Intelligence testing became popular in 1905 and is still seen as the answer to grouping children, to assessing their ability to do post-secondary work and to deciding what kind of curriculum suited them. By using intelligence tests from as early as 4th grade, a child’s future is anticipated by the time she is 12—the age I remember sitting in that fateful room. In recent years the gender and cultural bias in the SAT’s has become well known. Yet, it is still used as the principal benchmark for college admission.

A child’s relationship with learning has nothing to do with testing. Teaching to the test is not education and actually reduces s student’s love for learning. Moreover, standardized testing does not even give us a good reading on a student’s learning or an educator’s effectiveness while the relationship with the student is lost.

Teaching to the test has turned out to be profitable for the private business sector. Who knew? In a New York Times article, Gail Collins (April 2012) pointed out that school testing provides huge corporate profits, led by Pearson Assessment Group who has…a five-year testing contract with Texas that’s costing the state taxpayers nearly half a billion dollars. However, we’ve long known that testing does little to reveal student learning. At the same time, the over-emphasis on testing has caused considerable collateral damage in many schools and to many students.

The Tyranny of Normal

At the center of this issue is the idea of normal. Its history in education and psychology chronicles the predilections of the dominant aspects of our culture. Normal, we think, means stability and predictability. Yet it has less to say about the health of our people than it does about the security (and fears) of our institutions and the people who profit from the vested interests in them.

The problem with normal is objectification. Normal is the behavior a school needs to accomplish its goal of meeting cultural criteria, which, in our times, means competing in the global marketplace. Academic normal (cognitive ability) is defined by testing; then children are sorted (objectified) according to the results. Character normal is defined by behaving so that the teacher can transmit the curriculum to the greatest number of students and especially to those who succeed academically.

Normal becomes the ability to perform on a par with peers (within standard deviations) in the testing environment. This objectification is not just about data retention and regurgitation or about the intelligence to solve problems. It is also about the ability to perform in a containerized pressured environment. The children have been made into the receptacle for the larger cultural narrative of competition and individualism. Their fate is in the hands of the testers; the locus of control is external.  The not-so-subtle message is that security and our place in the culture depends on success in the testing environment as evidenced by outside approval.

Misguided education policies such as high-stakes testing results in the student’s loss of interest in learning about a subject out of interest. Errors are also likely to produce a low self-efficacy (a belief in our own ability to succeed). Instead performance on the test becomes an extrinsic motivation to avoid negative judgment. Thus, studying for test questions is not about learning. When concerned about performance, the focus is on not screwing up.

Learning is a process of mastering a new skill, understanding a topic, and inspires growth as meaning is discovered.  In the process of learning, errors are something to learn from, not to be avoided. Thus, learning is intrinsic and leads to high self-efficacy. Learning is all about screwing up, learning from mistakes, and applying what you’ve learned to do better.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
—Nelson Mandela

Optimal well-being starts with this question: Who is the child?

When an educator or parent chooses to focus on inspiring learning we are faced with the question of “who is this child.” The question of who is this child dissolves all objectification. We must see the child, her strengths, shortcomings, developmental capabilities, and interests. When we create an environment that inspires a student to play with a topic and think things through without worry of failure, then the student is inspired to explore, step outside of her zone of competence, openly ask questions, discover, and learn. What does this mean to child development? What does it mean for relationships among the children? One insight is that inspiring resilient learners is way beyond objectification. Oh yes, and inspiring resilient learners requires relationship with the student. Wish that I were approached with such intelligence!

Relationship with the student increases learning. As relationships become more and more tuned in to the child’s developmental capacities, new perspectives awaken in both adult and child. The shaping and learning of primary values occur in the child as well as further development of these values in the adult. So I ask now, how much do school grades matter if your child is not happy learning something?

Reference: A version of this op-ed appeared on April 28, 2012, on page A19 “A Very Pricey Pineapple.”

The more Maria opened to the complexity of all her emotions, the more she developed access to emotional well-being. She became more honest and experienced greater emotional connection with each of her family members. As her ability to love and accept the love of others increased, she experienced gratitude. 

Nurturing my children’s development has been life-altering for me personally, for my relationships, and for my family. I am so grateful for the riches that it continues to bring to us all. I would not be where I am today spiritually, emotionally, physically. And I really love where I am.

Engaging your child using the STEPs above during feeling development (ages 8 through 12), you and your child will build a life of connection through the relationship of sharing feelings, stepping into the other’s perspectives, reading nonverbal cues, self-reflection, and learning how to make amends. By becoming a trustworthy feeling mentor for a child, we find ourselves immersed in experiencing ourselves as responsible and full of trust.

Four Aspects of Adult Emotional Development:
when adults nurture the development of trust with a child
• Feeling awareness: increased consciousness of feelings in yourself, your child and in others.
• Trust in yourself, in your intuition, in your child’s feelings, and in others
• Empathy with your child and with others
• Complex interrelated feelings of greater emotional connection, increased honesty, and humility

Of all the gifts we can give our children, trusting relationships may well be one of the most important and long lasting. Middle childhood is a prime time for developing this kind of relationship with a parent or other caregiver, and the way to do is this is remarkably simple. This blog-post shows why this is true and how you can go about establishing relationships of loving trust with your child—an important foundation for all your child’s future relationships.

