Monday, Sep 03, 2007

One answer to all your questions about creating an optimal learning environment (Part 2)

Download this episode (11 min)   
In this episode Nick Drummond and Mats Edin continue talking about a perspective which addresses movement and vertical development in the classroom.

What is really important? What is motivating you and how do you motivate the students? It has to be an authentic answer. Maybe you have never really thought about it or let the students understand that together with you. So you have to find out together with them why what we say and what we do is so important, and allow for that to sink in. Maybe break up into smaller groups (boys and girls separately) to start there and find out. And if it starts to get uncomfortable then that is a great sign. What is motivating you, really? That is the key thing. If the answer is survival, to get your salary and pay your bills, then you have to dig deeper. We are not saying that many teachers think like that. But what is it that we are expressing? Because kids are easily disillusioned and that is why it is so important to give them a much bigger context than we normally give them and to find the answer you have to go deeper than you maybe ever have done before.

So what is life really all about? Are we nothing more than a chemical process? Is life totally meaningless?

We can’t motivate kids to take on a responsibility for life and development by saying that there is no God, there is no meaning, that life is a big accident and totally meaningless and that the brain is nothing more than a chemical process that anybody can manipulate to create some sense of meaning. But that is what materialists say. But if that is true then we are really in serious trouble. As chemical processes we really do have to fight to create something really big, to create meaning and to motivate kids. And if we believe that there is deep meaning to life then we are responsible for what we give to these teenagers and kids. Meaning is not just lying out there, we have to create it. We don’t have to look far. Look around you at the school. Are there people who need your help and presence? If you look around and the answer is yes, then you have the meaning there. Realising that we are responsible for making whatever higher happens. There is no one else who is going to do it. Realising that we are capable of much more than we thought. We are an expression of the highest that life and consciousness has reached. You won’t have to say to the kids to develop, because they will say “I’m just doing what my teacher is doing. She keeps moving all the time. She is always changing and developing. I know what life is about now. I didn’t get it before. She kept saying that we should develop but she didn’t, she just kept doing the same.”

This vertical perspective is implicating and people in Scandinavia, and in particular Sweden, become very suspicious when we start talking about it, because then it implies that they are going to be available. And Swedish people do not want to be available. “I want to have my time for myself. It’s my life!” And Swedish people love to be unhappy. But when you start expressing something else that is deeper than your own inertia you become available and responsible and you discover that life is inherently positive and what it is really all about.

Are you interested to learn more about applying this perspective in education? Then please contact us: http://www.nordicintegral.com, email: nick.drummond@nordicintegral.com

Posted by Nick Drummond at 8:34 AM |  MAKE A COMMENT  

<< Home