Learn how to learn

This morning a friend encouraged me to continue developing some of the ideas in Monday's post, "Labor."  While I love the feedback, & will do it (promise!), the conversation wound in a different & especially timely direction-- towards education.  Our discussion of what work is valued & why back-tracked to how we learn & which aptitudes are most valued in schools & in workplaces.

Thoughts of school & thoughts of fall

I tend to favor unschooling, a method of self-directed learning.  Rather than home-schooling a child, where you still follow a school curriculum at home instead of school, unschoolers support children's passions.  This isn't to say that the breadth & scope of education isn't met, or that children aren't challenged, but usually it's met at a different timeline.  For example, one of Kevin's professors unschools her daughter.  Kevin's professor has several degrees, is incredibly bright, & married to a man who is equally smart & also an educator.  Their daughter didn't want to learn to read until she was 10.  Developmentally, kids do any number of things at any number of ages.  I crawled late but walked early.  There is nothing written in nature saying children learn to read at age 5 or 6.  In fact, many children fight & find enormous stress when they're forced to read before they're ready.  Knowing this, though it tried their patience, the family educated their daughter, nurtured her interests & growth, & waited to help her with reading skills until she showed the inclination.  One day she did.  Once she was ready she learned to read incredibly quickly & now is devouring books.

Obviously this is anecdotal evidence in favor of this method.  I'd be happy to research more hard data.  My sense is that hard data would confirm that children do develop on an individual timeline.  Certainly we can read general developmental trends but a variety of factors will point to each of our individual aptitudes & appetites.

A systematized, universally implemented educational model would be seriously challenged in addressing the nuances of each child.  This is why I tend to favor unschooling, home-schooling with a lot of awareness of each child's strengths & pace, or alternative educational models such as free schools.  However, that said, I have plenty of friends who are current or former teachers.  One of my friends, whom I respect greatly, is very much in favor of supporting the public sector.  Her belief in the public sphere helped me piece together some of my emerging ideas on how to keep learning & educational spaces vibrant.

Here's the deal: I totally concur with her or anyone else who feels that the public sector needs to be refunded.  Tax money should be divested from the military & reinvested in schools (specifically some of the gutted programs like arts).  However, to continue the conversation on how to teach, learn, & create space that truly recognizes each student, I very much believe in parallel structures.  A year ago I heard Chris Dixon offer a talk on "Taking Ourselves Seriously" addressed to those in the left engaged in creating parallel structures like Free Schools, Housing Cooperatives, Community Gardens, DIY Bike Shops & Shares, & other collaborative community building that challenges corporatocracy.  The conversation circled back to this same place & the consensus among those present returned to holding the public sphere accountable while creating viable alternatives.  It shouldn't be either/or but both.

Obviously not all parents want to nor are able to home-school or unschool their children.  Not all children thrive best in that environment.  There should be public education that is solid, safe, & stimulating.  Likewise, alternative educational models in community or in homes should exist to challenge normalization of standardized testing & other controversial practices which certainly do not serve all students nor all communities.

It's interesting trying to hold simultaneous space.  Chris Dixon referred to a friend's idea of pragmatically living in the world that exists while keeping one foot in the potential world of what could be.  Allowing ourselves to hold space for both so our imaginations can encompass & strive towards what truly serves us best.

Embodying Story

At summer camp, as a young girl, I took modern dance.  I remember dancing freely with the teacher's voice suggesting I "be a tree."  Reflecting back, it sounds so much less inhibited than I usually recognize myself to be.  It sounds so much more hippie than I generally acknowledge myself to be.  But I came home begging my mother to send me to modern dance lessons.

We lived in the Philly suburbs.  To my knowledge, in the early 90s she probably would have had to commit to drive me to Philly for lessons.  I'm sure it could have been a burden to a working mother.  She found a ballet studio run by two Polish former dancers.  One played the piano & the other kept time by banging her cane.  These ballerinas had danced for survival.  I wanted to dance for something else.

I remember that same spark of recognition when I wandered into Barry's house as a teenager.  His mother took sculpting classes at night.  Their home was filled with nude sculptures of real women with generous thighs, soft shoulders, & round bellies.  As a young woman, growing into my own skin, it suddenly seemed possible that I could find a home there.  I looked closely at what Barry's mother had fashioned: I could see her thumb nail carve out a shoulder blade, her print on a calf, where she had sprayed water to soften, & where she'd allowed clay to harden & form.

I loved working with clay.  I loved the tactile sensation.  I loved sculpting & feeling that lineage to something epic, some sensation of man from earth, imagination to reality.  I took a workshop with Jill Manning where she compared backbending towards throwing a pot on a wheel, slowly centering.

During this time my main expression was writing.  I wrote tons of poetry & short stories.  The poetry was mainly influenced by Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, & Adrienne Rich.  A different voice appealed to me in stories.  I liked something rugged & rich in Flannery O'Connor's tales & generally dug deep in the Southern American cannon for authors.  

All of these authors directed me to their sources.  Sylvia Plath especially sent me towards Biblical stories, Greek, & Roman myths.  I loved the drama.  I loved the crafting of Self.

All of these memories have resurfaced for me recently.  I'm teaching kids yoga, which I don't do often.  I began remembering what felt compelling to me around age nine.  It was movement & story.  That is yoga-- connecting to something deep, rich, & possibly buried within ourselves.  Freeing up & moving through.  Sculpting our own forming bodies into something authentic.  

In recent years I've read many of the stories that shaped yoga practice.  My plan is to allow these young students to embody Virabhadra & then learn about the epic tale between he, Sita, & Daksha.  Teach the students how to inhabit Natarajasana & then explore the significance of Nataraj dancing & stamping out ignorance.  Balance in Ardha Candrasana & giggle at the origin tale of Ganesh hurling his husk at the moon.

Sweetly, though I have yet to meet this group of students they've already offered me this exploration in preparing their class.  There is such a richness in the relationship of learning.  I have the blessing & privilege of watching students stride a little more knowledgeably within themselves & in so doing, excavate.