The feeling emotion of trust requires relationship to develop. Trust requires face-to-face time that begins with eye-gazing with your infant, through inspirational adventures with your 9–year-old, and continues into the teen years by exploring your teen’s ideal activities with him or her. As Natalie Angier confirmed in her recent article “The Hormone Surge of Middle Childhood” in the New York Times, new findings from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and anthropology are finding that middle childhood is a time of great brain growth and emotional development.

Maria learned early in life that feelings couldn’t be trusted. She was an affectionate mom when her children were little, but her parenting skills grew sparse as her children got older.  Early on in my childhood, I didn’t know what my feelings were. I was raised in a household where there was no fairness and there was no right to my feelings. I was disconnected. I just knew feel good, feel bad, and don’t know…If I did express my feelings, my mom would say, “You don’t feel that way. You should be ashamed.” She was very controlling. It led to dishonesty.

Reinforced by the brain sciences, we know that middle childhood is when the parts of the brain that mediate emotional regulation and social learning are primed. Ages 9 through 12, once known by the horrible nickname of the tweens, is actually a time that involves keen awareness and probing into questions of fairness and social justice—not simply a time be-tween early childhood and teen years. Children this age have an avid appetite for learning the social rules and how to form and maintain trusting relationships. The relationships that most foster the development of trust at this age of important social brain growth involve trustworthy people who listen, who are honest, and who humbly admit their mistakes.

Trustworthy people listen, so just being there and listening to your child is very important. Children in this stage of development generally love to hear stories of your childhood and your feelings in different situations when you were their age. Remember to express your feelings in a developmentally appropriate way whenever you can. Put your feelings into the language of this age child and be sensitive to the child’s developmental capability to understand what you are offering him or her.

Communicate in feeling language.
Connect when your child is frustrated or upset—use the STEP method:

1. Stop what you are doing.
2. Take the time to look at your child and listen all the way through before you speak.
3. Empathize and suspend judgment—ask questions to help him or her make sense of thr experience so that understanding can emerge.
4. Ponder and reflect together—invite your child for ideas on what would be fair, new alternatives, and for making amends

After engaging these four STEPs in your relationship, your child will be more receptive to listen to you and hear your suggestions.

As Maria engaged the STEPs to nurture her 9-year-old daughter’s feeling development, she found that she reconnected to her own feelings and grew. She said, Then I started to connect with the feelings that I had… I realized how my fear of being helpless keeps me from feeling. While reflecting on her time nurturing trust with her daughter, Maria said, Emotionally, physically, psychologically, I’m a much happier person. I feel more honest and stronger.

At Summa Academy we are interested in supporting each individual child. We ask: Who is the child as a unique individual? Who is she when she’s not seen as a part of a class or grouped with others in a grade level. How does the child, in his own right, perceive the world? Summa Academy is scheduled to begin in fall 2012 http://summainstitute.org/academy/enrollment/.

Summa Academy supports healthy development in children with practical applications to home life and education. In that healthy development, your involvement is key. In fact, caring for your child’s development will promote optimal well-being for you both.

Here, the word development means a movement through stages of life that the child goes through as he or she organizes the world. Because these developmental changes are strongly influenced by both genetic inheritance and environmental influences, we must pay careful attention to our relationship with each child. Each stage of life is seen through the manifestation of all the child’s abilities: cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and self-perception. If we ignore the different ways in which each child’s organizes her or his world, we may end up distancing ourselves from that development and that can lead to objectifying the child or stereotyping.

As adults, we must be careful to not group children into categories; e.g., terrible-two’s, awkward tweens, oppositional teenagers, etc. In my consulting practice, I encourage parents and caregivers to take a unique approach with each child they are with. In order to do this, we need to see each child as an individual with innate and unique characteristics influenced by his or her developmental capacities in combination with the context in which he or she lives.

The key is for any adult to understand how the child sees the world and to acknowledge and balance the two main influences on who the child is: the child’s age of development with its needs and characteristics and the environmental influences (family, school, clubs and sports). I have seen amazing trust develop when we can relate to the child in this way.

Since the child’s consciousness develops in relationship with others, we need to take great care to learn about the child’s development. Consciousness shows up primarily in changes in perception, which determines behavior, identity construction, ego development, relationship, knowledge formation, and emotional connection. To really look at and see the child is a form of respect for the child and, I dare say, for life. This requires understanding how the child’s worldview is directly related to development.
• Knowledge of child development is crucial to parents because family relationships are an essential contributor to the patterns that influence the child’s emotional development and social interactions for a lifetime.
• Knowledge of child development is crucial to educators because it can help educators understand the optimal age for appropriate communication strategies, for relationship, and for environments that provide the best needed support for developing the child’s innate capacities.

It is also important to know who we are in our own development (and resulting consciousness) because this strongly affects our students and our children and is the underpinning of all that we do with them.  In essence, who we are is what we teach.

