents as 'benefit scroungers'.

I think about the willingness of others, ideologists and propagandists and religious zealots, to assume to INSTRUCT Mums, quite often to go against the Mothers own deepest instincts and feelings...

These are not nice thoughts. The experience of those at the receiving end is many, many times worse. It's more than thoughts. It's lives.

The Bureaucratic fig leaf of 'parental leave' .. what a dull phrase that is in our lexicon. Such a small amount of time, given as a concession to the economy. How meagre! How cruelly efficient!

I was watching Kangaroo Dundee. A very busy man.

Yes, this man has become a 'Mum', albeit of adopted abandoned Kangaroos...  fluffy animals makes us coo. 


Men CAN mother.... when we really WANT to.

Benefits Addicted Mums make us scowl. Check the comments section when ever the Guardian ' Comment is Free' column starts a thread on this subject in response to some Government Minister pronouncing on the next 'plan' to deal with the 'problem'.

Yes, the public - actually, the wolf that calls itself the media, pretending to represent the public 'opinion' - will happily let the Government scowl at the Mum. As if it were ALL her 'fault'. Transferring the problem.


 
LOOK AT WHAT IT TAKES. TAKE IT IN. BE HONEST. 


THAT'S a work load. Huge amounts of all kinds of energy required. For a LONG time!

Especially during infancy. The slow segregation of Mother and Father into discrete 'roles' as full-time caretakers and breadwinners, separated from their extended  family and their community looks more and more like a culturally induced avoidance strategy. Conditioned slacking.

Irrespective of what primates may or may not do, our biology functions at it's best, in context, when the load is shared by a community of people who probably love each other to one degree or another. Oxytocin is a molecular expression of that reality.

Historically, - read the literature, don't take my word for it - Kings (and most Queens) never seemed to like the messy WORK of parenting.

We Industrialised Peoples live like Kings, in relative terms, with our gadgets, resources we use, land we use .... relative to biology, anthropology, culture.

It is that work, care, commitment and energy that is the core of a healthy functioning human community, it does take a village to care for a child, indeed all the children of the community, at optimum biological state. A village in a natural setting, naturally.

Until Motherhood/Fatherhood and community parenting are at the very core of this Society, informing it's long term decision making processes and behaviours, it will remain selfish in it's core psychology. And unsustainable.

And it doesn't have to be that way.
 

We have brains.....

"The idea that the brain can change it's own structure and function through thought and activity is, I believe the most important alteration in our view of the brain since we first sketched out its basic anatomy and the workings of its basic component, the neuron.

The neuro-plastic revolution has implications for, among other things, our understanding of how love, sex, grief, relationships, learn
ing, addiction, culture, technology, and psychotherapies change our brains.

All of the humanities, social sciences and physical sciences, in so far as they deal with human nature, are affected, as are all forms of training. All of these disciplines will have to come to terms with the fact of the self-changing brain and with the realisation that the architecture of the brain differs from one person to the next and that it changes in the course of individual lives.

While the human brain has apparently underestimated itself, neuro-plasticity isn't all good news; it renders our brains not only more resourceful by also more vulnerable to outside influences.
"


 

Norman Doidge "The Brain that changes itself"

We as people all have this capability, it is innate. And each of us needs an appropriate environment and experience for it's healthiest expression. We continually change and grow. Self healing. Solving problems. Then we die.

And what is innate in us, as individuals, must also be innate in a healthy functioning human community. Our optimum biological state. Where individuals live and die, and the community is sustainable over many millennia. Kinda state I'd love to live in.

How we get there is a very interesting journey.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe



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The Corruption of The Curriculum.

I read this rather clear and yet short piece, on the 'corruption of the curriculum' and it's a damning indictment of Educational policy and tinkering with teaching practice, learning 'styles' and course content.

It states the following :

 "The school curriculum has been corrupted by political interference, according to a new report from independent think-tank Civitas. The traditional subject areas have been hi-jacked to promote fashionable causes such as gender awareness, the environment and anti-racism, while teachers are expected to help to achieve the government's social goals instead of imparting a body of academic knowledge to their students."

