The Child's Natural Order

Overemphasis on behaviour, attitude and social skills has curbed learning in schools. This is on the whole unfortunate as such traits hardly constitute knowledge about the physical world and what is worse is that they remove the child from his/her native self. They are more to do with behavioral dynamics than with the quest for knowledge. I refrain from referring to behavioral dynamics as personality, for a child new to the world must not be robbed of its innocence. Categorizing juvenile personality does precisely that. A child has to be nurtured no doubt and nurturing implies grooming. The blessings of etiquette and manners that gift our existence with meaning would do the same for every child if and only if they are received as gifts by them. If they do not go down well with them, I am afraid they would act as imprints curtailing potential for self awareness. 

We grow up with fixed notions about discipline, focus and activity. These traits are thought to be necessary for learning, as ‘sustenance’ is believed to be the key to its enterprise. The ones who drill these notions into our psyche would like us to swallow them and digest the essentials that some of us have naturally come to abhor. Why naturally? Discipline is not the child’s natural order. By presenting it through the medium of fear you are depriving the child of its benefit. You are not going to be able to make the young learner accept it without resistance. You are not going to be able to make the child see it as a quality that would aid in the pleasure of learning. How is the child supposed to be made to accept the notion in mind? One can be made to behave in a disciplined manner but to accept the necessity of discipline mentally is another matter altogether. It would be worthwhile to treat discipline on equal terms. We need to have a common conception of this misunderstood trait. Discipline as repetition does not help in exploring. Exploration is necessary for learning. Discipline as conviction goes a long way in exploring and finding out. Why not introduce it as soothing cream? Why look at discipline as a bitter pill to swallow? 

The necessity of discipline and concentration are drilled into our psyche. They then operate as static ideals that serve to define studious diligence. A child who conforms to these devices finds favor with the system and thereby earns good will. A child who does not conform to such a dictate is condemned to ‘stand outside’ the class where the identity of an outsider is discovered. The morale of the shunned sets in and what follows is creeping dismay that haunts what should be the wonder years of the child.

Adults have the benefit of experience which children do not. It cannot be seen as ‘lack’ for we need to encourage them to look forward to it. To spell the hours every day is to amount to monotony but to live every day with zest is to internalize change which is learning from experience. When a teacher knows that children do not have experience, it ought to dawn upon the teacher to eliminate ‘fear’. Fear acts as an association thereby extinguishing participation in the learning experience. If the teacher resorts to fear as a tool then he/she is incapacitated by limitation. 

Students need privacy while learning. This need for privacy is innate to students. There are many occasions where they would like to learn by trial and error; sometimes on whim as well. The teacher carries a baggage of ideas, background and attitudes that may impede the student’s natural course of learning. The major ones are attitudes about the child’s psychology. A teacher tends to think that a studious child makes for a focused learner. Enforced focus amounts to suffocation. Focus can only be a natural choice for the student. The student focuses effortlessly on a subject when the attention is captured by the excitement it provokes. Enforcing focus would imply a limitation on the part of the teacher. The student does not need to focus all the time. A sparrow by the window is a welcome distraction and a little diversion goes a long way in refreshing innocent minds. A child gets to use all the senses to learn and this would be holistic wouldn’t it? Such a learner is said to be a multimodal learner.

A teacher can explain concepts through different media; visual, auditory and kinesthetic. This is an effective way of teaching multimodal learners.

Another point worth noting is that a student may see patterns across subjects. He/she may not want to study subjects in water tight compartments. A simile such as, “as solid as a rock” may remind a student of a chapter in rocks and minerals in Chemistry. The mind wanders and drifts away to a place where differences in form are unseen. This learning style calls for appreciation. It may seem like hyperactivity, but judgement clouds beauty. Why judge? Why restrict thought to form? A restriction of this kind can curb the child’s appreciation for a subject. The broader the creative range, the greater the appreciation. 

Hyperactivity can make a child adept at multitasking and a focused child can make an assiduous specialist. We may find the same learner hyperactive and focused at different points in time in different tasks and sometimes in the same task as well. They are natural variations in a learner. A natural learner follows the path of instinct and when left to do so obtains the rainbow effect of awareness. The contours of knowledge are colored by awareness.  Give in to the dance of hyperactivity and tune in to the poise of focus!