In a recently article (http://summainstitute.org/docs/JLuvmour_Article_Winter2011_pp15-23.pdf)*, I discussed the importance of taking the time to understand how our children perceive the world at each age of development. This excerpt is an example:
…it is time that education supports each child in a web of relationships with educators and parents who share in the primary responsibility of guiding that child’s development. In this view, the boundary between adult and child does not exist. Our relationship with the children in our care, whether personal or professional, is of critical importance to well-being in the child’s consciousness. During each age of childhood, connection, understanding, and appreciation of child development are required.

Children learn competence in their developmental capacities in informal interactions with educators and in the family environment during everyday activities. To make those interactions the best they can be, it is important to understand how the child sees the world, a seeing that is governed by the organizing principle, and to nurture that child’s developmental needs. Every aspect of a human being is continually adapting to relationships, interpersonal communication, and educational experiences. With knowledge of child development and attention to attuned relationships with the child’s consciousness, we can co-create educational environments [and home environments] with supportive relationships that match the child’s developmental capacities. Well-being will flourish in both child and adult… The benefits of right relationships with children nourish children, adults, families, and society as a whole.

“It’s not about performance—it’s always about relationship.”

The culture at Summa Institute supports sustainable relationships by providing respect, integrity, connection, and relationships. Through the use of Natural Learning Relationships, we insure the healthy personal and communal development of our students and their families. We help families thrive. Come learn more about Summa Academy and I look forward to your comments.

“Mutually respectful relationships between us and our students create the context in which inspiration can emerge, and those relationships form the basis for successful learning.”
-Ba Luvmour, MA, Academy Director

Sources:
Luvmour, J. (2011). Education and the Consciousness of the Developing Child. Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice, 24(4), 15-23. A review of this article by Paul Freedman, head of the Salmonberry School in Eastsound, WA can be found at: http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/education-and-the-childs-consciousness/

Link to abstract: http://ojs.great-ideas.org/index.php/ENC/article/view/791
©2011, Josette Luvmour, PhD. All rights reserved.
Please contact Josette@luvmourconsulting.com for permission to reprint.

Having struggled mightily with this and perhaps crafted a few passable “elevatorspielen”, I’ve come to realize that answering those questions is not so simple—not because the answer isn’t clear or I am somehow confused—but because the answer lies in relationship to a whole new paradigm of understanding—a quantum leap really—in how we organize our minds and our relationship to the world.

This paradigm is not new in the sense that we at Summa made it up, or that this worldview is somehow a recent invention or something silly like “the inevitable complexification of thought in a post-industrial, post-modern information-based economy”. It’s not only much more ancient than that, it’s really much more profound.

What it comes down to is the difference between seeing ourselves as broken beings in need of fixing and seeing ourselves as essentially whole and healthy (though imperfect and prone to suffering). A moment’s reflection aught to inform you that this is not a trivial difference.

It’s also not an affirmation or a crutch or a justification for the violence we perpetrate on others. What it is is a draw to what we know in our deepest selves to be true - that the gift of life is an opportunity to actualize the full breadth and depth of that wholeness; And that, ultimately, that’s all that’s really going on here on earth.

Now you may look around (and I do) and notice that it doesn’t look like it’s going that well. The 20th century was by far the bloodiest in human history; this one looks to be about maxing out the earth’s resources in search of the good life, with the underlying threat of true-believer terrorism living in its shadow.

So it’s clear that this shift isn’t going to happen by itself; we must engage it.

So, back to the questions that started this blog… Summa Institute is the embodiment of our engagement of this shift that must happen. We recognize that psychologically wounded people make wounded (and wounding) choices, and conversely psychologically healthy people make healthy choices. And we also recognize that most people spend their whole adult lives recovering from their childhood. So that is where we focus our energies - on children and the adult-child relationship. How can we best nurture this wholeness and allow it’s full expression? What (if anything) stands between us and its actualization? How can children AND adults grow within the context of this beautiful thing we call Relationship?

So, that’s my elevator speech…. For today.

Interested in learning more? Come to my talk this Thursday night in SE Portland - detail to be found here…

The whole thing is so sickening - let me break it down for you:

1. Students take written tests developed by “experts” who may have never spent a single minute in an education setting with children. These tests are based on standards that armchair educators and instructional material and testing corporations have decided are appropriate.
2. Students are graded, tracked and pigeonholed into various shades of gifted, average and stupid
3. Teachers are graded, tracked and pigeonholed based on their students’ performance on these tests
4. Schools are graded, tracked and pigeonholed based on their students’ performance
5. School districts and state/federal agencies allocate funds based all this
6. Everybody loses.

So now teachers help their students get better grades on tests - isn’t that what the whole process described above is about? And when they do it, they are “cheating”.

I’m sure people think that doing well on tests somehow measures intelligence or predicts future success - but nothing could be further from the truth. What it predicts is the ability to do well on tests. Think about it.

Have you ever seen a test that could even come close to taking the full measure of a human being? Nope, me neither. So, what are we really learning here?

What we’re learning is that nobody has any idea what education is about - and in fear and ignorance we cotton on to these one-dimensional ideas of what it means to be human, of what learning is about.

Small schools, low student/teacher ratio, more money for education - none of this will help. As long as we cling to the notion that this violent approach to learning benefits humanity, we are doomed to failure. The only thing that will make any difference is understanding learning and education from the perspective of consciousness.