The article then outlines in concise language some of the 'corruptions' and their adverse effects.

The describe 'educational apartheid' (subjects excluded for some students based on income and class), 'history without dates' (without a coherent narrative), a policy of behavioural change that reduces

It's well worth a read, and I would like to put it in context, "join-the-dots" so to speak. To go further. To clarify.

After all, it was issued by Civitas, who are pretty much a right wing think tank, and why would I be impressed by what ever spewed forth from such an establishment. So I gotta put that right. I am not at all impressed, because the article itself is tinkering, and while it makes a critique that has some substance, it fails (as intended) to set things in context.

Has anyone mentioned to you that it is known, and proven, that State Education was initially instigated by intensive and long-term lobbying from business? 

"
Perhaps the greatest of school's illusions is that the institution was launched by a group of kindly men and women who wanted to help the children of ordinary families—to level the playing field, so to speak."

It was of course,  presented as philanthropy,  the trojan horse of modern social engineering effected by the use of wealth, by stealth. And yes some people really did believe they were genuine seeking to help others and to help 'mankind'.

In fact there was close to a century of lobbying at  local, national and international levels of Industrial Society, and a huge, vast amount of money was spent over that time in this project to introduce Compulsion Schooling for all children.


"The real makers of modern schooling were leaders of the new American industrialist class, men like:

Andrew Carnegie, the steel baron...
John D. Rockefeller, the duke of oil...
Henry Ford, master of the assembly line which compounded steel and oil into a vehicular dynasty...
and J.P. Morgan, the king of capitalist finance...


The primary driver was of this project was the power and control of business, mostly the coal business, which with coal being the first fossil fuel, has a certain resonance with corporate power play within Governance by the
petroleum industry. that we know today ... the coal and steel business was or became the central power in 'Civilisation' and one of the most aggressive in terms of 'expansion' (globalisation) and in terms of infiltrating Governance. The project to compel all children into education started in the 1750s.

And what has happened is that for a while it worked, as all training does, then some people started to see through the system, and found ways to use it as the basis for real learning outside the system, and began to resist the indoctrination and worse, actively self organise.

Power cannot allow that. For two reasons.

!. To many power players is dangerous if they are all equals.  There has to be manageable limits.

2. "If some 'poor' people learn to do what we are doing, we are out of business. So let us 'educate' them such that they cannot really learn, but can remember what they have been told, and they'll confuse memorising for learning. And we will set the psychological limit within the education SYSTEM, the systemic process does the work, not merely the curriculum."

The curriculum can be tinkered with, both by Power and by those Power allows, within limits and under their watchful eyes.

The article I quoted is complaining about the tinkering, and not the system. It prefers the 'traditional tinkering'. That's as far as it goes.

Not impressive.

The SYSTEM must  remain, even as it's façade is ever changing as either genuine empathic understanding emerges (they can't fool all the people all of the time) which Power will always seek to co-opt, by systematising whatever emerges organically, thus neutering any potential threat to Power it might represent.

Any right winger knows this. Well,the ones who dictate policy. Who ever they are..

This is partly why John Taylor Gatto says we must disestablish the SYSTEM, retaining the infrastructure and applying and modifying those infrastructure so that they can be used as places of self motivated learning, where the full person is allowed to grow, as such to truly meet the needs of the children, and indeed of all of us, as natural learners.

"
After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves."

Self motivated, self organised.
Self Governing. Common Sense. Biologically mandated.

The article is a brief overview of a book, by Frank Furedi...

'The Corruption of the Curriculum' by Frank Furedi, Shirley Lawes, Michele Ledda, Chris McGovern, Simon Patterson, David Perks and Alex Standish is published by Civitas, 77 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 2EZ

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

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Trauma and Abuse Dynamics : A flow chart of sorts.

When a trauma event occurs there are possible flows or directions emerge, one direction is life enhancing, the other is life restrictive.



Resolution of trauma requires safety first. If the culture itself is unsafe, then resolution is more difficult to attain. 