Think about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/nyregion/how-cheating-cases-at-new-york-schools-played-out.html?_r=1&ref=education

Rites of Passage offer a sacred opportunity to connect with the whole of our being—physical, emotional, intellectual, familial, communal, psychological and spiritual. Rites of Passage have historically been used as a means of transitioning into a new perspective on life; perspectives that are taken to be more mature, or more profound, and which are felt to be necessary for full human development (see Josette’s article Rites_of_Passage_in_Our_Times.docx). In modern day there are only vestiges left that are more celebrations or parties than Rites of Passage (i.e., confirmations, Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, graduations, etc.). This loss is a catastrophe for humanity. Of all the sacred values trashed in the modern and post-modern world, none has more dire consequences, or is more sorely missed, than an opportunity for submergence in the ocean of transcendence. We hunger for this and this is what drives us to Occupy.

Built into the structure of Rites of Passage is a face to face meeting with the unknown. This leads to the question of how we, as individuals, can experientially know ourselves as open-ended. The choreography of the steps in a Rite of Passage, inclusive of careful support, are designed to offer an optimal opportunity for direct experience of emptiness, of the unknown, and perhaps, therefore, of spirit. While no one can, or should, guarantee this type of experience, adhering to these six elements, with developmental sensitivity, make it altogether likely. These six elements are what I will present in my class.

The result is development of the ability to adapt and live a meaningful existence. Rites of Passage are respected by many as offering the opportunity to touch the very depths of human possibility, known by many of those who have undertaken them, as a breathtaking adventure that, when done carefully and correctly, has nothing less than wholeness, health, and well-being as the goal. And this connection to spirit, through transformation of ourselves and recognition of meaning is what we all seek. That is why Occupying is spreading so fast and why we all want to be involved, even if we don’t totally understand what is happening. But let us not just Occupy, let us instead recognize our need for meaning in our lives and respect it. Let us bring experiences like Rites of Passage into our lives as if our very lives do in fact depend upon it, for that is what is at stake—our humanity.

Spirituality is intimately tied to relationship. Many spiritual leaders have realized this intimacy. Those who attempted to bring their insights to education are explicit about this relationship. Here are a couple of quotes just to make the point; many more available upon request.

How important is relationship? It is nothing less than the way of freedom. Freedom comes into being …in one’s relationship with people, with things, with ideas and with nature. Relationship is nothing short of existence itself. Existence is relationship.

The essence of existence—of being—is relationship. It is the way we know, the reality we live, the pattern that connects. And the sacred is immanent within those relationships.

Spiritual engagement is not sentimental. Either you are committed or you aren’t. This post is for those who are, or want to be. It will be of no value to those who believe they can think their way to spiritual awareness, or engage it without conscious effort. The reality is there, embedded in the profession, available to those truly willing.

Steps

We, the teachers, are participants in education. Mutual learning is occurring. Belief that teaching is hierarchically delivering curriculum or knowledge blocks spiritual awareness. As participants, our first step when engaging the spiritual opportunities is to realize the critical importance of our own self-development.  If we are not deeply concerned with who we are then there is a good chance that our own conditioning and projections will control our relationships with children. We cannot connect to the whole of the child if we are not attempting to connect to the whole of ourselves.

The second step is to never lose sight of the fact that teacher and student develop together. And that the whole of their development is a synergy that arises from their interplay. They are not mutually dependent, but truly interdependent.

Now there are many prominent educators who suggest that we go outside of our own discipline of teaching in order to self-actualize. We hear that entering a traditional spiritual practice is necessary, or advisable, to develop certain spiritual qualities. Mindfulness is of one of the best examples. At a recent conference in Hawaii speakers also mentioned dream work, journaling, and other ways to “listen to that voice inside and trust it”. I have no comment to make on the value of these practices per se, but only ask the question of whether they are needed for the self-development of a teacher. And my answer is no.

There are basic principles a teacher must hold in order to actualize the spiritual opportunities in the profession. They are:

• Greater importance given to who the child is rather then what the child does
• Appreciation of the child’s wholeness
• Understanding that wholeness is the indefinable synergy of the dynamic interrelationships of all the aspects of the child
• Continually asking: What is the consciousness of children? What is the nature of their psyche?

Let’s look at each of these and see how they bring forth spiritual actualization.

Emphasis on Who the Child Is Rather Than What They Do

As the environment and relationships become more and more appropriate (refined) new perspectives are awakened in both adult and child. These subtle types of learning involve the shaping and learning of primary values in the child as well as the further development of these values in the adult. Values learned include trust, compassion, integrity, resilience, and the awareness of the sacred. These values cannot be taught by verbal lecture or planned lessons. Achieving this takes time and sensitivity but it is certainly possible for most of us. This is being-to-being relationship. Although it is continuously occurring, both child and elder find it difficult if not impossible to describe being-to-being learning.

Throughout many whole-child approaches, such as the early childhood education described by Maria Montessori, or some methods of education such as those described by Frederich Froebel, being-to-being learning entails one’s relationships with oneself, with others, and with the world in which one lives. Although it defies description as to exactly how it is happening, a quality of being is developing in the child and a reciprocal development of being is occurring in the adult.

To enter a being-to-being relationship means that we must investigate and care for our own being. It also means that we accept the responsibility to notice where we fall into relationships based on doing and appearance and make some effort to rectify the matter. We might say that this in itself is a type of mindfulness, or self-observation that so many spiritual philosophies speak of as critical to self-actualization. The difference, though, is that it is a natural part of life as an educator and not an imposed discipline from outside. In other words, it is not a striving to become something, to get spiritual experience, but an easy part of the flow of teaching.

Appreciation of the Child’s Wholeness

Education invites us to engage specific study of the nature of children. This study is nothing less than the study of the evolution of consciousness in the child, in the society, and perhaps even in life itself.  We are looking directly at the creation of meaning and purpose in children and in humanity. We are studying the nature of the human and how to serve its well-being to allow the best chance for self-actualization in each and every one of us.

This study is a crucial aspect of our self-development. For in this we are studying ourselves, our own nature. We are learning about our individual, social, and evolutionary heritage and we are considering deeply its future implications. By engaging this study we are looking at issues across the spectrum of life including spiritual philosophy, psychology, ecology, anthropology and other contiguous disciplines. Of the highest order, in my opinion, we are looking at relationship, with self, each other, and nature. To do so is an important step in self-actualization. And it is built right into teaching practice.

Education insists on openness and inquiry. From science we have Prigogyne’s contribution, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1977, that systems in open communication with their environment self-organize to greater complexity. He showed this to be true for molecules. It is true for all complex, dynamic systems, which humans certainly are. This greater complexity cannot be inferred from the previous system. Molecules do not necessarily imply cells, cells do not necessarily imply organs, and grasses do not necessarily imply flowers. The new whole that emerges from the synergy is ever mysterious and always a surprise. In addition, Quantum Mechanics have given us the Uncertainty Principle. Spiritual philosophies insist on awakening as open, non-defined, ever fresh. This is succinctly stated by Krishnamurti when he says “Truth is a Pathless Land.”

This helps us tremendously in self-development. We cannot see children or ourselves as closed systems. We are all lifelong learners. We are all continually rediscovering our wholeness. Our behaviors are both expressions of what we have learned and experiments to find new ways of communicating, of self-organizing towards greater complexity. By understanding that wholeness cannot ultimately be defined, that we are open, that the movement to greater complexity is a natural part of us, we become open to this moment, to this relationship, to this opportunity to see what is, to realize the sacredness of relationship, to look at ourselves without fear and striving, to self-develop.

Understanding that wholeness is the indefinable synergy of the dynamic interrelationships of all the aspect of the child

By pointing to the synergy that is more than the sum of the parts, we deeply enter into the importance of relationships. That synergy arises due to the dynamics among the various parts that comprise the whole. The nature of the relationships of our lives as educators is critical to the synergy—to the wholeness that we and our students experience. In terms of spiritual insight our self-knowledge is embedded in the relationships we have.
We know that teacher and student develop together. Their spiritual growth is intimately interconnected. Therefore, by our engagement in being-to-being relationships we awaken that in the child which, in turn, stimulates even deeper appreciation of ourselves—a delightful upward spiral.

As educators, we all agree that development of the intrinsic capacities of the students is a priority. In order to do this we have to carefully consider the nature of intrinsic capacities—how they form, how they develop, what kinds of environments best serve their healthy expression. In a word, we must understand and connect to the way children of various ages and backgrounds make meaning in their world.

Caring for meaning structures carries with it the responsibility to know the individual child. This means we must participate in the diversity of backgrounds which the children bring with them. I believe the benefits of this are obvious. We grow in tolerance, we learn new expressions of values, and we find in ourselves patience and delight as we stretch in ever new ways. It is really very exciting to learn from a child how she listens and responds and then see if I am capable of participating in her meaning, and truly being with her. It is a lesson in humility, in caring, in putting aside one’s agenda, in short, in developing oneself to serve another, perhaps the deepest form of self-actualization available to us.

I do not think that dream work or mindfulness can provide these growth opportunities. The nature of the intrinsic capacities of the child is simply not in their purview. They may shed some light on how we are approaching them. Again, I am not making any comment whatsoever on their overall value. I am only pointing out that we have unique challenges and opportunities in education and that we best serve our field by participating in them. This, more than increased pay, acknowledges the integrity and value of our profession.

Continually asking: What is the consciousness of children? What is the nature of their psyche?

Approaching child development through the lens of the consciousness of children is a rich opportunity for the spiritual awakening of teachers. Many spiritually oriented educators, such as Monetessori and Rousseau to name just two, have seen the importance of child development. As readers of this blog know, Josette and I have spent 30 years pioneering and refining Natural Learning Relationships. New readers can go here for a comprehensive overview of Natural Learning Relationships.

As a consciousness-first approach to child development, Natural Learning Relationships looks at the characteristics of each developmental stage and attempts to describe how they are organized to allow self-actualization. There is in each developmental stage an Organizing Principle. The Organizing Principle takes the qualities, capacities and talents of the age and uses it toward the well-being of the child. Its nature changes throughout each stage of the development, but not its purpose, which is to insure maximum opportunities for self actualization.