Those who resolve the trauma resultant feelings and experiences have restored their natural vitality, their flow, their ability to express authentically (since they do not shut down their feelings) and consequently are better able to respond if another trauma occurs; those who do not resolve the trauma resultant feelings and experiences may be more likely to repeat the cycle of adverse control indefinitely as they become locked into behaviour patterns, many of which are un-conscious - they ought not be 'blamed' or judged for this. 

They need support, understanding, empathy and obviously safety.

The roots of the perception of nature as a 'survival struggle' emerge from this coping mechanism when it is established as a chronic dynamic, andis then  institutionalised, built into the structures of society as those who do not resolve the trauma resultant feelings and experiences WILL build that controlling psychology into whatever they create... 

Of course, it is obvious that it also serves those Institutions (Rulers) to convince others that nature is indeed a 'struggle for survival' because that is used as a justification for their behaviour..... such as 'extirpating' native societies, fighting wars, competing adversely... 

Breaking the cycle is the result of not so much as 'adopting' different behaviours (which mask the insecurity - and is to be found in the use of behaviour modification, outcome based education, punishment, religion, etc etc ); it is a matter of facing the feelings, experiences and perceptions that the trauma generates and resolving them so that one is able to respond rather than react, and that natural vitality, the 'flow' of feeling, of direct perception into the world is restored.

Thrivival and natural dynamic equilibrium converts solar energy into more abundant life processes, utilising Earth materials, to build more topsoil, more abundant life for all; 

Survival Modality seeks to coerce, to solidify and conform material reality to the self limiting perspective of those who rule (and for whom survival is always in question, in that coercion ALWAYS generates resistance) and do so for their own exclusive perceived needs - which are to to maintain control, to keep the feelings at bay.... yet, by ignoring the symptoms, by suppressing them, they bank more and more dysfunction and that can lead to one outcome alone; collapse. 

It might take some time, yet it is inevitable.


Kindest regards

 Corneilius

 Do what you love, it's your gift to universe


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A school run by children, assisted by adults

Short documentary on an independent 'school' in Copenhagen, from the 70s, that explores why such a school might exist. The footage shows happy lively children and adults learning together, and the commentary reveals the thinking behind the school.



This is what all children and parents need to understand, that childrens learning is best driven by their own motivations, that children want to become competent in the world they are born into, that 'thinking alone' is a vital creative drive in all people and that democracy without this in place in all it's constituents is a farce, a soap opera that distracts attention and enables control by forces whose interests are not the same as those of most 'ordinary folk'.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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THE NATURAL CHILD : what every child needs!

THE EXPECTATIONS OF EVERY CHILD



The expectations of the natural child are to be loved, to be recognised as a unique being, to be seen as a valid being with feelings and sensings that no one need fear or challenge.

The natural child expects to meet competent adults who know what they are doing, who are integrated in harmony with the environment, who have mastered their own being and who behave with a deep respect.

The natural child expects to explore freely and to learn about the world he/she is born into.

The natural child expects to be able to learn from his oe her own experiences, and from older children, as much as the adults.

To the extent that these inherent expectations are met or not, and to the extent that the natural child is coerced or not, these factors will determine the psychological balance of the child and of course the adult the child grows into.

And an adult world that does not meet those expectatitons is the result of those adults having not met with their inherent natural expectations. For most this process is unconscious, and thus the cycles are repeated and as the saying goes ' we do not learn from history'....

Well then, enough is already far too much. Start now.

You can explore the nature of adverse systemic conditioning with these resources :


Alice Miller
www. alice-miller.com
David Smail
www.davidsmail.freeuk.com
John Taylor Gatto
www.johntaylorgatto.com
John Holt
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holt_(educator)
Paulo Freire
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire


You can explore these themes with your heart, with a ruthless self honesty and by talking to and really listening to very young children .... ideology is of no use here, and neither is religion.

Break the cycles, see through your conditioning, only you can do the work that must be done for fre your mind and your heart.

There is nothng you can buy, steal or take that will open the fullest bliss of a life lived as life intends.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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