The child access optimal well-being when the needs of the organizing principle of a stage are met. By providing for the stage-specific needs of the child, adults also come to greater health and contact their own well-being. Properly responding to the expressions of the Organizing Principle in young people can often precipitate a simultaneous development in adults. This relationship serves the deepest development of both children and adults. It can be viewed as a dance of reciprocal growth toward self-knowledge. It is a vital example of opportunities naturally built into the teaching profession. Recognition of mutual development can change chauvinism towards children for its inherent value of serving the self-actualization of the adult is unmistakable.

Specifically, mutual development includes:

• The opportunity to heal past wounds
• Engagement of relationship to break current habits and patterns
• An invitation to self-observation
• Deeper development in the adult of each of the organizing principles of childhood—to wit: Rightful Place, Trust, Autonomy, and Interconnectedness

Last, educators, in my opinion, can and should hold the children in what the great psychologist and educator Carl Rogers called unconditional positive regard. Children, indeed all of us, have the potential for optimal well-being and our work is to allow them to become fully aware of this. Optimal well-being lives in our essence. It is a special kind of beauty. To remember that it exists, to notice it, to connect to it reminds us of our own goodness, our own truth, and our own beauty.

This is teaching as a spiritual activity.

Wisdom is not a disembodied intellectual concept. Nor is wisdom a rarefied set of honed skills, standards, or objective truths. Rather, wisdom is a whole being experience of self, spirit, and being.

Wisdom is always inclusive of our emotions, body, brain, and heart along with the whole evolving history of our interpersonal relationships and personal development. Wisdom is built on and emerges from the foundation of self-knowledge—relational to any age and stage of growth.

Qualities of adult wisdom involve integration of all aspects of self. Other qualities of adult wisdom involve individuation of the self in service of the wholeness of being while simultaneously being connected to the greater good. All of these factors together yield an experience of integrity and meaning that serves purpose.

However, wisdom is not a perfectionist goal or rarefied awareness. Rather wisdom is available at any age of development when a person is able to access and act from their inherent developmental capacities available and within the boundaries of individual context.

What brings forth wisdom? The path to wisdom emerges in relationship. The relationship between parent and child is one such context in which wisdom can emerge in both adult and child simultaneously. We call this wisdom-based relationship.

Wisdom-based relationship is not primarily cognitive; rather, it is visceral, empathic, and a kind of knowing that is a fundamental connection between I and thou (adult and child). The experience of wisdom in relationship lies in an open appreciation of the other which moves beyond personal interests. It is our ability to see and feel our children’s consciousness in ourselves and relate to our child in his or her language, meaning, and developmental moment.

One beauty of parenting is that nurturing well-being in our child stimulates increased well-being and the development of wisdom qualities in us as adults. The method involves conscientious relationship to nurturing development in the child coupled with self-observation and reflection.

Your conscientious use of Natural Learning Relationships has the potential to bring forward wisdom-based relationships with your child. The result is delicious moments of meaningful relationship that last a lifetime.

You can attend a workshop with Dr. Josette Luvmour this Saturday from 9:30am-4pm in Portland, Oregon.

The Tyranny of Normal
Normal. Its history in education and psychology chronicles the predilections of the dominant aspects of a culture. Normal means stability and predictability. It has less to say about the health of people than it does about the security (and attendant fears) of the vested interests of institutions and the people who profit from them. Normal’s pernicious effect on children and education has been trumpeted by many including Illich, Szasz, Foucault, Adler, and Friere…I could run this list all day and not be finished.

Normal in psychology is excruciatingly defined in the DSM. Have you ever seen it? There is a diagnosis waiting if you have 5 (or 3 or of a possible 10 (or 12 or 18) behaviors of a certain type. Some diagnoses make sense as there is mental dysfunction. Others, such as seasonal affective disorder, make me cringe. Really? The weather is the cause of sickness and needs drugs to cure? I ask: who profits from the DSM going from a slim paperback (first published in 1950 with versions of normal and abnormal and described 60 disorders)—to two volumes the size of War and Peace (2012 version)? I leave it to you to answer. What was once considered emotional change is now called a disorder. If you can’t adapt, adjust, or learn to navigate change, then you have 5 of the 8 behaviors of Dependent Personality Disorder. Don’t worry. There is a pill for you in psychiatric drug treatments.

The problem with normal is objectification. In the psychology proselytized through the DSM health is objectified. We are sick if our behaviors don’t meet the norm. The bitter irony is that objectification is a leading contributor to dysfunction in mental health. The DSM even recognizes it. (For example, V61.10—“Partner Relational Problem”).

Public school pays homage to behavioral psychology and cognitive psychology. The student is judged by his or her behavior. Normal is the behavior the school needs to accomplish its goal of meeting cultural criteria which, in our times, is competing in the global marketplace combined with no-child-left-behind standardized tests. Academic normal (cognitive ability) is defined by testing. Children are then sorted (objectified) according to the results. Character normal is defined by behavior norms so that the teacher can transmit the curriculum to the greatest number of students, and especially to those who succeed academically.

Testing is a psychological event. Normal becomes the ability to perform on a par with peers (within standard deviations) in the testing environment. This objectification is not just about data retention and regurgitation, or about the “intelligence” to solve problems. It is also about the ability to perform in a containerized pressured environment. The child has been made into the receptacle for the larger cultural narrative of competition, isolation, and individualism. Each child’s fate is in the hands of the testers; the locus of control is external.  The not so subtle message is that a secure future and our place in the culture depend on success in the testing environment and the approval and beneficience of others.

Despite many program reforms such as cooperative learning, use of technology, hands-on projects, and community college for high school students the objectification continues. Why? Because while testing (IQ, academic, aptitude, MMPI) reinforces and celebrates objectification, testing is not its cause. That lies in deeper waters.

Alternative education lives outside the public system for the most part. Though its roots in America trace back to the earliest colonial days, alternative education hooked up with Humanistic psychology and took a great leap forward in the 60’s. Led by in education by John Holt and many “free-schoolers” and in psychology by Carl Rogers, alternative educators add concepts such as democracy, multi-age learning, and the child’s right to be heard and treated with dignity and respect in the school environment. Testing minimized or abolished, a rebellion (as fit the times) against everything associated with normal, alternative education had many guises springing from similar underlying principles of listening to children, respect for diversity, consideration for curriculum relevancy (often including student interests) and connection with the larger community.

And I say, Hooray!…And I say, not enough.

My 30 years of experience indicates that elimination of objectification occurs more often in alternative education. However, normal is insidious. For instance, devising a program as a reaction to a problem is the normal course of action. Problems originate in the consciousness of the participants. Responses must speak to that depth in order to generate effective change.

Alternative education has, for the most part, not incorporated the advances in psychology and contiguous disciplines. (More on this below) It has chosen a social positioning instead of a consciousness position. This is, in my opinion, a mistake that leaves alternative education on the periphery of the new paradigm that is unfolding in many areas of life.

We need a comprehensive vision for all education that transcends normal, allows educators to create the programs that make sense for their constituency, and maximizes the learning community as central to education.

This vision must extend to the whole of society. In other words it must be the education component of a paradigm shift. We cannot view education as an isolated discipline for the misconception of separation and isolation is the essence of normal.

Enter optimal well-being.

Optimal Well-Being
Optimal well-being starts with these questions: Who is the child? Pure and simple: who is the child?

The inquiry into who is the child dissolves all objectification. The inquiry takes us into fields of transpersonal psychology, holistic education, and beyond. For example, through Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine’s work in the Brussels Free School (a university) we know that humans, indeed all life, self organizes to greater complexity when in open communication with their environment. What does this mean to child development? What does it mean for relationships with children? Couple this with the insightful and persuasive work in the field of the evolution of consciousness by luminaries such as Gebser, Jantsch, and Wilber and patterns emerge that tell us much about the unfolding nature of the child’s consciousness. One insight: Objectification denies complexity. Many more insights await those who engage the inquiry.

There are similar contributions from anthropology, spiritual philosophy, brain research (e.g., interpersonal neurobiology), and other branches of science. The synergy provides insight of such magnitude that sometimes the term “optimal well-being” seems an understatement. The scope and breadth broadens to an open-ended participation in evolution and knowledge of self and universe.

Optimal well-being depends upon knowledge and relationship to the child’s consciousness in the same way that a bountiful and beautiful garden depends upon knowledge of soil, amount of sunlight, type of drainage, fertilizer, and respect for individual plant/environment needs. Knowledge of a child’s consciousness means awareness of how the child organizes his or her world—how the child perceives time, space, identity, respect, community, love, death, aesthetic, meaning-making, sex, and values.

This knowledge includes the realization that every one of these qualities is radically different for a 5, 10, 15, and 20 year old. And it includes creating relationships that nourish the whole of the child’s consciousness in the same way as fertilizing a garden brings forth its blossoming fruition and beauty. (Click here for a quick overview of Natural Learning Relationships—consciousness-based engagement of children).

We have expanded psychology to the breadth of the child’s consciousness. Only now can optimal well-being emerge. When it does, what happens?

Everything changes. Relationship becomes more intimate. We enter being–to-being relationship. As the environment and relationships become more and more developmentally appropriate (refined) new perspectives awaken in both adult and child. There occurs the shaping and learning of primary values in the child as well as the further development of these values in the adult. Values learned include trust, compassion, integrity, resilience, and awareness of the sacred. Achieving this takes time, commitment, and sensitivity. Engaging this with careful attention can both prevent and solve many problems with children.

At the moment we act with intention, we end the chauvinism that we are bringing up our children. Nothing less than our own self-knowledge, our spiritual and interpersonal growth, and our cognitive and emotional competence develop in tandem with the child’s consciousness.

Everything changes. We are free of blindly acquiescing to agendas based on culture and tradition. We are not trying to heal wounds, though many psychological wounds do heal when engaging the child’s consciousness. We insist that our community be based on commitment to consciousness.  We have the confidence that the best outcomes for children and ourselves emerge with optimal well-being. Outcomes are not fixed (which scares some) and we realize that impositions of normal only retard the outcome expression.

Everything changes. Normal is long gone and takes its insidious shadow of pathology with it. Fear about what’s wrong, what’s broken, what’s sick lessens. Change is embraced and navigated in relationship. Well-being emerges and the natural capacities of spirituality, social justice, and community as well as rightful place, trust, autonomy, and interconnectedness manifest according to developmental opportunity. We don’t have to teach for these precious qualities of self to come forward. These qualities are of our being, our very selves. We just have to nourish consciousness.

The aim of education changes. The content of the curriculum is seen as a way of nourishing the consciousness of the child. We teach civics to 15 year olds but always in a way to help the children actualize autonomy. Democracy? It’s an inevitable outcome. We include ecology for 11 year olds but as a way to talk about relationships and foster trust.  Prejudice? No chance to take root. Respect for diversity is not taught because it is lived. Curiosity, relationship, learning? Never not there—because it is ever-present.

Society changes. Added to the synergy of all of the above is the value that a focus on optimal well-being brings to therapy, to social service organizations that serve children, and most importantly to families. Optimal well-being is the leverage point from which we can reclaim a healthy society.  Consider that for the first time in recorded history we have the opportunity to know and participate in relationships that nourish consciousness. Imagine a world where that happens. The great poet Blake said “What is now real was once imagined.” This is not idealism when the knowledge and means are at hand to live in optimal well-being.

Knowledge itself changes. Josette’s PhD committee at Fielding Graduate Institute insisted that her data reveal that wisdom best described the changes emerging in adults who had consistently used Natural Learning Relationships. These were graduates of programs and clients of ours from over 10 years ago. In that respect, hers was a longitudinal study of adults who made intentional effort to nurture children’s development of optimal well-being. The guidance that she was witnessing the emergence of wisdom came from the rigorous academicians of her dissertation committee.

Wisdom
Aristotle, a great naturalist, coined the term entelechy to describe how wisdom expresses itself in humans. Distilled to its essence, entelechy means the essential informing principle of a living thing.

The list of “entellectuals” is long and distinguished. Gottfried Leibniz, a founder of calculus and originator of the notion of the perennial philosophy, used entelechy extensively to describe an organism’s self-sufficiency and as the source of their “internal activities.” Adler used the term to help describe the child’s inexorable movement towards greatness. Froebel, and later Montessori, referred to entelechy to help describe the vital nature of the child and then developed pedagogies designed to maximize this vitality. Carl Jung, Gregory Bateson, Thomas Merton, and many others have used entelechy as a springboard to deepen appreciation of the source of knowledge, awareness, and the ability to self-reflect.

Wisdom is not something we put into a child—it is already there. In his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow asks, “What if the organism is seen as having ‘biological wisdom’?” In every stage of life, there is wisdom that is present and available to the human. In every stage of childhood, wisdom is present and available in the child.

We are born with it. The wisdom we are referring to is the same as that which Gregory Bateson called “systemic wisdom.” In his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Bateson defined wisdom as an awareness of the interlocking circuits that connect the elements of the natural world. He said, “I use ‘wisdom’ as a word for recognition of and guidance by knowledge of the total systemic creature.”

In Natural Learning Relationships, we refer to wisdom that is in the moment—the simultaneous knowledge/action that optimizes the well-being of the organism. Wisdom is right-action of a person’s developmental moment in relationship to the context. In a state of optimal well-being, a person can experience that which is most meaningful, beautiful, and true for their developmental stage and their moment of life.

My Vision of Education
Entellectual, not intellectual, educators are called for. Only entellectuals will be able to design the programs and curriculum that support wisdom-based relationships in the communities in which they teach. Only they will expand into the disciplines of spiritual inquiry, anthropology, evolution of consciousness, science, family dynamics, nature of wisdom and all psychological discourses. Their abiding inquiry will center on the consciousness of the child and the relationships that support it.

Any educator in any system can be an entellectual. They might not have the opportunity to bring all their wisdom to the fore, but they will find many opportunities to do so.

My school has a specific statement of its approach to the consciousness of children. Relationships rule; all relationships serve optimal well-being. Curriculum is designed according to individual and family values. The child is included in the design of education within their developmental capacities. Families enroll and there are many points of intersection between home and school. Values emerge that have meaning for school and home. Teacher Training includes full scale inquiry into the disciplines named in the preceding paragraph as well as how to engage parents and siblings of students. It also includes inquiry into self-knowledge. “Do our actions serve optimal well-being” is a legitimate question and part of the staff culture.

My school’s four simple goals:

1. Academic excellence and a mastery of all the important skills needed to maximize their educational potential.
2. The social ability to bring greater perspective, understanding, compassion, and problem-solving to the world we live in.
3. The ability to self-reflect in a way that builds confidence and helps a child know their place in the world.
4. An enriched— never diminished—ability to find joy and wonder in themselves, the world, and people around them.

Impossible? The Summa Academy will open next fall. And I have done prototypes over the past 30 years.

I realize that I raise many questions. Can educators take responsibility for understanding human consciousness? Can we get away from our addiction to programs? Can we care more about how learning occurs than our agendas, no matter how socially just they are? Can we see that organizing around our wounds is the normal reaction but often leaves us in an “anti” position? Can we commit to optimal well-being as the basis for our work?

Most importantly, can we include ourselves, our knowledge base, our epistemology—are we willing to answer the question: How do you know?

These questions are integral to my school. Answers are emergent, not fixed and so the school evolves.

That’s my vision of education. What’s yours?